California extends tax relief to Southern California wildfire victims

8 December 2008

published by hr.cch.com

USA — The California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) has announced special corporation franchise and income and personal income tax relief available to California taxpayers affected by the recent wildfires in Southern California. Taxpayers that have lost homes or suffered property damages as a result of the fires can quickly get some financial relief by immediately claiming their disaster losses on their tax returns. Also, the FTB can help replace tax records and other important paperwork lost in the fires.

The wildfires were declared a federal disaster, and affected taxpayers may claim their disaster losses in the current or prior tax year. Claiming the losses on a 2007 tax return will allow the FTB to issue refunds as quickly as possible. Counties included in the disaster area are: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and Santa Barbara. Fires specifically included in the disaster declaration are the Tea Fire in Santa Barbara County, the Sayre fire in Los Angeles County, and the Triangle Complex (formerly named Freeway Complex) fire in Orange and Riverside Counties.

Taxpayers claiming the disaster losses should write “Southern California Wildfires 2008” in red ink at the top of their tax returns to alert the FTB to expedite tax refunds. Taxpayers filing electronically should follow their software instructions to enter the disaster information. Original and amended return forms are available on the FTB’s Web site athttp://www.ftb.ca.gov/.

Taxpayers needing copies of lost or damaged state returns should complete Form FTB 3516, Request for Copy of Tax Return, and print “Southern California Wildfires 2008” in red ink at the top of the request. Disaster victims can receive copies of their tax returns for free.

Additional information about disaster losses can be found in publications FTB 1034, Disaster Loss, and IRS 547, Casualties, Disasters, and Thefts.

Namibia: Educate Masses On Dangers of Wild Fires

3 December 2008

published by http://allafrica.com

Namibia — Catalysmic bush infernos wreaking havoc across the country are a major cause for concern because valuable vegetation is ruined, depriving livestock and wild animals of their main food source – grass and tree leaves in the case of browsers.

The regions adversely affected by these uncontrolled bush fires are Caprivi, Kavango, Omaheke and and Otjozondjupa. And statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry indicate that uncontrolled bush fires annually ravage between 3 million to 7 million hectares of land in Namibia.

Apart from reducing valuable pasture to ashes thus depriving mostly free-range cattle and wild animals of their main source of food, bush fires damage the environment and this adversely impacts on tourism – one of the top earners of much-needed foreign revenue.

Human activity such as villagers setting fire to specific thickets of bush to flush out small game such as warthogs, springbok and others that they hunt for the pot and when they try to smoke out bees from their hives with the aim to harvest honey, cause bush fires.

In one recent blaze a single farmer among many in the Otjozondjupa Region lost an entire herd of wild animals in a blaze that reduced to ashes grazing covering a thousand hectares.

At times extensive damage is caused on property while humans perish in such fires. As we speak, most of the grazing along an important flood plain that provides pasture to thousands of cattle and wild animals that normally graze along this plain in Caprivi only has ashes.

Some villagers deliberately start bush fires so that cattle have greener pasture.

Among those identified, as culprits, by the traditional khuta at Bukalo are fishermen who in some cases often come to Namibia without proper travel documentation such as passports.

They usually start with a small spark but this triggers one thing after another, until a small blaze becomes a raging inferno that destroys everything and anything in its path.

Where humans do not cause these fires bolts of lightning are known to cause these fires.

This problem is compounded by inadequate incentives to undertake effective control measures, due to unclear property rights in communal lands, and inadequate coordination and cooperation arrangements between the various communities.

Confusion wrought about by laws that overlap and more so in conflict with one another, lead to lax control over fires.

We feel traditional leaders need to be given more leeway in dealing with this problem by way of giving them more powers – though for now some of them can impose fines of up to N$400 or a fine of one cow for those convicted of deliberately causing bush fires.

More resources need to be availed to sensitise these communities on the dangers of deliberately causing such fires that have a very detrimental impact on the environment.

We need to strengthen existing sensitization campaigns that are usually carried out through radio, and the community needs to be more pro-active if we are in future to – once and for all – contain these ruinous infernos, particularly ones caused by villagers out illegally hunting for the occasional game meat, as they strive to fend for their usually extended families.

We should not wait with arms akimbo doing nothing and only be mobilised to do something if we are in the middle of a raging inferno.

Sensitising villagers by informing them about the dangers lurking out of these fires could in one way remedy this problem.

Investing in mobile fire-fighting equipment is an area that should be explored and putting more stress on prevention is another tool – true to the adage prevention is better than cure.

Questions linger in bushfire aftermath

28 December 2008

published by www.thewest.com.au

Australia — The families of three truck drivers killed when a ferocious fire ripped through Boorabbin National Park last December have struggled through their first Christmas without the men and with few answers about the tragedy.
  
A year after good mates and neighbours Lewis Bedford, 60, and Robert Taylor, 46, both of Two Rocks, and Trevor Murley, 53, of Hovea, died in their trucks when they were trapped in the fast-moving inferno 100km west of Coolgardie, no inquest has been held.
  
The men were part of an unescorted convey of 15 vehicles allowed through a Department of Environment and Conservation roadblock at Coolgardie on December 30, despite warnings the 160km-stretch of Great Eastern Highway between the Goldfields town and Southern Cross was “unsafe” and expected strong wind gusts “could result in unpredictable fire behaviour”.
  
The police arson squad investigating the circumstances of the men’s deaths and why the DEC, the lead agency handling the bushfire, reopened the highway handed its report to the coroner in September.
  
But hopes of a public inquiry before the next bushfire season were dashed with the court’s schedule full until early 2009, although it is understood emergency services agencies have already finalised new guidelines for bushfire road closures in a bid to prevent similar tragedies.
  
Mr Taylor’s brother Andrew said his family would like an explanation about the disaster and anyone at fault should be held liable. But nothing could bring his brother or the other men back.
  
“He (Robert) left on his truck run on Christmas Eve and that was the last time I spoke to him,” he said. “On Christmas Day I remembered thinking about him being on the road and wondering where he would eat Christmas dinner. Now you relive last year but knowing different circumstances. I’m just trying to keep things together.”
  
Estelle Dragun, Lewis Bedford’s sister, said she believed the authorities had already learnt a great deal about the horrific tragedy.
  
“I think that’s the important thing, that we learn and we don’t make the same mistakes again,” she said. “It’s such harsh country out there.” She wished the families of the other men well and said her family was trying to remember her brother the best way they could.
  
Trevor Murley’s brother Ross said his family would privately commemorate his brother’s death.
  
Friends of the three truck drivers have created a heartfelt tribute at the site where they died, planting trees in a bid to bring life to the blackened area and leaving mementos of flowers and trucking posters.
  
But the white crosses they erected provide a stark memorial on the desolate stretch of Great Eastern Highway. A year after the men’s deaths, the shrine of waist-high crosses bearing their names and photographs stands out from the still-blackened landscape.

Forest fire report: Big losses rarer than feared

5 December 2008

published by www.oregonlive.com

USA — A U.S. Forest Service report indicates that Oregon is losing less forest to major fires than had been feared.

A five-year inventory of federal, state and private forests in Oregon from the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station shows the amount of forest that burned in the kinds of intense fires that move fast and cause a lot of damage was much smaller than previous analyses had predicted.

Barring a prolonged drought, less than half the forested lands in Oregon are predicted to develop crown fires, and an even smaller fraction, 5 to 15 percent, can be expected to develop active crown fires, a report on the inventory said.

]]>That contradicts studies published in 1999 and 2002, which found that a century of trying to put out every forest fire had left much of the forest with an excessive buildup of fuels that would generate major fires, the report said.

An average of 155,000 acres of forest burned annually between 1995 and 2004, which amounts to 0.51 percent of the 30 million acres of total forest land in Oregon. The high in the period was 2002, a drought year, when 1.90 percent of Oregon’s forest burned, about 570,000 acres.

“Increased media attention to wildfires and a perception among land managers of the need for managing wildland fuels more actively may be generating the impression that the area burned is increasing,” the report said.

In general, the state of Oregon forests is good, said Joseph Donnegan, a Forest Service ecologist who was lead editor of the report. Insect infestations and disease are low, the forests are producing a variety of goods such as lumber and services such as clean water, wildlife habitat and outdoor recreation.

Climate, particularly a prolonged drought, is a much bigger factor in determining the prospects for a bad wildfire year than how much logging has been done, Donnegan said.

Forest ecologists Norman K. Johnson of Oregon State University and Jerry Franklin of the University of Washington agreed.

“On the westside (of the Cascades) … the fire danger is highly overrated (in an historical context),” Franklin wrote in an e-mail.

The work needed to get forests in shape amounts primarily to clearing brush and small trees that serve as ladder fuels, carrying flames from the ground up into the forest canopy, rather than thinning mature trees, Donnegan said.

The problem is that there is little commercial value in the materials produced from such work, except as fuel for biomass generators, which are in short supply in Oregon.

However, the inventory estimated that thinning forests in the Cascades from Hood River to Redding, Calif., and the Klamath and Siskiyou mountains from Roseburg to Redding, Calif., could produce $6 billion to $9 billion dollars worth of fuel for power generation, enough to produce 496 to 1,009 megawatts of electricity over 10 years.

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Meanwhile, what conservation groups have been telling the Forest Service for years — old growth forests are less prone to fire than younger forests — was borne out in an analysis of the Biscuit Fire, which burned at varying intensities across 500,000 acres primarily on the Siskiyou National Forest in southwestern Oregon.

The inventory found that more than three-quarters of the land covered in big old trees, both conifers and hardwoods, burned at low intensities, which clean up brush and ladder fuels without killing the large trees.

The places that were hit by hot, intense fire tended to be sites that could not grow big trees, and were covered with brush and smaller trees.

The inventory also found that the national forests are home to almost all the old growth forest left in Oregon, and that old growth forests serve as a carbon sink, storing more carbon pulled from the air by photosynthesis than released through decomposition.

Donnegan said it would be up to society to decide whether old growth forests are more valuable as a tool in combatting global warming than as lumber.