Page 788 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 29 March 2006
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There will not be any ecological value if we see these sorts of areas burnt to the soil, which is what we saw in January 2003. If we do not reduce the fuel loads in biodiverse areas, in ecologically sensitive areas, in ACT forest areas and in ACT parkland areas, then the environment will be destroyed, and it takes a long time to recover. So preventative work in the first instance will be very, very important.
As to the point about brush fences at Yarralumla, I think you will find that really the fire at Yarralumla was carried by the neglect of grass areas on the urban edge, not by the brush fences. It was the fire burning through the grass, up across the urban services track into the treetops and then, from those treetops, on to the rooftops that really presented as the chain of fire to that property destruction.
I have a copy of a letter from the Chief Minister responding to concerns about long grass from a resident of Stops Place in Chifley. In that letter Mr Stanhope explains:
The urban edge behind residents is a Mount Taylor Hill Nature Reserve is classed as an Inner Asset protection zone. The vegetation within this zone must be managed to produce fire intensity, ember load and likelihood of crown fires. In order to achieve the standards required, the Inner Asset protection zone must extend 10 to 30 metres from the residential boundary to reduce the probability of asset damage from a bushfire and provide a defensible and less hazardous space from which residents and emergency services personnel can defend property.
Mr Stanhope has made two very good points there. He mentioned that the protection zone must be 10 to 30 metres. I interpret that to mean that, because of the north-westerly and westerly approach to that urban edge, it needs to be 30 metres. If the 40 metres that I suggested this debate is too wide for Mr Hargreaves, it sure as hell is a lot better than the five metres that we currently have. Five metres goes nowhere near to meeting the Chief Minister’s own standard of 30 metres which he talked about in his letter.
Of course, the Chief Minister makes the very good point that that sort of zone is required if you are going to allow neighbours, residents and then the authorities who turn up to be able to defend the property. They need that space to manoeuvre. That is interesting, is it not? Yet what we see all over Canberra is long grass up to your armpits right up against people’s back fences, and that is along the western fringe, along our most vulnerable zones.
I also find it interesting that the Chief Minister is much more forthcoming with useful information in relation to bushfire hazard management when responding to my letters than the Minister for Urban Services and emergency services has been. At least the Chief Minister has basically admitted that a larger firebreak between homes and nature parks is needed than currently exists along many urban edges.
I remind members of the photos I have tabled previously that highlight this problem. I have many more photos taken over the summer period that give overwhelming evidence that this government has allowed long grass to grow out of control. Some of that may have been cut in the later January and February period, but my concern is that in early January and mid-January this poor standard of fire preparation existed well into the bushfire danger period. I am happy to organise those photos if you want to see them.
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