Noticed something a bit worrying today - according to official warnings, the area where I am currently living, south east Queensland, the fire danger is rated at 'Very High'. That's not too bad - there are another two levels above that: 'Extreme' and 'Catastrophic'.

What concerns me though is the number of 'permit burns' going on, given we are just one 40C windy day away from extreme conditions. A 'permit burn' is when a farmer is given permission to carry out a fuel reduction burn on their property. Typically they will try to create a buffer between their property and an adjoining National Park - which makes sense - but is this the right time of year to be doing that?

There is a 50-50 chance of some storms coming through this week. If we get that rain, things should be ok. If we don't, all those fires - and I can see two of them from my porch which have already been burning for three weeks - are going to explode.

Some extreme conditions today - winds up to 80kph.

Two bushfires in NSW but no reports of houses lost so far

Extreme conditions in parts of WA with the 'catastrophic' warning issued for some areas.

Dust storm where I am (and over most of NSW and SEQ - air described as 'hazardous') - we did get some rain this week which will hopefully be enough to stop the fires running riot here - but it's hot and the wind is blowing - and at least one of the permit fires that has been burning for weeks survived the rain coz I could still see it smoking up yesterday

What's really missing is a decent fire watch map. Seems way behind the typhoon charts and forecasts, even though it's a very similar thing really - affected by winds - reasonably predictable in terms of where it's going to go - would be a great help to people trying to make a plan

So is this situation unusual or a yearly concern?

Its a yearly concern - there have always been bushfires in Australia - some of the vegetation actually needs a bushfire to trigger reproduction. Eucalyptus trees have plenty of oil so they burn pretty good.

The question is whether it will be exacerbated by climate change. Obviously the worst years are the dry ones - then it's a matter of getting a run of days with extreme conditions - usually high 30's then one 40+C and big winds.

The most bushfire prone area is down south. Although the winters are quite cold there the humidity is very low and it doesn't often get those big summer downpours typical of tropical climates - in fact two months without rain during summer is not unusual. If that follows on from a dry spring, then that's when it gets dangerous.

Actually, this year, I think the spring rains were ok down south, so should be ok - but there will always be something happening.

The northern fire season is about now, spring time, as they usually have a dry winter, but then the summer storms and humidity are generally enough to prevent anything too serious.

Serious bushfires have broken out in central east Queensland, which is even further north than I would have thought. There's been no mention how the fires started but I bet it was a so called 'permit burn' that was started by some farmer to backburn a buffer to his property and then just left to burn in the hope that the summer rains would come like normal and put it out. It didn't. What did come was record heat and big dry westerlies coming directly off the desert.

Drove a 150km coming back home today (well south of the wildfires) and saw four or five of these back burns. Right now the conditions here are 'borderline' - it's hot but no big wind - but if that wind comes it's absurd having theses backburns smouldering away - forget about a faulty electricity-line - these are big, untended fires covering 100's of hectares that are set to explode.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/queensland/parts-of-central-queensland-declar...

They are now reporting 80 fires in Queensland! Funnily enough that's about the same number of current 'permit burns' that are currently authorised.

The commentary coming out from the authorities is that this an 'unprecedented' event and urging everyone to 'leave their homes' nd act with 'extreme caution' - how about a bit of fucking caution with lighting these fires in the first place!

And given they didn't do that, for God's sake put all those permit burns the fuck out immediately!

Weather conditions for tomorrow are not good - hot and windy

No major rain forecast - temps predicted to hit 43C here this coming Monday. It's already a disaster - but might be just getting started

Here's the screenshot from today from the rural fire authority site.

Good Lord! It looks like it would be hard not to run into a fire if you venture out. 43, dry, and windy doesn't sound good.

As it's turned out, today conditions already became extreme - hot, dry, big winds, up to 80kph

There are now 130 odd fires going in Queensland apparently.

Just drove into the post office 6 km away and saw three of them on the way - luckily they're down wind of here.

Despite wall to wall media coverage of the fires there has still been no mention of how they all started.

Here's a map of current fires for Queensland

That must affect the air quality over a wide area. With the California fires, the air hundreds of miles away was bad enough that they were canceling school.

Yeah, it looks like Taipei on a bad day out there at the moment.

Today we're going back into the danger zone - temps above 40C with increasing winds and over 100 fires going across the state.

Still not a single question from the media as to how these fires started in the first place. Apart from that, the media hysteria is in full-swing.

The fact is, these fires were deliberately lit. They are the result of an out of control 'Permit Burn' system that allowed farmers to light over 100 fires across the state, as conditions worsened, and without ever putting them out. My guess is that they have been doing this for years and used to rely on seasonal November/December storms to extinguish them but this year the rains didn't come. Well they did, but not with quite enough volume to douse the 100 or so fires they'd deliberately lit. Then conditions really turned ugly.

Now the Queensland rural fire authority keeps talking about the 'unprecedented' conditions. The thing is, for the last 20 years there's been a bit in the news about this concept called 'climate change'. 'Unprecedented' is the new 'precedented'. It's disingenuous to say 'oh, who knew?'

The other weird thing is that the Queensland fire authorities still haven't called a Total Fire Ban throughout this fiasco - even when conditions were rated as 'Catastrophic'. We had one Total Fire Ban day back in August, but nothing since. Traditionally, late winter has been the fire season here coz it's the time of no rain and high winds, but for some reason the fire authorities can't make the mental switch that things have changed. 'Stupid' is a word that springs to mind. Now, having caused these fires, the same people are in charge of strategy for putting them out - doesn't fill me with confidence.

Update:
NW winds are gusting up but not as strong as a few days ago, around 20-40kph. Temp: 41. You know it's dry when you're clothes washing is ready to take in 10 minutes after you hung it out, albeit with a slight smoky flavour.

If you stand out in it, the weather has this 'otherworldly' feeling - a 'future-gone-bad' movie -. there's an awesome menace to it.

360 degree smoke haze so hard to know exactly where the fires are, but can assume from what I saw a few days ago.

In the Warrill Hill/Harrissville/Boonah/Kalbah/Aratula area there are at least four 'Permit fires' burning in the scenic rim mountains. Bush residents in those areas would want to be on alert.

One or more of those is to the north west of here which is where the wind is coming from.

Bushfire sunset

OfficialPermit Burn map from the Queensland Rural Fire Authority, late Nov 2018

This photo was taken on Oct 26. Around that time there were farmers lighting fires galore. As a Victorian, it was a shock, especially as no efforts appeared to be being made to put them out. With below average rains they just kept smouldering away

Isn't that a major tourist destination? I would think this is economically bad, in addition, of course, to one's health.

If it makes you feel any better, it's regularly hitting below 0 C every night now, and I had to shovel snow off my walk at 6:10am before I went to work the other day. The air, however, is spotless.

Before we had the Covid cover-up, we had the 2018-19 Queensland Bushfires Cover-up. The disaster was clearly caused by idiotic hazard-reduction burns conducted in the face of extreme conditions - that, very predictably, got out of control.

To re-cap: 2018 was a hot dry year up north. In Queensland, Oct-Nov usually heralds the start of storm season, so traditionally, the Qld fire dept will conduct fuel-reduction burns around that time then rely on the storm downpours to put them out. But in 2018 they weren't predicted to come - & didn't.

Instead of closing down fire-permits, the Qld govt simply soldiered-on. Fuel-reduction burns are necessary, but there's a time to do them, & a time definitely not to - that's common-sense.

The other point about these 'controlled-burns' is that there's no-one controlling them. More often than not it involves either govt officials or farmers (with govt permits) simply lighting up the mountains, then as i said, waiting for the Oct-Nov storms to put them out.

In 2018, i was living in rural Queensland. I had a nice panoramic view across farming land to the Scenic Rim mountains. But with conditions worsening, i was shocked to see all these permit-burns still being lit up. My land-lord was actually a higher-up in the fire-management system & i had the opportunity to ask him, Why are all these fires being lit in such potentially dangerous conditions? Is there anyone monitoring them? Who's going to put them out?

His answer was: Just let it burn. When i asked What's going to happen if the rains don't come? his response was: You're not one of those Greenies are you?

At night i could sit on my porch & watch all these permit burns glowing in the mountains - i took a lot of photos. Even as late as Nov, new fires were being lit - it was madness. Sure enough, the rains that were predicted to not come, didn't come. Instead we ran smack-bang into a heatwave, & then, inevitably, an extreme fire danger day: 40C, big northerly wind.

You don't need to be a fire expert to know what's goona happen in that situation. You've got all these large, deliberately lit fires burning away in the mountains & then bang, they all exploded.

Funnily enough, i was listening to ABC radio a couple of days later, with half the state now on fire, when the presenter said: Now if there's anyone out there from Victoria listening, where you're used to bushfires, especially if you've had fire-fighting experience, can you please ring up & pass on any tips you might have for us Queenslanders battling this unprecedented bushfire disaster.

I'd never rung a radio station in my life, but having been a Vic bushfire-fighter for 5 summer-seasons, & having seen the whole scenario play out from my porch over the past two months, i decided to call.

I got through, explained my fire-fighting experience, then got straight to the point: I've witnessed all these burns being lit-up in the last couple of months but no-one has been putting them out. This is what has caused the current disaster.

At first the announcer was excited coz they love stories about arsonists: So you've seen people deliberately lighting fires! Do you know who these people are?

Yeah, but it's not an arsonist, they're farmers with govt-permits & the Qld fire-dept. They were fuel-reduction burns that blew-up. As an ex-fire-fighter, my advice is: Don't be doing fuel-reduction burns in such dangerous conditions - it's asking for trouble.

The response was, literally: Now's not the right time to talk about that.

Then why did you ask people with fire-fighting experience to call if you don't want to know the answer?

Whereupon she hung up on me.

The following year, the exact same scenario played out in NSW. No lesson learned - no coverage in the media of why these disasters had happened - except for some platitudes about climate-change - which for sure plays a part but you have to react. If climate change has made some months, which were traditionally ok for fuel-reduction burns, now not ok, then don't keep lighting the joint up! The only govt response was to create another bloated level of bureaucracy called The Disaster Response Board or some such crap, which was later disbanded when it was found to be worse than useless in the very first challenge they faced after the fires, which was the Northern Rivers floods, where citizens were abandoned and left to fend for themselves - with some DIY rescuers even threatened with fines for saving people.

Then today, i read this article:

9 News: A 75-year-old man has died after a planned hazard-reduction operation on a property in New South Wales. Police believe the man was conducting a hazard-reduction burn of one of his paddocks, with assistance from NSW Rural Fire Service members and family, when he became trapped by the fire.

So here we go again. In normal times, in the northern states, March might seem like a good time to do fuel-reduction burns, but we're coming off the back of a dry summer & we're in the middle of an extended heat-wave! Sure, it's unseasonal, but a lot of weather is unseasonal these days - you have to recognize that & adjust.

Police established a crime scene at the property, and are investigating the circumstances surrounding the man's death. Initial inquiries however suggest his death is not suspicious.

Not suspicious! You're deliberately lighting up fires in dangerous conditions - with a stack of evidence that that is a very stupid thing to do - but there's nothing suspicious about that?

Next fire-season (Oct-Dec in northern states, Dec-Mar down south) is shaping-up as a doozy as it appears we've flipped back from the La Nina floods straight into an El Nino pattern, but now is not the time to prepare. Do that in winter when it's cooler, much easier to control fires, which burn at a much lower intensity.

If the government keeps refusing to learn the lessons from past fuck-ups & persists with lighting these burns in dangerous conditions, then, with the extra-growth from the two wet years drying out, we're destined to sleep-walk straight back into one of the worst fire years of all time.

9 News: The (2020 Orroral Valley) bushfire was started by a searchlight on an MRH-90 Taipan army helicopter in the Namadgi National Park, just outside Canberra.

The helicopter was assisting bushfire prevention efforts in the ACT .. and was looking for remote helipads. The chopper's crew had landed for a toilet break when they inadvertently started the bushfire with their hot searchlight.

The Orroral Valley bushfire destroyed 80 per cent of Namadgi National Park and tore through more than one-third of the ACT, finally being extinguished after burning for more than five weeks.

At the centre of the inquiry was why it took those aboard 45 minutes to contact the ACT Emergency Services Agency that a fire had broken out in the area.

An onboard recording heard one of the helicopter's passengers yell "come up, come up, we've started a fire, turn the searchlight off".

Whoops. So having started the fire, what did our gov-employees do about it?

The helicopter only stopped for about one minute before returning to Canberra airport but neither the pilots nor passengers contacted emergency services to let them know they had started a fire, which one pilot estimated was already "200m by 200m" when they evacuated.

So yet another case of the govt experts fucking-up, then trying to cover it up.

The ACT government had questioned the need for an inquiry into the fire and in response to previous media reporting of the cause, Chief Minister Andrew Barr said he was not interested in a "witch hunt or a blame game".

No, their only interest is in covering it up. Which they've largely succeeded in doing. We're already over 3 years since the fire & all it gets is a small article buried deep in the daily news. I accept that they fucked-up, that's one thing, but then not reporting it, which consequently allowed it to grow into a massive bushfire - that's criminal.

It's a great example of how govt investigations are weaponized to do the opposite of what they're supposed to do. Delay, delay, delay, delay, until it's not longer in the news (thank God for Covid!), then do a low-key enquiry with highly paid lawyers & bureaucrats ... then don't hold anyone responsible!