Moronic parks people

[roysta]

Roystra one option is to join the team.
I'm sure they would welcome additional help.

Thanks for the job note, but I'm close to retirement and a career deviation now won't be happening.
I already operate in a small team framework making directional decisions under duress, not just during a few months of summer, but year round.
It's far more fun planning and executing overseas trekking and climbing trips.

[roysta]

Oh and you're a forecast and fire expert ?.

Yes, I have some skills in that area AND I'm enjoying the rain that was forecast.

[photohiker]

Now that the thread has basically run it's course, I'd like to say that I think that the discussion would have been more cordial and perhaps had wider participation if the initial language was less inflammatory.

I guess any workplace employing many people may land up with the odd moron, but branding them all as such isn't really fair and clearly untrue.

[wayno]

theres over a hundred fires burning in NSW at present. I think the fire service have their hands full. reopening the parks for the weekend may not have been their priority.....

[frenchy_84]

I find it interesting, that on the news this evening there are reports of multiple bush fires in or nearby NSW national parks that have started today. Perhaps its not that moronic to have had the national parks closed over the weekend

[stuey69]

theres over a hundred fires burning in NSW at present. I think the fire service have their hands full. reopening the parks for the weekend may not have been their priority.....

The thing is though the fire threat has moved north and forecast conditions were indicating that days ago.
Around Sydney there have been no fires and the threat has been low.
Over the last two hours rain has been falling, in fact there's been somewhere between 6 and 16mm in an hour and forecasts also pointed to that.
And tomorrow it must be noted, parks in the Sydney Region are closed.
So perhaps, while the language used in the original post was indeed inflammatory, the facts of part of the post are borne out.
Just a thought.

[wayno]

forecasts arent gospel. you cant count on rain from forecasts

[stuey69]

In my opinion, forecasts in New Zealand, particularly down around Queenstown are far more reliable than in Oz.
And they have the Main Divide to deal with.
During my umpteen visits I've been very happy with their performance.

[wayno]

yes well anywhere in that part of the island the forecast often consists of if you can see the mountains it will definitely absolutely pour down, if you can't then its already pouring.... the weather tends to be black and white down there, the weather systems are often so straight forward any local could tell you what is going to happen, the rest of nz's forecast can often be a joke...

[jonnosan]

Blue Mountains NP tracks (at least) were reopened this afternoon.

[colinm]

Closing tracks and whole areas of national parks is not about protecting bushwalkers from wildfire, it is only about protecting bush from bushwalkers' fires. As such, it is a short-sighted practice, based on false premises, doomed to fail in the medium- to long- term, but it does have the effect of putting off the inevitable. Short-term thinking at the political level will win every time.

The fact we haven't had a Blue Mountains bushfire this time around is mainly attributable to heavy surveillance of known arsonists, and luck. A bushwalker cooking dinner is indistinguishable from an arsonist, in the governmental model, since both have the effect of kicking off a chain reaction we are unable to control. Since arson surveillance has worked to prevent the blue mountains sparking up (and it has, make no mistake,) of course the government will extend the ban to anyone with the ability to make fire.

SITREP: NSW, all of it, is tinder-dry after an historically dry summer. The fuel load is very high as a consequence of the drought breaking a couple of years back. NPWS has (for some reason I don't understand(*)) stopped preventative/mosaic burning to reduce fuel load. Canberra went up recently, Victoria went up recently. The fire service is completely focused on preventing damage to property (with consequent loss of life.) The Lib-NP coalition are only fairly recently in government - they don't want a disaster. They don't care about bushwalkers, they care about media coverage and property owners, hence any argument based on risk to bushwalkers will have no impact.

NPWS is consequently, and quite understandably, highly risk-averse. For example: NPWS fire policy for Royal NP was to 'prevent' wildfires for 15-20 years after the last major fire ... how they're going to achieve that is beyond my ken, but that was the policy last time I looked. The decision makers are operating under the delusion that they can stop the bush burning indefinitely if they can just keep flame away from it, and this is the fundamental reason they've closed the parks.

Seems to me quite likely that there's going to be a conflagration sometime soon (this summer, next summer) and that there's nothing anyone can do, now, to prevent it (or even, really, to ameliorate it.) The current light rain doesn't really put out the fires currently burning, it just means the RFS can't light backburns.

It's pure luck that the weather happens to have been favourable. A pure fluke has delayed the inevitable. Sometime in the next little while we will have a week of extremely hot weather, and then an afternoon of strong winds, and there will be another series of wildfires. Property will be destroyed, people will die. The NPWS decision makers are keen that it not happen on their watch.

I could be completely wrong, but to the extent that I understand the issue: Australia's dominant flora has evolved to cause fire. For millenia aboriginal and (for centuries) historical pastoral practice was to selectively burn to keep the understories clear, and to generate feed for native and then introduced grazing animals. If I understand it correctly, it is necessary to burn selectively over cooler months to avoid conflagrations (although the art of doing this effectively has been lost.)

We, for some reason(*), have chosen not to maintain the country, and we will (as a direct consequence of this) suffer the consequences.

As far as National Parks go, I blame the Wilderness Act which militates against burning because it pretends that something called Wilderness can exist without any human interaction or intervention. It is apparent to me that this model of the bush is a damaging fantasy based on 19th century romantic notions.

----
* Actually, it might have something to do with cuts to RFS and NPWS funding.

Last edited by colinm on Sun 13 Jan, 2013 8:36 pm, edited 6 times in total.

[Hallu]

In my opinion, forecasts in New Zealand, particularly down around Queenstown are far more reliable than in Oz.
And they have the Main Divide to deal with.
During my umpteen visits I've been very happy with their performance.

Well while I was here last week exploring the South Island I actually thought the weather was more like Tasmanian weather, completely unreliable and changing.

[stuey69]

Well while I was here last week exploring the South Island I actually thought the weather was more like Tasmanian weather, completely unreliable and changing.

I've been returning to my birth country for several decades and I don't think too much has changed. That big mountain range down the centre of the South Island always presents weather challenges.
I've been there when it's been horrendous and at other times when it's absolutely wonderful and serene. It's always difficult to pick, you take your chances.
But it's New Zealand and it's a pretty wonderful place whatever happens.

[GD4Up]

The people I have a big problem with are Parks.
I'm certain many of these people would love to gate the parks and throw away the keys.

You might be right roysta, some might want to protect 'their' park but also think that those Rangers may have been called away from home and normal duties to help fight fires elsewhere and don't need more lost walkers and more fires to deal with.

I'm pretty sure upsetting your weekend wasn't high on their priority list.

[Rob A]

Well, round here;

Parks light many of the fires to control undergrowth or to eradicate weeds. What grows back first is the weeds so the parks are full of bitou bush and lantana with a die back of natives and decline or eradication of coastal rainforest.
Parks push in tracks so that maintenence can be carried out and so that emergency sercvices can get in, so we get fire bugs and fires, idiots in 4wd, motorbikes, women with prams nappies sanitiary napkins, fishermen who shti in the bush and who mark side tracks by stringing out FireLine monofiliment, and schoolies who leave anything and everything because someone esle will clean up after their binge parties.
Parks maintain the tracks by grading and pushing in coal chitter to stabilise track wash aways so we get light milk blue poisoned waterways algal blume and stagnant ponds that used to support .... honestly its criminal.
Parks put in large lockable gates set in concrete footings so that motorbikes and 4wd can drive round them fukc up the surrounding areas, and we get large areas of bush that get graded flat for laydown areas and for the work.
Parks put in large concrete blocks to stop 4wd and motorbikes driving round their million dollar gates so that ... ditto.
Much of this happens towards the end of the financial. Cant have the budget clipped next year.
Parks pick up trade off areas from developers gifting in order to sweet the deal with local covernment to obtain rezoning from coastal protection and selected land use (mining 3 miles underground) to residential development.

If one more clown tells me the sort of fires we get these days were natural part of the australian landscape Ill suggest they roundly shove the carbon credits one group gets by setting fire holtice boltice to the top end in one month rather than another, and which they sell off to the japanese so that they can carry on polluting to their hearts content with their newly purchased credits. Carbon trading I mean what the F. How can creating more of it be better than not creating it in the first place.

If parks put fences round sensitive areas and kept idiot australians out of them I would be all for it. But they dont.

Unfortunately, thats only half of it. Whetever gets shanked on the coast is generally replicated in the ocean itself. And that is one out of sight out of mind kind of problem no one even contemplates.

[Ent]

While not Parks' biggest fan I would hope that they have done the science behind the closures. I agree that a general statewide closure might be rather nanny state but in Tassie the closures appear to be based on actual fire danger so I would trust PWS decision making process, but as always would appreciate if the reasoning was explained. Though I for one would not like to be in the Western Aurthurs with fire around so fully support their efforts in ensuring walker safety. Trouble is with a few parks once fire hits people will be trapped.

Noticed on the Temple in the Walls Park the aftermath of a fire but looks like it was quickly contained. Have no idea when this happen but glad it was stopped when it did.

Regards

[wayno]

depends how much time and how much resources it takes to change a decision on whether the parks should be open and whether they had the spare time and resources to make that decision or whether they were preoccupied totally with fighting fires..

[Onestepmore]

yes well anywhere in that part of the island the forecast often consists of if you can see the mountains it will definitely absolutely pour down, if you can't then its already pouring.... the weather tends to be black and white down there, the weather systems are often so straight forward any local could tell you what is going to happen, the rest of nz's forecast can often be a joke...

Hang on, trying to get a picture up here.....hubby is not helping with his 'advice' "Have you read the instructions?' - of course not - I'm female!

Edit:
Booyah!

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