Finns offer to help Turkey in combating forest fires

Finns offer to help Turkey in combating forest fires

06 June 2010

published by www.todayszaman.com

Turkey — Finnish officials have offered to help Turkey tackle forest fires, a perennial scourge that run the risk of ravaging the country’s forestland in the upcoming peak high-risk fire season.

“We are ready to share our expertise with Turkish officials on how to reduce the risk of fires and how to respond swiftly when a fire happens,” Heikki Granholm, a counselor at the Finnish Agricultural and Forestry Ministry, told Today’s Zaman.

“We have developed a number of best practices in the prevention of forest fires by building numerous roads into forestland and increasing public awareness on the risks,” he said, adding that vigilance and observation were key to preventing the rapid escalation of fires in Finland. Granholm said a delegation from the Turkish Ministry of Environment and Forestry was coming to Helsinki next week to have talks with Finnish officials.

Finland, a country with three-quarters of its land forested, has its own share of fires in the summer but the damage is much more limited compared to Turkey, which topped the list of fire damage in Europe in 2008, during which a total of 29,749 hectares of forest were burned in 2,135 fires. Thanks to a rapid action plan adopted by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, the following year saw far less forestland vanish due to fires.

According to a report issued by the ministry in April 2010, the number of fires in 2009 was 1,793 and the forestland burned dropped to 4,679 hectares, considerably less than in 2008. The aggressive policy adopted by the government targeted the root causes of forest fires, building more than 700 watchtowers and establishing 24-hour surveillance teams. The ministry also introduced a vehicle tracking system to keep tabs on all of its heavy equipment, helicopters and planes in order to swiftly channel them to needed spots in case of fires.

According to ministry officials, the efforts made by the 11,000 firefighters, 2,500 forestry engineers and 5,000 other workers in the field have produced encouraging results. The ministry has 45 firefighting airplanes and helicopters currently in use. In an effort to discover forest fires early and prevent their spread, 54 cameras have been installed in high-risk areas throughout the country in addition to a satellite monitoring system. Every 15 minutes high-risk regions are reviewed, with firefighting authorities receiving updates.

Yet the danger remains, as citizens’ awareness on preventing forest fires is something that the government needs to work on. The deliberate starting of forest fires by contractors and seasonal forestry workers in order to generate job potential, slash-and-burn tactics to open the land for agricultural use and accidental picnic fires still pose a major problem for Turkey.

Jari Parviainen, the director of the Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla) in Joensuu, said Turkey can benefit from Finland’s experience in fire prevention, whether for man-made or natural wildfires. He told Today’s Zaman that there is much contrast between Turkey and Finland — the latter is blessed with mosaic-like landscape with lakes, rivers, wetlands and barren mountaintops in the forest matrix, which in effect hinders the spread of fires. “Nevertheless, we have built quite an extensive network of roads to swiftly deploy firefighters to extinguish fires,” he told Today’s Zaman.

According to the latest European Union Commission report on forest fires, the number of wildfires in Finland last year was 3,161, of which 1,415 were reported as forest fires. The damage to the forests, however, was far less compared to Turkey. The total burned area was 1,175 hectares, of which only 824 hectares was forestland. Though the most common reason for wildfires is related to human activity, in most cases the fires are not started deliberately. In Finland, only a very small number of fires are caused by arson.

The Turkish Ministry of Environment and Forestry has changed its forest fire fighting strategy in recent years, focusing especially on the prevention side through education and awareness raising, as most fires in Turkey are started by humans, whether deliberately or accidentally. It also tries to boost the early warning and fast suppression tools available to firefighters across the country.

The General Directorate of Forestry, an agency within the ministry charged to monitor forests and prevent fires in Turkey, is testing automatic fire detection systems to handle fires quickly. For this reason, it contracted the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) and Bilkent University in Ankara to set up five test fire towers in each of two forest districts, Antalya and Muğla, where the fire risk is quite high during the long hot summer season. The government is also working on a rapid reforestation campaign to replenish the forestland lost due to fires.

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Bush fires trend worrying

Bush fires trend worrying

09 June 2010

published by http://www.fijitimes.com

Fiji — BUSH fires have become a major problem for the people living in the districts of Namuka and Nadogo, Nadogo Secondary School principal Setereki Koroilagilagi said.

Villages in the two districts affected by bush fires are Lagalaga, Namuka, Nubu, Nakelikoso Daku, Wainikoro and Taganikula.

“It has become a culture for us to experience bush fires every year. It’s mainly because it’s very dry and people don’t take much care while out in the forest,” said Mr Koroilagilagi.

“People go out hunting and they throw about lit cigarettes and match sticks in the forest. Sometimes farmers lose control of fire while clearing land or preparing land for cultivation of crop.”

The frequent bush fires resulted in small scale vegetation. He said land fertility of land had been degraded. Soil has depleted and this is affecting people’s interest in large-scale farming, Mr Koroilagilagi added.

“Most of the trees are destroyed in the fire and as a result we have lost the wild life. There are not many birds in this area and there are hardly animals around unless bred by the villagers,” he said.

“The animal’s natural habitat have been disturbed and damaged. Climate change is also giving rise to the number of bush fire. There is too much heat and a lit match stick can burn the whole bush down.”

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Dark Days in August

Dark Days in August

21 June 2010

published by wildfiremag.com

USA — In the summer of 1910, great fires swept across the Northern Rocky Mountains and Western Canada, consuming nearly 4 million acres of prime timber. After an already long summer of seemingly constant wildfires, a warm Palouse wind swept out of eastern Washington on Aug. 20, crossing the Idaho panhandle and heading into Montana, whipping hundreds of separate blazes into a giant conflagration that destroyed more than 1 million acres in a harrowing 48-hour period. The blowup swallowed entire towns, cut off railroads and overran hapless firefighters throughout Idaho and Montana, killing dozens of people.

The fires scarred more than just the landscape; they dramatically affected firefighting efforts on both sides of the U.S. and Canadian border. In the north, the fires had virtually no Dominion Forestry Branch personnel to collide with, but they galvanized the need for fire prevention and suppression policies and efforts. In the United States, where the newly minted U.S. Forest Service had promised to protect the woods from all abuse, the 1910 fires killed debate over whether fires should be fought and loosened Congress’ penurious funding of the agency responsible for guarding the country’s forests. The fires convinced generations of Forest Service leaders to battle fires with everything they had, setting the nation’s perception and approach to firefighting for the next century.

TROUBLING START

Prior to the start of the fires, the five-year-old U.S. Forest Service, created in 1905, was stretched thin. Equipped with a badge, double-bitted axe, rifle and sidearm, Forest Service rangers had instructions to “look out for fires, timber thieves, squatters and game violators” as they patrolled millions of acres alone. When the light summer rains that normally dampened the Northern Rockies never materialized, the Forest Service found itself managing a tinderbox of dry fuels ripe to burn. At the time, the agency was struggling to prove to the public that it was better able to care for millions of acres of timberland than were private interests. The 1910 fires became its first major test.

The U.S. Forest Service appeared well-staffed in 1910 compared to Canada’s Dominion Forestry Branch. Created four years earlier, the Forestry Branch sought to emulate its southern counterpart by establishing a conservation program to manage Canada’s forests for wise use. Central to forest conservation was protection from fire, and Director Robert Campbell worked hard to bring some semblance of systematic fire control to the Western territories. In Western Canada, fire followed the migration of people. Coal-fired railroad engines sent off sparks into the vast forestlands and left raging conflagrations in their wake.

In the summer of 1910, a nearly continuous 75-mile stretch on the eastern slope of the Rockies burned. To combat this, the Dominion Forestry Branch had available a permanent staff of just 40 and an annual budget of $100,000, compared to the U.S. Forest Service’s $4.6 million budget supporting 2,000 permanent employees. In the face of the 1910 fires, the best fire control Dominion could offer were prevention efforts and limited attacks with locally recruited crews. With limited firefighting efforts and few people in their path, the 1910 fires largely ran their course in Canada.

South of the border, fire control efforts were much different. The fires began early that summer. By July, thousands of men, untrained and hastily transported into the mountains, were fighting hundreds of fires across the Northwest under the direction of overwhelmed Forest Service rangers. The extremely rough terrain made many of the fires inaccessible. With the closest roads sometimes 60 miles from the fireline, firefighters had to cover the rest of the ground on foot over rough game trails. In August, timber companies pleaded with President William Taft to commit U.S. Army troops to the fight; Taft responded by sending nearly 4,000 troops, or 5% of the nation’s total standing army.

August’s low humidity and high winds exacerbated the fires. Then suddenly, on Aug. 20 and 21, a gale-force wind blew, fanning little fires into giant conflagrations travelling 30 to 50 miles in a few hours and sweeping over stranded crews and towns. According to one eyewitness in Montana, quoted by Elers Koch, “The sky turned a ghastly yellow, and at four o’ clock it was black dark ahead of the advancing flames.” The fire burned much of Wallace, Idaho, before crossing over the Bitterroot Range into Montana and devouring the mountain outposts of Taft, Saltese, DeBorgia and Haugan. Those unable to escape were forced to weather the blast in whatever places promised some degree of safety. Some retreated into mine tunnels, some took refuge on recently burned-over areas and others lay in small streams covering their heads with blankets. Only rain and decreasing temperatures on Aug. 23 halted the fires’ advance.

Horrific scenes of burned firefighters both alive and dead were widespread throughout the region. Seventy-eight firefighters, along with seven civilians, perished in the flames. Scores of injured firefighters overwhelmed local hospitals. In addition to the loss of life and property, the fires turned millions of acres of verdant forest into a moonscape. The Forest Service estimated that the fires destroyed more than 6 billion board feet of marketable timber, enough to supply the entire nation for several months.

BEYOND THE AFTERMATH

The 1910 fires’ legacy went beyond the lives and landscapes they touched in Idaho and Montana. Shocked by the horrific losses, the public cried out for action, and Congress quickly doubled the Forest Service budget. The fires helped break a legislative stalemate to pass the 1911 Weeks Act, a seminal piece of legislation that eventually brought more than 20 million acres in the East under Forest Service protection. According to fire historian Stephen Pyne, the “big blowup” of 1910 is the founding story of modern-day fire suppression: “August of 1910 was the single most important moment in American fire history. It burned a swath across the memory of a generation of foresters.” Three successive Forest Service chiefs had battled on the firelines in 1910; the experience permanently stiffened their future resolve to make fire suppression the agency’s foremost priority.

1910 also helped shape Canada’s Dominion fire control efforts, but in more modest terms — the difference being that without an institution the size of the U.S. Forest Service for the government to shore up, the 1910 fires had far less to affect in Canada. The fires followed on the heels of the horrific 1909 fire season, which the Dominion Forest Branch had used to successfully argue that prevention efforts alone would not bring down timber losses to fire. In the coming years, the branch began bringing stability to the Western provinces through systematic regulations on burning; investment in permanent improvements such as lookouts, roads and telephone wires to aid fire detection and suppression; and extending its fire protection efforts beyond the boundaries of its parks.

Nature gradually healed the fires’ wounds, but their effect on U.S. fire management lasted much longer. That summer in 1910, the Forest Service decided there was no value for fire in forest conservation. The aftermath of the fires created the policy and infrastructure necessary to permanently ban fire from the national forests, placing the nation on a permanent war-footing against wildfire. Although they burned 3 million acres in Idaho and Montana, the 1910 Northern Rockies fires affected all of the country’s forestlands for the next century.

1910 FIRE COMMEMORATION EVENTS

  • July 16, Savenac Nursery, Mineral County, Mont. Event to highlight effect of fires on tree nursery and reconstruction after 1910.
  • Aug. 19-21, Wallace, Idaho Community events including Wallace Museum tours, Pulaski Tunnel and Ninemile Cemetery tours (self-guided), reenactments, historical theater productions, guest speakers Timothy
  • Egan and Stephen Pyne, along with a new memorial dedication.
  • Aug. 20, St. Maries, Idaho Rededication of Woodlawn Cemetery Memorial and Community Dinner.
  • Aug. 20, Thompson Falls, Mont. “Step Back in Time to 1910” program at the public library.
  • Aug. 21, Avery, Idaho Bike tours and community breakfast, dinner and day-long events including presentations and historical interpretation by Steve Coady.
  • Aug. 21, Savenac Nursery, Mineral County, Mont. Rededication of Savenac Nursery Memorial Grove, planted to honor fallen 1910 firefighters, and a Civilian Conservation Corps reunion.
  • Aug. 21, Trout Creek, Mont. Reenactment of 1910 fire camp, community events and rededication of Swamp Creek Fire Memorial.
     
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Into the inferno

Into the inferno

25 June 2010

published by www.theaustralian.com.au

Australia — CONTEMPLATING the serene countryside that surrounds the TarraWarra Museum of Art in the Yarra Valley, especially on a cool and cloudy winter’s day, it is hard to feel apprehensive about the danger of bushfires.

Vineyards mantling the slopes, with red and white roses planted at the heads of each row, run down to the still waters of a pond, and all around are green wooded hills. And yet all this is very close to the catastrophic bushfires that destroyed so many rural townships in February 2009. How close can be appreciated from inside the gallery, where the enormous window at the end of the perspective looks straight towards hills still bristling with burned tree trunks.

After those events TarraWarra was almost the inevitable place to mount an exhibition about fire in the Australian landscape. The museum has never had as many people come to a show, and will seldom have visitors who scrutinise the works on display in such a spirit of seriousness and even reverence. Staff told me of many people who had burst into tears, sometimes after quietly looking at the exhibition for some time, before being suddenly overcome by emotion or memories of their own suffering or the loss of friends.

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All Australians know about bushfires, a few through direct involvement, many from the pervasive smell of distant fires or the uncanny orange light that comes through the smoke haze, and most in the safety of tele-voyeurism, watching walls of fire on a big screen while reporters repeat their script of cliches. Chief among the banalities that inevitably recur is the phrase “Mother Nature in all her fury”. It seems odd at first sight that journalists only ever personify nature as a mother when they are evoking her most savage and destructive manifestations: fires, floods, hurricanes.

Surely it would be more fitting to speak of Mother Nature when surveying a field of ripe grain, ready for harvest? But in reality the expression, which is like a throwback to a much earlier world of belief, betrays fear and the desire to placate a dark, incomprehensible force by an act of submission.

Curiously, I was told the firefighters themselves spontaneously imagine the fire as a monstrous female entity, speaking of it as “the bitch”, for example, even though fire itself is generally conceived as masculine, whether in the Western system of the elements or in various Eastern philosophies; here, however, it is seen as no more than the instrument of a primitive and enraged female earth-divinity.

From a sufficient distance, great fires are an impressive sight, like volcanoes, waterfalls, storms at sea and other spectacles of the power of nature. An element of fear, in the apprehension of our own smallness and vulnerability, is inseparable from exhilaration. This was the experience analysed by Edmund Burke in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), in which he associated beauty with wellbeing, harmony and serenity, and the sublime with the fear and excitement of an inhuman infinite.

The sublime was what the romantics looked for in nature, rather than the equilibrium of beauty sought in the classical landscape. It played an important, and different, part in the painting of European masters such as Friedrich or Turner, Australians (Eugene von Guerard) and Americans (Frederic Edwin Church and others).

But it is harder to conceive of our bushfires in this way, because they are simply too close to our daily lives; aesthetic detachment is much more difficult to achieve, as well as more problematic, where the danger is real, an attack to be fought off rather than a spectacle to be admired.

Bushfires mean death, and in the aftermath it can seem like the death of nature itself. This sense of utter bleakness is particularly well evoked in Rick Amor’s painting Summer (2008), with its monochrome palette of ashen greys and stark tonal contrasts of charred trunks.

What makes this picture particularly poignant is that in composition it is loosely conceived as a classical landscape, with framing trees and central space that would once have been welcoming and pleasant; it is thus beauty itself and communion with nature that have been destroyed, with no compensating vision of the sublime.

Jane Scott, the exhibition’s curator, has done an excellent job in assembling the most important images of bushfire in Australian art, and lenders have been generous in parting with important works, though under the circumstances refusal would have seemed extraordinarily ungracious.

Of these loans, the most important, and almost the keystone of the exhibition, is William Strutt’s Black Thursday February 6th 1851, which was based on studies the young painter made in Australia at the time, and completed in London in 1864.

As the title makes clear, this painting was based on the greatest bushfire in the history of Australia, which devastated more than a quarter of the area of Victoria, although more lives were lost in later and smaller fires in more densely populated areas.

In a sense this exhibition is something of a vindication for Strutt, who saw the event as something that was at once terrible and characteristic of the Australian experience, but encountered an almost complete lack of interest, at least from buyers, in his picture.

Perhaps its vision was too grim and even apocalyptic at a time when the new colony of Victoria was booming with wealth and brash optimism; James Smith, the critic of the Argus, argued that Black Thursday was a picture of national importance and should be acquired for what was to become the National Gallery of Victoria.

In the end, however, even the modest price Strutt was asking could not be raised, and after many years the picture was sold to a private collector. When it finally entered a public collection, in 1954, it was that of the Public Library of Victoria.

Strutt worked very hard on this picture, which he conceived as an epic of human suffering in which all flee before the onslaught of an annihilating force that makes no distinction of class or wealth, age or sex, or between man and animal.

The detailed and accurate depictions of the various fleeing or dead animals are particularly striking. In fact they are a bit too prominent, so that the picture is as much a work of natural history as of history painting.

Despite some reservations, however, the painting is a remarkable achievement, full of fine observations and some quite beautiful passages, which repay the effort of picking through a composition that is perhaps inevitably overcrowded for its scale. Longstaff’s Gippsland, Sunday night, February 20th, 1898 — again a response to specific fires — is more successful in composition, particularly in the way the artist evokes not only the terror of the fire, at once imminent and distantly encircling, but also the loneliness and isolation, through the vast darkness in the centre of the picture.

The horse plays an important but more discreet part in Longstaff’s composition, and animals remain central to several very different works, including Simon O’Dwyer’s moving photograph of a farmer weeping as he shoots cattle burned by the fire, and Susan Purdy’s long photogram that extends in three parts along the side corridor. Purdy’s work is the only one that seems to acknowledge the role of arsonists in starting these terrifying blazes.

One striking thing is that the reality of these events is so extreme it does not permit rhetoric or conceits. The gravity of the subject seems to demand simplicity and directness. Thus Imants Tillers reproduces, on a much larger scale, a bushfire painting by the high colonial painter von Guerard, inscribing on it MODEL OF REALITY, and below, spaced across the composition: ME HERE NOW.

Les Kossatz, like several others, began the work exhibited here as personal notations of the experience, in his case of the aftermath of fire, and his small pastel drawings of hillsides with their clusters of skeletal blackened trunks have a corresponding quality of understated conviction. One of John Gollings’s works looks from a distance like an abstract drawing, covered in a network of dark reticulated lines; on looking more closely, one realises it is a photograph, taken from the air, and the lines are thousands of fallen charred logs.

Among the things that draw you back for another look there are four small oil paintings by a young artist, Camilla Tadich, in a style that is somewhere between Amor and Clarice Beckett, and which evoke the silent stillness of the landscape laid waste by the passage of the blaze.

Claudia Terstappen’s large photographs are certainly striking, but suggest effects of light rather than the fury of destructive heat; the vision is more detached and they are thus less impressive in this context than they might be elsewhere.

Similarly the images that deal with regeneration, such as those of Fred Williams and John Wolseley, while fine in themselves, are harder to appreciate when one’s attention is really focused on the physical and moral drama of the bushfire and its immediate effects and consequences.

The most touching story in the show is the one that lies behind J.W. Lindt’s small but dramatic picture of a cloud of smoke looming behind a hill across the valley in 1926; the elderly photographer, whose house and studio were threatened by this fire, died of heart failure a few days afterwards.

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U.S. Lucky as International Disasters Dwarfed Domestic Losses

U.S. Lucky as International Disasters Dwarfed Domestic Losses

30 June 2010

published by www.businessweek.com

USA — U.S. tornado and wildfire seasons are milder than average this year, sparing domestic insurers like Allstate Corp. as overseas carriers absorbed losses from Chile’s earthquake and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Wildfire frequency through June 28 was the lowest since 2003, National Interagency Fire Center data show. Tornadoes struck 904 times this year, killing 29 people, compared with a first-half average of 983 twisters and 69 deaths from 2007 to 2009, according to preliminary data on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website yesterday.

Catastrophes outside the U.S. this year cost insurers more than twice as much as domestic disasters, with the February quake causing about $7 billion in claims and the Gulf disaster more than $1.5 billion, said Bob Hartwig, Insurance Information Institute president. Lower U.S. disaster costs may bolster surplus at domestic insurers as they brace for a hurricane season predicted to be more severe than average by the NOAA.

“More years than not it’s the U.S. that has the greatest insured catastrophe loss,” Hartwig said. “Global losses dwarfed U.S. losses this year.”

Insurers spent $2.6 billion on U.S. first-quarter catastrophes, down about 18 percent from the same period in 2009, according to the Property and Casualty Insurers Association of America. Tornadoes are typically most frequent from April through June, while the worst wildfires tend to occur from June through October.

AIG, Allstate

Allstate, the largest publicly traded U.S. home and auto insurer, may post operating earnings per share of 98 cents for the quarter ending today, compared with 55 cents in the same period last year, according to the average estimate of 19 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Last year, the Northbrook, Illinois-based insurer had record second-quarter claims, with five events costing $50 million or more.

American International Group Inc., which gets most of its revenue outside the U.S. and has been scaling back in the country with the sale of its domestic auto-insurance unit, may post a profit decline. The New York-based company will earn 99 cents a share in the second quarter, according to two analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, compared with $2.57 a year earlier.

Lloyd’s of London has said its insurers will pay $300 million to $600 million tied to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon Rig that caused the leak in the Gulf of Mexico in April. European reinsurers such as Munich Re and Swiss Reinsurance Co. have disclosed the highest claims from the Chile quake.

“If we did business in other countries, obviously we’d have more losses,” said Dick Luedke, spokesman for Bloomington, Illinois-based State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. The policyholder-owned insurer reports earnings once a year.

‘We’ve Been Lucky’

California, which endured the country’s costliest wildfires in 2007 and 2008, was spared from severe blazes so far this year because there was enough rain to dampen vegetation, said Julie Hutchinson, a battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

“We’ve been lucky,” she said. “The threat hasn’t stopped, but it’s been delayed and lessened.”

The second half of the year is typically riskier for U.S. insurers because of hurricanes. This year’s Atlantic storm season may be the most active since 2005, which was the worst on record with more than 1,500 U.S. deaths and $115 billion in damage, Moody’s Investors Service said this month. The season began June 1 and ends Nov. 30.

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Military training may have sparked wildfire

Military training may have sparked wildfire

15 June 2010

published by www.lcsun-news.com

USA — Military training is again thought to be behind a fire burning on 1,000 acres of Fort Bliss and White Sands Missile Range land, sending smoke into the Mesilla Valley throughout Tuesday.

The fire began Tuesday morning during a live fire training exercise in Fort Bliss’ Do-a Ana Range, in an impact area – a location where unexploded ordnance is known to exist, according to Fort Bliss. Bureau of Land Management officials say crews are trying to gain access to the burn, but unexploded ordinance in the area as well as closed fences are hampering efforts, said BLM spokesman Louis Bevacqua.

Realtor Carl Topley was checking on listings and refilling flier boxes when he noticed the white haze over Soledad Canyon around 10 a.m. Tuesday – indicating something dry was burning on the eastern slopes.

“It obviously was not a cloud,” Topley said. “I suspected that the military may have lit something on fire on the back side of the mountains again. It seems to be an almost annual event.”

In April, 2009, the Oro Grande Range wildfire, which was also believed to have started during a training exercise, consumed 10,000 acres of brush and 10 utility poles and damaged three vehicles on a Fort Bliss firing range before being contained after two days.

And in 2008, military ammunition is believed to have ignited another fire in Soledad Canyon, in a remote area of the southern Organ Mountains on Fort Bliss land.

No resources were requested from Do-a Ana County to assist
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with Tuesday’s fire, according to county spokesman Jess Williams.

About 500 acres were estimated burning at 4:30 p.m., according to Fort Bliss, whose firefighters and about 50 soldiers monitored the fire with the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, which also provided a spotter aircraft.

“It sounds like they’re on top of things on this fire,” Topley said. “But I know in years past, there have been fires where the BLM and the military couldn’t figure out whose fire it was. Meanwhile, the fire continued to burn.”

For citizens watching the smoke drift on the horizon, that can be pretty frustrating, he said – a sentiment shared by many.

“I don’t care whose fire it is,” he said. “Put it out.”

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Mental trauma worsens for Black Saturday survivors

Mental trauma worsens for Black Saturday survivors

26 June 2010

published by www.abc.net.au

Australia — Support groups for victims of the Black Saturday bushfires say the worst signs of mental trauma are just starting to emerge.

It has been almost 17 months since the fires swept through Victorian towns, killing 173 people and destroying more than 2,000 homes.

Many survivors are experiencing their second winter in temporary housing, which for some includes outdoor showers and toilets.

Bill Gale from the Kinglake Ranges Community Recovery Committee says the mental health of many survivors is deteriorating.

“A lot of people, whilst they were busy immediately after the fires, are now finding things to be very difficult and some of our businesses are suffering as well,” he said.

“All the literature and research indicates that years two to four [after] are the worst in regards to mental health.

“That’s in fact what we’re starting to experience now.”

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Bushfire shelter wins global award

Bushfire shelter wins global award

04 June 2010

published by www.swinburne.edu.au

Australia — A business plan to produce a unique series of above-ground bushfire shelters has taken out the 2010 Licensing Executives Society International (LESI) Global Award.

Designed by student entrepreneurs Andrew Thomas and Alison Durham from Swinburne University of Technology, Encase™ bushfire shelters are free-standing, above-ground and offer maximum accessibility.

“We developed this technology in response to the deadly bushfires that swept through Victoria, Australia on 7 February 2009 killing over 170 people. Since then there has been growing concern over the nature, risk and severity of bushfires in Australia and in other Mediterranean climates,” Encase™ CEO Andrew Thomas said.

“From the footage of the bushfires as well as market research, it was clear that the most important feature of the shelter should be accessibility – so we designed them to be above ground to maximise this.”

“During the Victorian bushfires, many people lost their houses as they weren’t able to stay and defend them. But if those affected can stay safe on site – which our product allows for – they stand a good chance of saving their house.”

Thomas said that the Swinburne teaching staff, LES judges and their mentor were very encouraging and pushed EncaseTM to make their plan better leading up to the competition.

“Coming from Australia, it often feels like we’re a long way away from things. So the opportunity to be in the US at a global event has been incredible for us,” said Thomas.

The prestigious award, worth USD$5,000, is presented annually as part of the LES Foundation’s International Graduate Student Business Plan Competition. This is the third consecutive year Swinburne has received the award.

Almost 40 teams entered this year’s LES Foundation Competition which attracts student entrepreneurs from across the globe who submit business plans that hinge on groundbreaking technologies and services.

During the event, the Global Award is presented by LESI to recognise the team whose plan best deals with IP rights and their use in the global business environment.

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Avoid burning your land: Nhema

Avoid burning your land: Nhema

21 June 2010

published by www.sundaynews.co.zw

Zimbabwe — The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Management, Cde Francis Nhema, told over 500 farmers, villagers and school children at the Matabeleland North provincial fire awareness campaign launch at Nyamandlovu Farmers Hall that they have to be on the look out for fires as they destroy the environment.
“Veld fires destroy the livestock livelihood as all grazing land goes up in flames and smoke sabotaging the country’s ongoing restocking programme.
“Environmental degradation increases the impact of natural hazards and limits the natural absorptive capacity and resilience of the areas affected,” he said.
The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Management said considering that last year fires affected a total of 161 330 hectares in Matabeleland North, it was important to prevent veld fires.
“Hwange was the most affected district with 62 508 hectares being lost to veld fires followed by Bubi with 31 819 hectares and Umguza with 17 751 hectares.
“Year in, year out, we experience serious outbreaks of uncontrolled fires throughout the country causing untold devastation on our biodiversity and ecosystems,” he said.
Minister Nhema said since most veld fires stem from human activity, it is Zimbabweans who can prevent these uncontrolled fires and protect the country’s heritage.
“Stopping at good intentions is not enough, we need to start acting now to reduce the destruction of our environmental assets. Let us all do something to prevent and stop uncontrolled fires and work towards a better future for present and future generations,” he said.
Minister Nhema said the country cannot afford to lose its biodiversity and foreign currency as a result of smoking out bees, careless throwing away of cigarette stubs or unattended fires meant to warm people at bus stops.
“All these problems are due to human negligence hence the need to reorient our attitude towards fighting veld fires.
“In this regard I am strongly appealing to local authorities, traditional leaders, chiefs, headmen, kraal heads and all stakeholders involved in local governance to establish and train fire fighting teams in their areas,” he said.
The minister said traditional leaders were the custodians of the natural resources and had to continue exercising their wisdom and the authority vested in them under the Traditional Leaders Act in safeguarding the natural resources, which are the country’s natural capital.
Minister Nhema said it was important that farmers and all villagers construct fireguards around their homes and farms as a precautionary measure.
“Fireguards are constructed using various methods, you can use a tractor and plough or clear the area by hand or burn which ever is convenient to you,” he said.
The minister said it was a Government directive that these fireguards should be in place by 31 July every year.
“My ministry through the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) will be conducting inspections countrywide and serving orders to ensure compliance with regulations pertaining to the construction and maintenance of fireguards,” he said.

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