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Burning Off

It was really smoky yesterday due to burning off operations in the local forests. After the last disasterous bushfires, more of an effort is made to reduce fuel loads near towns. We were lucky this summer, no real bad fires, but the land is still very dry.

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16 thoughts on “Burning Off”

  1. sue ouzounis says:

    It’s terribly dry, very scary when they burn off. If they are not careful it can flare up, how many times has that happened when the wind has picked up. Should go back to the old days when they allowed livestock along the verges. Or like mum says, get some of those delinquents out there doing their community service clearing the land. It was good enough during the depression, when country roads & stone walls were built by out of work labourers, why not now.

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    • Yeah, well, Sue, conservation groups stopped the roadside clearing and the forest grazing for some time until the fuel loads got out of hand. In the old days you could pick up fallen wood from the roadsides, but now you need a permit. That kept them tidy. Many a fire in the past has been caused by Spring burns, with stumps still smouldering underground the biggest danger.

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    • Hi Tess. The dry land and heat just optimizes the conditions. So if a farmer is out slashing grass and his slasher blade creates sparks from a stone, it can ignite. Welding often sets fires. We have a seasonal fire restriction period over the warmer months, with total fire ban days declared when it’s extra hot, when people are not allowed to light solid fuel fires out of doors or operate machinery that can cause fires. We have problems with firebugs too, but the authorities seem to get on to them quick these days. Most fires – especially in the forests – are caused by lightning, probably the same in most places in the world.

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  6. We’re having massive burnoffs at the moment, too, Christine. There’s a narrow fringe of cultivated land just on the other side of the Huon River from us, then nothing but forests and wilderness to the west coast.

    Thank goodness they’re now allowed to do controlled burns again, unpleasant though these are while they’re happening, after the dreadful bushfires we had two years ago following several years of lunatic policies against controlled burns.

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