Guardian’s latest updates on fires

Australia fires live: NSW and Victoria bushfires heap pressure on Scott Morrison – latest updates, Guardian 6 Jan 2020

The PM’s handling of the Australian bushfire crisis comes under further scrutiny as NSW and Victorian towns gain brief reprieve from fires. Follow the latest news and live updates

The impact the bushfire emergency is having on our First Nations people is required reading as well.

From Lorena Allam:

For First Nations people the bushfires bring a particular grief, burning what makes us who we are ……

The issue in extreme drought like this, underpinned by 20 years of reduced rainfall, so 15-25% reduction in winter rainfall which has meant our window for hazard reduction is very narrow now because it’s either too wet or too dangerous to burn, reduction over decades in forestry and National Parks personnel who’re out there doing the hazard reduction, so it’s fallen to volunteers and we are mainly only available on weekends, so there are all these factors but it’s what annoyed ex-fire chiefs, I suppose was that it was being used as an attack, the Greens are stopping burning, it’s actually not true.

… With extreme dryness, everything will burn. That’s why we can’t put the fires out. Firefighting aircraft are not a panacea. It needs to be new thinking on how we deal with this ongoing crisis into the future. There will be planning standards, building standards, how we use federal government agencies like the ADF which we called for – we were mocked by the prime minister for asking for that some months ago. But we do need to work out how we are going to deal with this. I’ve recently been in California. The best resourced firefighting place in the world really. They can’t cope with the fires driven by climate change. So they are having a huge rethink about how they do it. So fuel reduction is part of the picture, but that’s all.

Greg Mullins is also asked about hazard reduction burns. He says:

January 6, 2020 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming

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