02/11/2009
Criminal Negligence
IT is believed that one in five people in my old town of Marysville are dead.
SATURDAY, February 7, 2009, will be remembered in Australian history as a day of the greatest infamy - a day that dwarfed the preceding bushfire tragedies of Black Thursday, 1851, Black Friday, 1939 and Ash Wednesday 1983.
The Victorian environment is no longer a game board for political greens and expediency minded politicians with votes on their minds.
It is a killing field where Victorians have been sacrificed on the altar of green environmentalism - a religion that was sold to them as a saviour and turned out to be an executioner.
For eight years I conducted horse tours in the bush around Marysville and I knew it better than most because I didn't stick to tracks - wherever possible I took people directly through the bush, interpreting it and educating them in its ways.
I knew very well that those forests were about to burn and what a terrible toll they would take when they did. So I tried, but obviously not well enough, to change things.
About six years ago I was a shortlived committee member of Marysville Tourism. I resigned because the group adopted an anti-logging stance and aligned itself with a radical green group which later organised a logging blockade in the area. At the time the group president was the manager of a well known guest house which now lies a burnt out ruin in the main street. At least one guest died there.
Around that time I also wrote an article for the local district newsheet, The Triangle, going into the background of the fire regime in Victoria's forests and how it had changed dangerously.
What little things I could do, I did. So did my friends - people like Bob Richardson of Push For The Bush, Graeme and Wendy Stoney, Charlie Lovick and Doug and Christa Treasure.
I put my cattle back on the high plains in defiance of Bracks and Thwaites. I told whoever would listen of the danger. I still have cattle in the Alpine National Park because I am not going to surrender to the negligent malfeasants who have cost us the lives of so many people.
What I and my friends did was not enough. We should have barnstormed Victorian towns and spread the message far and wide. We failed. I promise you we won't fail again.
First on my list is Bruce Esplin, Victoria's disaster commissioner whom I labelled on this blog as Victoria's Commissioner for Future Disasters. Could I have bestowed on him a more accurate title?
His head has to roll along with the decision making bureacrats in Parks Victoria and DSE. They should be charged with criminal negligence.
It's not as if no one knew of the rapidly growing and deadly peril. Anyone with experience of the Victorian bush was aware of the danger that was growing in our forests.
Scientists like David Packham, Athol Hodgson and Peter Attiwill did their utmost to help Victoria avoid last Saturday but the government wasn't listening.
In the final analysis this tragedy has not come without a lesson. Where are the massive fires one would expect to be burning right across the forests of the Victorian High Country right now. There was no lack of ignition factors, particularly on a day that reached 47C and featured heavy northerly winds.
That the vast majority of country that was burned in 2003 and 2006-07 is not burning now is not a matter of luck. It's because there is a reduced fuel load.
Australians have been lied to consistently by radical greens and their political friends. Now, it's no longer a matter of debate over forest management - it's a question of justice for all those who have died and every family who has lost a loved one.
Tomorrow Bundarrah Days will review warnings we have written over the years leading up to Saturday's disaster and invite readers of this blog to contribute to a submission to the coming Royal Commission.
06:49 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (11) | Email this | Tags: criminal, negligence, bushfire, parks, victoria, dse, deaths, marysville
Comments
Bundarrah Days are here again.....yay! Look out and Brumby and friends.
Posted by: Kim | 02/11/2009
Thanks Phil
I admire your great posts on Andrew Bolt's blog and I wish you all the best in your fight for justice
regards
Gabby
Posted by: Gabriela Roberts | 02/11/2009
Thanks Gabby and Kim. I appreciate that and I guarantee you that this time we'll fight it to the end.
Posted by: Phil | 02/12/2009
Hi Phil:
It is great to see your blog in operation again. Mike D has been keeping us informed Stateside.
This tragedy should have never happened, as we both know. David Packham has been in the forefront of the scientific community -- and you and your cohorts have been in the same position as knowledgeable and experienced resource managers -- and yet the Greenies and their urban "scientists" have continued to have their way.
These deaths and this destruction were both predicted and preventable -- it is the same story in Australia as in the western US. Scratch the surface, and it appears to be a horrific physical and economic crushing of independent rural folks and families in both countries by socialist city dwellers (however they might characterize themselves).
I note that our government is sending 60 of our most failed scientists and wildfire managers to your country as "advisers." They will try and blame these catastrophes upon Global Warming or Australian Shelter-in-Place policies, or other nonsense, rather than accept the rightful responsibility for their own actions and pronouncements.
We do have excellent forest and fire scientists in the private sector, and excellent wildfire manage professionals in our State organizations (Oregon and California, especially), but those are not the people you are getting. You are getting our feds, which are cut from the same mold as your feds: the Centralralized Government reps and apologists.
In my view, these people should rightfully be brought to justice and held accountable for their words, actions, and inactions, rather than parading around the world at taxpayer expense and dispensing "advice" to each other.
Best of luck to you, and please keep up the good work! You are needed much more now than ever before!
Best wishes,
Bob Zybach, PhD Environmental Sciences
Oregon, USA
Posted by: Bob Zybach | 03/03/2009
Bob, it's great to hear from you. As you say these deaths were both predicted and preventable. How tragic that it took such a devastating event to trigger a Royal Commission. Hopefully, the truth will out and be accepted by government. One can only hope.
The greens have now adopted the position that the fuel load wasn't to blame because these were crown fires. How active crown fires occur in the absence of ground fuel they don't explain.
Posted by: Phil Maguire | 03/04/2009
Phil:
It's too bad I wasn't able to make it to Australia this January, as I had been hoping to. The opportunity to witness these events first hand and to discuss them with you personally would have been a wonderful experience, despite the tragedy and loss involved to so many others.
Yes, of course it is a fuel issue. I am putting the finishing touches on my book regarding western Oregon wildfire history at this time, and we have a situation that is identical to your own.
Indians burned the landscape regularly. Then ranchers and loggers kept fuel loads down (or at least localized) with logging , farming, and grazing practices. When our federal governments stepped in and put an end to these practices, the land -- predictably -- began bursting into massive wildfires.
It's the fuels. People are part of the environment. Take people out, and the fuels build up, and then they burn up. Everyone but the Greenies and their politician/"scientists" seem to know that.
These people need to be held accountable, not paid or listened to any further. One man's opinion.
Posted by: Bob Zybach | 03/04/2009
Tree crowns ARE fuel.
Apparently the practice of blaming the victims is widespread. Quite common here, too. One silver lining -- it aids in separating the folks who care from those who don't.
Posted by: Mike D. | 03/04/2009
G'day Mike.......great to see you, mate.
I did make the point that tree crowns are fuel and that the trees in our forests are more numerous than they used to be...
Posted by: Phil Maguire | 03/04/2009
Howdy Phil. Glad you are back in the saddle. But at such a time! What an enormous tragedy, the losses, the suffering. You have been in our prayers, all of Victoria and Australia.
I have two US friends in Australia right now. One is a fire specialist who has been there for six months. He is in shock at the deaths, as I am sure you all are. The other has been asked to particpate in the Royal Commission. He is a world-class fire expert. They both are, really.
I fear the same sort of extreme tragedy is looming here. Ignorance has stifled responsible environmental stewardship. Fuels are building up. Every year the fires are worse and closer to population centers. Public health and safety are threatened as never before.
We look to AU for example in two respects. First, how you respond to the environmental challenge. It is an old problem, well-recognized and encountered before. Will AU change your approach to land management now, finally, or revert to past practices that have failed time and again.
Second, how will AU, a close-knit society, respond to the mass human tragedy? Dealing with loss of life, with extreme and widespread grief, is never easy, never simple. There are lessons here for all of us to learn, again.
So we look to AU for guidance in these matters. Do not think you are alone or unappreciated. Just the opposite. We need you to help us find the right path.
Again, prayers and sympathy to all.
Posted by: Mike D. | 03/08/2009
I tell you what, Mike, frustration is about boil over here amongst country people. Would you believe the popularity of this imbecilic government has increased since Black Saturday because the Premier appears empathetic?
So, maybe Australia is not a good place to look for guidance. We have too many dolts in our population who have the right to vote.
It seems that not even 200 plus deaths directly attributable to green management can stop the green juggernaut because, of course, the fires were caused by global warming just as the floods in Queensland and the snow on Mt Hotham last week were caused by climate change.
It wasn't ground fuel that caused the fires to burn as they did because they were crown fires. And it was the oxygen that was set alight that caused fireballs - absolutely nothing to do with fuel. Fair dinkum, mate, greens will say anything. I haven't stopped reading nonsense since the firesl started.
Lucky for our old mate Bracksy that he's retired. Remember I reported him saying that the notorious Black Friday bushfires could never happen again in Victoria because of his great new laws? Well, so much for Bracksy. And of course we haven't heard a word from Twitter Thwaites.
We still have Victoria's most famous bald head, Bruce Esplin, making bald statements about wildfire. The Commissioner For Future Disaster is in fine form now, but we didn't hear a word from him in the lead-up to the disaster.
Obviously he thinks it's his job to talk about disasters when they've happened not to take steps to prevent them.
The state of conservation and disaster politics in Victoria is bizarre, obscene and pythonesque.
Posted by: Phil Maguire | 03/09/2009
Email me. Some private correspondence for you.
Posted by: Mike D. | 03/10/2009
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