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.