Yeah, an opinion piece by Miranda Devine is really going to convince me the fire chiefs in NSW and Victoria, local fire brigades across NSW and inidvidual firefighters are bunch of idiots who can’t see the “green menace” in front of their eyes...../s
And Niki Savva who place burnt down after repeatedly ask the ATC Govt to reduce the fire hazard and let her remove trees from her property because of a fire hazard.
On December 29, 2005, when our home and the homes of two of our neighbours were destroyed by a fire that began in adjoining bush controlled by the ACT government, it was not the worst thing to happen in my life.
Still, it was pretty devastating. And too many Australians know how it feels. Thankfully none of us was home. I say thankfully because we didn’t witness the *destruction of things we held dear, except on the news when we watched the flames of the devil in concert erupting from the roof. We didn’t have to hear the terrifying roar, never had to make that agonising decision about how long to fight or when to run.
That only three houses were destroyed and another damaged was thanks to the fast action of the fire brigade, and a wind change. The whole suburb could have gone up, which would have been a different story, like in 2003 when Canberra was devastated by fires that killed four people and destroyed 470 homes.
We didn’t expect any sympathy and we didn’t get any. *Instead we were blamed for the loss of our homes by the greenest of green governments in Australia, which had failed miserably to manage its vacant reserve. The *experience only deepened my exasperation with the failures of government at critical times and with the zealots on both sides of the climate change debate: those who act as if the solution is to head back to the Dark Ages, and those who argue that because Australia alone can’t fix it right now, today, then it’s pointless to do anything. Hang the consequences for the economy and our living standards on the one hand, or learn to live with fires, drought and floods on the other. Everything — our forests, water and intimate surrounds — can be managed better by us as individuals or by those we elect, but often it seems once the crisis passes, so too the desire for permanent solutions.
The last thing the Greens *appear to want is any kind of *sensible solution because they profit from the fight. So do those who despise them whose bile, often directed at children, for god’s sake, only encourages lazy governments. The all-or-nothing discourse is dispiriting. Ultimately, whatever improvements we make to our *environment, to clear the air and water and sustain vegetation, will help us and the planet stay safer and healthier.
In our case, we had been pleading for months with the ACT government, via letters from our corporate body secretary, for regular clean-ups of the adjoining land, home of the historic Can*berra brickworks where the distinctive red bricks were forged to build the national capital.
For years my husband cleared an area behind our fence of a couple metres wide to provide a firebreak and try to ward off the critters — brown snakes, foxes, kangaroos. He still does.
We feared, even before 2003, at some point fire would break out in the brickworks. A few months after those fires the authorities visited to discuss removing trees from the other side of our brush fencing because they could be a fire hazard. We asked if three tall pines on our side of the fence could be removed. If trees like them were a fire hazard on one side of the fence, they were surely fire hazards on the other. We didn’t want every tree removed, just those we thought might be a threat. They denied permission, suggesting the pines were heritage-listed.
Soon the reserve was again overgrown. Mounds of blackberry bushes were sprayed and the remains left to become tinder dry. Grasses flourished, shrubs and trees self-seeded. *Repeated written requests for a clean-up went unheeded. We asked again in 2005 for permission to remove the pines. They sent two experts with tape measures. They noted the size of the trunks, their distance from the house, the overhang of their canopies and so on. Finally we *received written permission to *remove them — with one condition. We had to wait three months *before we could chop them down, a “cooling off” period.
Those three months expired on December 29, 2005. The fire began in the long grasslands of the brickworks, devoured the dried-out blackberry bushes, then hit our pine trees, which lit up like giant candles, according to our neighbour who tried to douse the fire with a hose.
I found burnt branches of pine inside what remained of our house. I am no forensic expert but my theory is they dropped on to the roof, burnt through the skylights and the tiles, igniting the house. The cause was never established although two youngsters confessed to police they had been smoking in the brickworks.
All the damaged properties were surrounded by brush fencing, which the builder had been *required to install when the *houses were built in the early 1980s, because, as he told us, the government decreed it blended in better with the environment.
In the fight between the *insurance company and the government, the government argued the brush fencing was responsible for the destruction; a police report blamed the fuel loads in the *government-owned reserve. So it was our fault for not replacing fencing the government had for environmental aesthetics insisted on, *despite neighbours metres away with brush fencing being *unscathed.
Apart from losing some precious things, what hurt most was seeing the scorched earth that used to be our garden full of plants, many of which had been given to me by my parents. Don’t get me started on the looting of the few that remained. One of the men who had come to measure the trees was the local ABC radio gardening guru. He *described my yard that day as a small oasis. He drove past a few days after the fire to see what had happened. Spotting him, I asked if he would like to see the garden again. He refused but *offered up that at least they had given approval for the trees to be removed.
I believe it is possible for every suburbanite to change their climate simply by careful planting of trees — deciduous ones to provide shade in the summer and allow the sun to pour in during winter. It took a few years to restore our *micro-climate. When Earth Hour began, not long after our house and garden were destroyed, as the government was blaming us for it, while lecturing us on our duties while they neglected theirs, I was tempted to leave the lights on and the taps running all night. They made me as angry as those who rail against moves to ban single-use plastic bags or straws.
The preaching is infuriating. So is the denialism. Much worse is the hypocrisy, a wilful disregard for tending to the basics and the dearth of common sense.
Looking out my window now, my oasis is restored. So are the long grasses on a steep mound *behind the house. We watched them in bobcats build this mound out of contaminated rubble after we had rebuilt, warning them it was too steep to mow. They *ignored us. What would we know?
Not an opinion piece but a first hand account from a former senior correspondent in the Canberra Press Gallery