Fire is and always will be part of life in Australia. What we do to minimise its impact is critical and surely should be managed as a single policy rather than State by State?
Thanks Neville for your insightful opinion piece. I look forward to hearing what others think of this.
To manage a fire is to steer it in the direction you want it to take with ploughed fire breaks that can be burnt back from to lessen the chance of ember attack in the direction the fire is taking .
Livestock have to be used to reduce the fuel in hard to get at places .
Water is the most precious commodity in a fire zone so there need be a concentrated effort to change the way it is used ; Some one took up my suggestion on a small scale of using compressed air and minimal water to force the fire back onto itself while wetting down the burnt area to extinguish burning wood .
The design of fire trucks has to change to provide a fireproof cabin with heat resistant windows a vehicle lower to the ground that can carry more water instead of the current top heavy vehicles used like in Victoria that are basic with a tank and pumps on the back.
I am told that the Vic CFA removed all of the air conditioning units out of all the trucks when they did their fleet purchase a few years ago that forces the crews to wind down the windows to breathe in their oxygen starved cabins . Somewhere in Melbourne there is a shed full of air-conditioning units that were removed from each vehicle before they were delivered to each brigade.
All country shire laneways have to be cleared of fallen branches and long grass burnt between the fenced off paddocks and tracks blazed to provide for vehicle access further afield.
Right now we have so much red tape it's a wonder it doesn't catch fire ; We need a system put in place that covers all natural disasters that solves the problem before it can get out of control by putting all of our resources together under the one authority made up of veterans not office workers ,people who have felt the mental anguish of despair that they know those out there are living and know how to help from their first hand experience of having been there in person .
It would be far better to use a 5 to 10,000 psi water blaster to extinguish fires than to use what's currently in use that would save a lot of water and do a better job of extinguishing fires on stumps and trees and to be able to sweep the fire back upon itself .
A person wearing a fire suit using a long water pressure hose could do a lot of damage to a fire front so you imagine what many more could do working off the same tank .
All that's needed is water tankers refilling their tanks instead of each appliance having to return to the nearest watering point .
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