Bureaucracy adds to pain of Black Saturday recovery

Mandy Mc says:

07:06am | 05/02/10

I concur wholeheartedly with Fran - it is time to hand over the reconstruction to the people, of course - with the help of the experts but let’s leave the bureacracy (read: Vic Govt) well out of it now !

Matt says:

07:19am | 05/02/10

Yeah Pete then how come the same bureaucracy can deliver, with breaktaking speed, billions of dollars of school halls across the country, some of very dubious need?  I’ve been to Marysville and you will never convince me that what is (not) happening there is a national disgrace - as disgraceful as the lack of housing in remote aborignal communities.

Actually you’re right - its not the bureacrat’s fault.  Its a question of national leadership and national priorities. 

Well said Fran

Sympathiser says:

07:52am | 05/02/10

Only yesterday, half of Question Time in Parliament was taken up by several Parliamentarians congratulating and thanking themselves for a job well done for the work they carried out following Black Saturday. Now Punch tells a different story - one place without a school for instance. Ok Julia build a school poste haste.

Matt says:

07:58am | 05/02/10

And here’s a message for that Twiggy Forrest mob that reportedly turned its back on funding a kid’s playground.  If you want to attract tourists to a destination, especially one relying on road-based visitation, then the BEST thing you could do is build a state-of-the art playground that gives the kids something to do while the parents recover over a coffee.  And then fill the kids up with sausage rolls and lollies.  Dont dismiss the pulling power of a playground so arrogantly.

From what I saw, Marysville could do with the sounds of kid’s laughter.

pete says:

08:06am | 05/02/10

well frankly Matt, because there was a political will, they wanted it fast tracked for political expediency so they told departments to take short cuts, and the result of those type of decisions? You and I now have to pay for insulation in houses that dont exist or insulation for empty blocks of land etc. 
You are missing my point, I find it unpalatable for a politician to write a piece here using the sad circumstances the fire victims find themselves in, so that she can score a cheap political point against the victorian government, because rest assured thats all it is. do you really beleive that the situation would be different if the libs were in government?  The only thing different woulbe that an ALP politican would have written the piece.

Seamus says:

08:27am | 05/02/10

Definition of BureaucracyL Big cane toads in little puddles.

John A Neve says:

08:27am | 05/02/10

Fran Bailey, is ignoring the truth, the state of our burearucracy lies squarely at the feet of governments of all persuasions.

Local Community Bodies will only add another level of government, it’s been tried in other areas many times before. After a very short time political groupings start to take over. You then have the same old faces pusing their own egendas.

If Fran is really serious? She should start a parliamentary move to clean up the public service, it is obvious there are many not earning their keep. But it will never happen, sadly most politicians are lost without the
bureaucracy.

Helen says:

10:43am | 05/02/10

We regional dwellers should never again allow a small section of the community hijack land management policy as the greenies did in the mid nineties when they convinced Ministers and their minions to lock up public lands and stop reasonable land management practices.
The subsequent increase in fuel load, coupled with a long drought, has brought us the “Mega” fires of South East Australia in the past seven years.

1.Climate change and weather conditions have brought us the “mega” fires of South Eastern Australia. If you are really a volunteer firefighter you must be aware of the fact that the drought / windy conditions have brought on a situation where controlled burns are limited to a very narrow window of time per year, insufficient to make much of a difference to the fuel load.
2. Controlled burns is policy in National Parks as well as private land, where appropriate, but again opportunity is limited. See (1).
3. Bushfires rarely start in National Parks. Fires in NPs usually start outside the NP and burn in, not the other way around. The Black Saturday bushfires were started by electrical cable faults and arson, not Greenies or NPs.
4. Speaking of arsonists, the ones I’ve seen caught in the media are neither Greenies nor city folk, so dial down the abuse of these groups, please.
5. Wet cool temperate old-growth rainforest isn’t as likely to burn as the dry, fire-loving regrowth which results after the old-growth has been clearfelled and what the forest industry describes as “regenerated”.

Jeff Mueller says:

12:10pm | 05/02/10

Helen, spoiling a good whinge with facts is not the Australian Way!

Jacquie Butterfield says:

12:11pm | 05/02/10

The fracas re aftermath management is almost too painful to read about.
Similarly reported in Haiti was that apparently Israeli and Cuban aid rescuers stepped over US Military barriers to go immediately to dispense aid….and that the US, being very interested in safety of its aid workers, recalled them at 9pm as it was going to be very dangerous, with result that they had to leave 40 patients in critical stages in the tents leaving apparently a CNN crew to tend them…sorry if this is old news….some things that are done are unbearable to learn about.  Poor organisation, red tape are too painful to witness when you can do nothing personally about it!

michael ferguson says:

12:18pm | 05/02/10

Helen 11.43 .  Good to see some sense on this issue rather than the misguided and emotional views put forward by Allen 8.05.  Calm heads need to prevail.

Mick says:

12:37pm | 05/02/10

As a prescribed firefighter of two of the three recent ‘mega fires’ and a forester, I am going to expand on a few of Helens points.

You are right to a point that the ‘lock it up and leave it’ land management policy of recent years has had an impact on the frequency of large unplanned fire events.  However, these fires are not as unprecedented as one may think.  What about the fires in 1939? or in 1851?  or even (to a lesser extent) in 1983?  What we are really seeing is the result of the removal of indigenous fire regimes, coupled with woefully inadequate resources to conduct prescribed burning of the correct frequency and intensity.  The colonial policy of fire suppression has indeed lead to a build up of fuel load across the landscape, but this had been occurring since squatters, pastoralists and gold miners ousted Coorees (along with their traditional fire regimes) from their lands .  We must remember that the current assemblage of vegetation communities is the result of past indigenous fire regimes and it is this loss of knowledge that is getting us into trouble.  It’s not as simple as blaming drought and climate change for the increased incidence of recent large, unplanned fire events.

To say that bushfires rarely start in National parks is utter rubbish.  Let me remind you of the fires in 2002/03 that burnt Canberra and threatened Victorian towns like Omeo..  These started in Namagi, Brindabella,.and Alpine National Parks.  Lightning strikes were the cause.  The fires of 2006 were also the result of lightning strikes in forested areas.  While arson is a very serious threat to towns, lives and property, to this day the overwhelming cause of fire events in forested areas are lightning strikes.  These are random and do not take land tenure into account. 

I also think your attack on the forest industry is misguided.  While it is true that cool temperate rainforest is less likely to burn, the black saturday fires clearly show that it can and will.  Vast areas behind Marysville (Lady Talbot Dr for example) and lake mountain have had intense fire in rainforest stands.  Large areas on the blue range behind Alexandra have seen rainforest stands burn These stands of cool temperate rainforest are dominated by Myrtle Beech and will recover.  The blue range is a great example where the vast majority of rainforest was burnt in 1939 and has regrown from coppice over the last 70 yrs.  The myrtle in these stands is already starting to recover.  Old growth stands, by definition, are in the twilight of their years.  The O’Shannessy catchment is an example of an area that had escaped fire for almost 400yrs.  70% of this catchment burnt during black saturday.  HOWEVER, the O’Shannessy is not pure rainforest and the presence of old, senecent (dying) mountain ash logically indicates that this area must have burnt in the past…and will burn again in the future (else eucalypts simply would not be present at the site). 
Also from observation since black saturday, one cannot say that regenerating eucalypt forest is dry and fire loving, or has burnt anymore than the surrounding early mature forest.  Remember that most of the area that was burnt in the Murrindindi fire was 1939 regrowth.  This is in its peak fire danger in terms of fuel loads.  Regenerating eucalypts actually carry less fuel (in t/ha) and there are many examples where stands of young regrowth remain unburnt, where the surrounding forest has suffered full crown consumption.

E says:

01:28pm | 05/02/10

Great post Mick,

There are two questions:

1) Why were the black saturday fires so extreme?
2) Why did so many people die?

I reckon Mick has nailed Q1 nicely.
I stand by my explaination for Q2 (above Micks post).

john howard says:

02:10pm | 05/02/10

bureaucracy = trying to implement laws so that your family won’t get toasted to a crisp in 20 yrs time when your suffering is forgotten.

biff says:

02:23pm | 05/02/10

When are they going to nail the bloke with ‘P’ on his office door? Isn’t he responsible for everything that falls within the borders of Victoria?

Gary says:

02:30pm | 05/02/10

You might want to get out of your chauffer driven car Fran…. Maysville PS is under construction… yes it has taken longer but that is because we the community have ask for not only a school but Childcare, Kinder & Maternal Health to be located on the one site… so it has taken a bit long but we are get four times as much

Sam says:

02:30pm | 05/02/10

Finally woken up have you…  good to see you not sleeping on the job for a change

Steve says:

03:44pm | 05/02/10

The crass, ill timed and plain wrong piece by Fran Bailey is only beaten by some of the highly emotive, stupid comments that are contained underneath.
I write this as someone who was involved in the fires as a volunteer, and as someone who has had to deal with the wreckage of many people’s emotions and livelihoods since. Never mind the ghosts of people I know who are no longer here.

I frankly cannot believe that Mrs Bailey would pick now to write such a turgid highly political piece. With emotions right across the communities at their highest level since the fires, to write such an emotive piece is frankly amazing.

And yet I am not surprised. Mrs Bailey has a track record of airily blaming all sorts of people without foundation at all. And of course not accepting any responsibility for much other than what she may perceive as good news.

Lets go through just some of the factual mistakes. She says Marysville is “without shops”. Wrong. Perhaps she doesn’t know about the car museum put in place by VBRRA , but I think she does. She talks of “the reluctance of fire bureaucrats to install (fire detection) technology.” Waht possible evidence is there to base this serious charge?? there is none.

She says that Victoria has adopted a “one dimensional approach to fuel reduction”. What on earth does that mean??? Nothing of course - just a back hand way of saying it’s all the government’s fault. And is she suggesting that the firestorm that day - indescribable to anyone who didn’t see it - was caused because of fuel reduction policies alone?

I could go on and on about this piece and its blatant politically inspired half truths and errors. But mostly I just want to say this - that there are many, many people who are daily dealing now with the aftermath of this; family members gone, property and livelihoods destroyed, marriages broken, deep pyschological scars that may never go.

We need better than this facile blame piece, and frankly many of the so-called comments as well. Perhaps we will see that in the days ahead.

persephone says:

09:34pm | 05/02/10

Agree, Steve.

I was in Marysville a fortnight ago. Not only were there shops open - some of them in buildings which still show the traces of fire (for example, some were part of what was obviously once a double storey building but now is single storey) but it was very alive - people and cars everywhere.

And houses also, in various stages of construction - including some on blocks which I (regardless of Black Saturday) wouldn’t build on in a pink fit.

formersnag says:

12:05pm | 06/02/10

When will the radical, extremist, loony, left, greens who were responsible for causing the high fuel loads that fed those firestorms be held accountable for the deaths they caused?

Captain Koala says:

08:47am | 07/02/10

Well put Mrs Bailey - your sentiments same as I have heard from friends in fire towns -. They reckon, and after track record with Victorian Police force, cant blame them that Christine Nixon is all about mug in paper.  Let the locals do the job