Posted on 01/10/2020 8:17:46 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Only about 1 per cent of the land burnt in NSW this bushfire season can be officially attributed to arson, and it is even less in Victoria, the ABC can reveal.
The world has been shocked by the scenes of devastation as the unprecedented destruction of Australia's horror bushfire season rages on.
The disaster has sparked significant media speculation that many of the blazes were deliberately lit.
While it is true firebugs remain a legitimate and serious threat, we crunched the numbers provided by police and fire authorities around the country.
The results might surprise you.
NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) Inspector Ben Shepherd said earlier this week lightning was predominantly responsible for the bushfire crisis.
"I can confidently say the majority of the larger fires that we have been dealing with have been a result of fires coming out of remote areas as a result of dry lightning storms," he said.
In Victoria, where about 1.2 million hectares has burned, only 385 hectares — or 0.03 per cent — have been attributed to suspicious circumstances.
This state-by-state breakdown reveals the true impact of arson this bushfire season.
NEW SOUTH WALES
The Busbys Flat fire, which burned through some 51,000 hectares of land and destroyed 44 homes in the village of Rappville in northern NSW, may have been deliberately lit.
Police Minister David Elliott said whoever started that blaze in October was responsible for a "bastard act".
A fire at Turramurra which briefly threatened homes on Sydney's north shore is also suspected of being deliberately lit, as are a series of small fires in the Royal National Park.
NSW has been the epicentre of Australia's bushfire crisis, but the facts show arson has little to do with it.
This week, a NSW Police media release revealed 24 people had been charged over deliberately-lit bushfires this season.
However, the majority of suspected arson relates to small grass fires and rubbish bins set alight, which have inflicted negligible damage and burnt a tiny area compared with fires sparked by lightning.
The Gospers Mountain "mega-blaze" and the Green Wattle Creek fire, which are both near Sydney, were ignited by lightning.
All the major blazes in the Snowy Mountains and South Coast which have taken hold since New Year's Eve were also started by LIGHTNING.
This includes the Dunns Road and Green Valley fires burning near the state's south border, which yesterday formed a new "mega-blaze".
VICTORIA
Despite massive fires causing chaos in Victoria this season, authorities are treating only one blaze as suspicious.
The Euroa blaze on January 4 closed a section of the Hume Highway, burnt about 385 hectares, and destroyed no properties.
More than 1.3 million hectares has been burnt in Victoria so far this season.
The Country Fire Association (CFA) said the majority of fires were not arson-related.
"Most of the fires have been caused by lightning," said Brett Mitchell, the CFA incident controller in Bairnsdale, in East Gippsland.
"Our intelligence suggests there are no deliberate lightings that we are aware of."
Victoria Police had no arson figures available for this bushfire season, but said in the 12 months to September 2019, a dozen people had been arrested for causing bushfires.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
None of SA's deadliest or most destructive fires are being treated as suspicious.
Two fires which have blackened more than a third of Kangaroo Island and killed two people, are believed to have been sparked by lightning strikes, according to the state's Country Fire Service (CFS).
The Cudlee Creek blaze in the Adelaide Hills, which started in catastrophic conditions and killed one person and destroyed more than 80 homes, was caused by a tree falling on power lines.
The CFS said a fire on Yorke Peninsula which destroyed homes and burnt 5,000 hectares in November was sparked by power lines falling on grass during catastrophic fire conditions and extreme winds.
A fire at Keilira in SA's south-east, which destroyed homes and killed thousands of livestock, has been officially attributed to lightning strikes, after an investigation by the CFS and South Australian Police.
Police said 10 people in SA had been reported or arrested for intentionally or recklessly causing a bushfire since September.
QUEENSLAND
The Sunshine Coast town of Peregian has been threatened by several blazes this season.
In September, two teenagers were charged with lighting a blaze there, while authorities are investigating "suspicious" fires that also took hold there in October and December.
Queensland Police said there had been 1,068 reported bushfires between September and January 8, of which 114 of which had been deliberately lit.
TASMANIA AND AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY
Tasmania is the only state where arson has allegedly been the overwhelming cause of fires.
Authorities attributed almost two-thirds of the blazes burning on the state's east coast and in the south since late December to arson.
"Approximately 21,000 of the 35,000 hectares burnt is a result of deliberately lit fires," a Tasmanian Fire Service spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, in the ACT, one person has been charged for deliberately lighting a fire, according to the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
The 20-year-old Mawson man allegedly lit several small grass fires, although no property was damaged, and was charged with breaching a total fire ban.
Police are treating as suspicious another grass fire which started on Friday in Canberra's south.
Government and environmental wackos are responsible for the fires.
Years of no backburning, no clearing brush and no protective measures...
Nonsense. They arrested a couple of dozen for giggles. A firefighter in a fire pron state told me fully 30% or more of the small wildland fires he responded to were arson. They tend not to call them that unless they get a conviction.
2 dozen firebugs, one was a volunteer firefighter who’d allegedly set at least 7 blazes.
183 criminal investigations (many for poor fire safety, eg discarded lit cigarettes, perhaps trash fires and controlled burns that got out of hand).
There were fires that were maliciously ignited and the human factor in many others cannot be denied.
It happens in California as well (firebug forestry freaks and illegal immigrant campfires that get out of hand).
I do not know if this article is correct or simply bull sierra. If the majority of the fires are in isolated areas it is probably of natural causes. If these fires are near human habitation it is probably arson or stupidity.
The 2 dozen arsonists arrested are all from New South Wales. They weren’t able to claim “conspiracy theory” because the police themselves reported it (and the hundreds more other fire cases).
What do the OTHER Australian states’ police say? ZERO cases?
This is policy wonk spinning of some (but not all) data.
Now backtracking on the arson cases. Here is some interesting things from the past...
https://www.ffm.vic.gov.au/history-and-incidents/past-bushfires/past-bushfire-maps
“Fire has been present on the Australian continent for millions of years and has been significant in shaping much of the landscape. Many fires were started by lightning.
Aboriginal people used fire for many thousands of years to ‘care for country’. The fires were a tool that encouraged the growth and extent of grasslands to enhance hunting, reduced levels of fuel, and kept vegetation from becoming dense and hard to walk through.
Because there are few comprehensive records of bushfires in the early stages of European settlement, or beforehand, the following chronology includes only those bushfires that have occurred since 1851.”
ABC here in Australia is the CNN of the USA. Actually they are government sponsored like PBS.However, their management and radio and TV hosts are controlled by the Green Party here in Oz, even though they are mostly funded by we, the people through the government. They do not allow conservative commentators to be members of ABC.
No, we have had 85 people arrested for arson here in South Australia since September. It is a serious problem in Australia and the Greens have their heads in the sand, since their policies are one of the main causes of the fires, besides the arsonists.
[It is a serious problem in Australia and the Greens have their heads in the sand, since their policies are one of the main causes of the fires, besides the arsonists]
ABC, fully funded by the taxpayers - over a billion Aussie dollars a year - obsessed with gloBULL warming, gender, refugees & not much else. no-one can touch them.
in this piece, they are desperate to downplay arson. in others, they desperately try to downplay the failure to carry out hazard reduction, as noted below:
VIDEO: 10m: 10 Jan: Sky News: Chris Smith: Local council restrictions make prescribed burning ‘almost impossible’
Since the Royal Commission into the Black Saturday fires, only a third of the area earmarked for hazard reduction burns has been cleared and former CSIRO bushfire expert Phil Cheney says there have been “excuses… and Pseudo-science to justify this”.
An expert committee recommended eight percent of the burnable land in Victoria to be cleared, which was then reduced to five per cent and even this figure has been unachievable.
Mr Cheney told Sky News this was the “Inevitable result of the government’s abrogating [of] their responsibility to managing public lands” as he explained local government’s cannot “set a priority on what they want to manage the land for”.
In many of these local government areas the necessary prescribed burning has been “almost impossible” due to the council restrictions including “vegetation restriction orders”.
“We don’t have the roads or trails that are necessary to do prescribed burning in a scientific and proper manner”, Mr Cheney said.
“We’re starting so-far behind the eight-ball”
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6121349634001
Methinks they doth protest too much.
You don’t wanna go pointing fingers and get them really pissed off and all super pyromantic, now.
/still waiting on the list of names of the firebugs
Crikey. Just ban lightening! Very simple solution.
Journalists go to school simply to learn equivocation. A pox on them!
Did deblasio ship any homeless to the aussies?
Two of them have been named — one Muslim and one Asian with a Vietnamese-sounding name — Tranh or Truong. The authorities do everything in their power to play down and even deny the role of arson, for obvious reasons.
Liars
Unprecedented except for 1974 when it was much more widespread
Liars just have lie
Sickening.
[maybe they’re hoping that if they act nice to them, they’ll be eaten last]
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