Lessons Learned from Wildfires in Australia ( and California )

The science

of forest fires,

wild fires.

bush fires,

or whatever 

you call them,

is not complex.

But even simpler

is to blame 

climate change !

Australia is 

in the middle

of one of its 

regular 

droughts.

Environmental 

restrictions 

prevented

landholders 

from clearing 

scrub, brush 

and trees. 

State governments 

don’t do their part

to reduce 

the fuel load

in parks.

In November 2019,

a former fire chief 

in Victoria slammed 

that Australian state’s

“minimalist approach”

to hazard-reduction 

prescribed burning 

in the bush fire 

off-season. 

There are many 

similarities between 

Australian and 

Californian politics, 

vegetation, and 

climate.

In both places. 

people like living 

around vegetation 

that dries out enough 

to burn EVERY year, 

with or without 

climate change.

It is bright green

when it rains, 

and tinder-dry

brown when 

it stops raining. 

When rainfall 

is high, as it was 

for recent years 

in Australia,

the vegetation 

grows thicker, 

which provides 

even more fuel 

for wildfires.

In California,

“prescribed” 

burns are now 

largely 

prohibited 

ensuring 

that disaster

is always 

just around 

the corner.

In Australia 

prescribed burns

are legal, but 

very restricted.

Both a result 

of misguided 

green ideology.

A 2015 

satellite analysis 

of 113,000 fires 

from 1997-2009 

confirmed what 

we had known 

for some time – 

40% of fires are 

deliberately set, 

and 47% are 

accidental. 

This generally 

matches the

previous data, 

published a decade 

earlier, that about 

half of all fires 

were suspected, 

or deliberate, arson, 

and 37% of fires

were accidental. 

Combined, 

they reach 

the same 

conclusion: 

85% to 90%

of fires are 

man-made.

Humans are 

not starting 

more fires

simply 

because 

the outside 

temperature

is warmer than 

the prior year.

DETAILS:

Australia 

has been

ready to burn 

for many years. 

David Packham, 

former head 

of Australia’s 

National Rural 

Fire Research 

Centre, warned 

in a 2015 article, 

in the Age, 
that Australia's 

fire fuel levels 

had climbed to their 

most dangerous levels

in thousands of years. 

Please see the next article, 

about Eucalyptus trees