A 'nuclear bomb' on their doorsteps: Fuel loads worse than Black Saturday
Fire experts have documented dangerous fuel loads across Victoria's forests and warned many residents face "a nuclear bomb waiting to go off" this summer. See the pictures.
Foresters, fire experts and the government’s own contractors have compiled confronting images of massive forest fuel loads, impenetrable regrowth and thousands of dead trees — evidence they say shows many Victorians have “a nuclear bomb waiting to go off” on their doorstep.
Howitt Society president Peter Flinn said members had gathered photos from Mallacoota to the high country and across the state’s west that reveal “incredibly high fuel loads that pose a huge risk, coming into summer”.
He said while bureaucrats and politicians in Melbourne continued to treat the dangerous build-up of forest fuels as “a rural problem”, the reality was far closer to the city with the outer-urban fringe — from Kangaroo Ground to Warrandyte and through the Dandenongs — just as vulnerable.
“People asked if what happened in Los Angeles (during January’s deadly fires) could happen here,” Mr Flinn said. “But it did happen here – it was Black Saturday (2009).”
Veteran fire researcher David Packham said the howling northwest winds of Black Saturday were initially heading towards Melbourne’s leafy suburbs of Eltham and Warrandyte and would have eventually reached the Dandenongs.
However he said a westerly wind change close to noon on the day pushed the fire further east towards Healesville, followed by another wind shift from the southwest at about 5:30pm that took out Marysville.
“Without that noon wind shift it wouldn’t have been 173 lives lost, but thousands.”
In the state’s far east, Mallacoota resident and Howitt Society member Rick Cooper said regrowth in the wake of the 2019-20 summer fires had built up to “impenetrable levels” in the forests surrounding the isolated town.
“It’s horrific, with three to four times more (fuel) than before the fire” Mr Cooper said. “I did a measurement of 100 tonnes a hectare (including the dead trees).
“It’s a nuclear bomb waiting to go off. I don’t think the department even knows how to deal with it.”
MALLACOOTA
The late University of Melbourne fire scientitst Kevin Tolhurst, who died immediately after a 2023 presentation to Mallacoota locals on the risks they faced, estimated Black Saturday’s fires released the energy equivalent of 1500 Hiroshama nuclear bombs.
Kinglake resident Sue Zuber, who joined neighbours in defending their Royal Crescent homes on Black Saturday, said nearby forest regrowth was dense.
She said up until Black Saturday many people “didn’t look at the forest as a potential threat”, but 16 years on it was just as “difficult to get people to engage”.
KINGLAKE
Mr Flinn said the government and its bureaucrats kept blaming climate change for the increased frequency and severity of major bushfires, rather than their own incompetence.
Analysis of the government’s departmental reports shows the annual area of fuel reduction burns has halved since Labor came to power in 2014.
Forestry consultant John Cameron said it was not just lives and property that were at risk, given major fires in Melbourne’s water catchments could take them off line, as happened after the 2003 Canberra fires.
“With the first heavy rain after the fire you get a huge quantity of silt and debris that the treatment pants aren’t able to deal with,” Mr Cameron said.
The government’s own assessments show the bushfire residual risk in Melbourne’s foothills, the Dandenongs and Mornington Peninsula has reached 92 per cent, worse than the 82 per cent level it reached in the lead-up to Black Saturday.
Mr Cameron said “the overall forest fire risk has not improved, but has deteriorated rather than improved and is probably worse than prior to the megafires of 1983, 2003, 2006-07, 2009 and 2019-20”.
The Howitt Society wants the government to honour the Black Saturday Royal Commission’s call for 5 per cent cent of the state’s forest to be burnt each year.
But Environment Minister Steve Dimopoulos’ office said the 5 per cent target was not “affordable, achievable or sustainable” and it was focused instead on its Safer Together approach of conducting smaller burns close to towns to reduce the loss of life and property.
However Orbost forestry consultant Garry Squires, who spent 30 years working in government on fuel load management, said the Safer Together strategy had failed Mallacoota in New Year’s Eve 2019.
“The fire spotted straight over the little burns they’d done around town,” Mr Squires said.
He said the lack of fuel reduction burns across East Gippsland meant the fine fuel loads, which carry fire into the tree canopy, had built up to dangerous levels.
ORBOST FOOTHILLS
Mountain cattleman Chris Commins, who does contract work for Forest Fire Management Victoria, said lowland forests were dropping about four tonnes of fuel a year, while in Mountain Ash forest it was about 10 tonnes.
He said that while much of the bark, leaf litter and twigs rot away, the build-up of fuel in some areas was vast.
Images Mr Commins took, east of Dartmouth Dam, show tonnes of fine fuels hanging of trees and on the ground, which can carry embers up to 10km ahead of a fire front.
“It’s all very well to burn around towns, but it means this remote country hasn’t been burnt in years.”
Mr Squires said the failure under take cool burns, as practiced by traditional owners, meant the ecology of the state’s forests was changing, as less frequent intense fires killed off tree species.
HIGH COUNTRY
Up at Eildon, Howitt Society member Peter Rice said there was a heavy build-up of fuels and undergrowth around Lake Eildon, including areas surrounding summer camp sites.
“Parks Victoria has hardly done any fire prevention work in the past 10 years,” Mr Rice said. He said the build-up of tea-tree scrub around Fraser Park was particularly concerning, given during a major fire the only escape would be into the water.
LAKE EILDON
Mr Flinn said the same was true of forests in the state’s west, where he took images of thousands of tonnes of fallen timber in the Wombat forest and closer to his home in the Southern Grampians at Dunkeld.
WOMBAT FOREST
THE GRAMPIANS
MORE IMAGES
CROAJINGOLONG NATIONAL PARK & MALLACOOTA
HIGH COUNTRY
KINGLAKE
WOMBAT FOREST
SOUTHERN GRAMPIANS
More Coverage
