Left to Die

References

Comments

Figure 1: Preolenna village, Feb 2009.

Left to Die

Given that plantations should be kept 700 metres away from a community [1] and that fireballs explode 200 metres in radius from their eucalypt fuel and that ember attack can come from kilometres away [2], rural communities like Preolenna in NW Tasmania have obviously been hung out to die since plantations have moved in.

Figure 2: The view to the west Meunna, Mawbanna….and some.

Their only fire appliance is in the main village, near five of the 21 houses in the district. The road in and out of the village has plantations on either side of the road. The school bus dodges log trucks as it wends its way between the trees. There is no safe way in and no safe way out as far as Morleah, further to the coast.

My neighbours, with fire-fighting experience would refuse to help in the instance of a serious fire. It is unlikely that a single house is 200m from a plantation – many are less than 50 metres away.

“There’s nothing anyone could do to save them without dying themselves. No way I’d be there… I ‘d be at my home in a bunker if Preolenna was alight.”

Figure 3: The main road from south of the Preolenna village.The trees are between 8 and 9 years of age and may double their fuel load before harvest. The fire appliance is near by communications tower.

Figure 4: The school bus route –on the main road twice daily.

On Sunday 7th January 2007 an arson attempt failed due to sheer luck [3].

Figure 5: Existing mixed farmland goes under, May 2001. The roof reflections show the bus route from the main road, Coalmine Rd intersection heading west (left) to the village in the far middle distance.

Figure 6: February, 2009. The roof of the house on the corner of Preolenna and Coalmine Roads is just discernible through the additional fuel load.

The arrival of plantations have turned the farmers’ household shade and shelter belts into fire hazards and their houses into death traps. Not every house with trees around it is the result of tree-hugging, tree-changing stupidity. The number of tree changer hectares would have trouble matching the 1 million hectares of hardwood and softwood plantations that have invaded the space between Australia’s native forests and rural communities (53% of plantations were on previously agricultural land in 2000[4]. 1.82 million hectares of plantations are identified in the 2008 State of Forests Report.)

Figure 6: Plantations replace mixed agricultural land – July 2001.

Figure 7: The house with the smoke in figure 6 – Feb 2009.

There are houses like this throughout the hinterland of the NW Coast of Tasmania in a belt of plantation that stretches from Smithton to Devonport and beyond. They no doubt occur in any rural area in Australia where it used to rain more than 6-700 mm per year.

Figure 8: Another farm east of Preolenna near Takone. Weather conditions and neighbours prevented catastrophe from a lightning fire in a neighbouring coup.

Figure 9: The same farm house (figure 8) in 1980, before extensions, outbuildings and garden were added in the mid 1980’s. The risk of fire from the small stand of radiata pines is almost nil.

Population shifts make housing on the outskirts of major centres necessary, given the inflation of town prices and lack of housing for those moving from remote regions. Premier Brumby does not forget the occasional lifestyler, either. The unfettered encouragement of plantations has failed to recognise these forces and the rights of existing residents – let alone having plans that consider the implications of climate change.

At no point have the state government departments concerned with resource planning , local government, fire prevention, or forestry made people aware of the true risks they face. At no point have they or plantation companies provided fire prevention plans. The fire authorities have actually engendered a false sense of security. Evidence shows they are assessing fire risk without an objective set of criteria. They use the “personal experience” of the officer usually assuming a small isolated outbreak in typical weather, with ample resources available.

Figure 10: Plantation to the fenceline of a property in Morleah, north of Preolenna

The local council that looks after Preolenna does not issue fire abatement notices in the hinterland: understaffed. The companies spend only enough on maintenance to clear 3 metre trails every couple of years and slash once per year, usually when it is too late and after a lot of nagging. They are understaffed and their maintenance budgets are underfunded for doing the job properly.

The plantation industry and its state and federal government backers are culpable for exposing the rural population to known risks of lightning strikes, arson and fires at least as bad as the Ash Wednesday and Snug fires. It amounts to a criminal neglect of their duty of care even before new climate change risks are factored in.

Plantations will need to be removed to at least a distance of 700 metres from communities (including those in ribbons along public roads ) and at least 200 metres from isolated residences. Clearings for powerlines and other infrastructure need to also be reconsidered in the light of the increased risks due to climate change. A share in the costs of private bunker construction for plantation-threatened households should also be mandatory. Fire risk assessment protocols should be established and the state fire authority overhauled. Councils should be forced to carry out the duties they have to their entire shire (including mowing their own verges twice: before, not after fire season).

State planners should be required to rezone areas for plantations so that they are broken into smaller non-contiguous parcels before the next rotation.

Many of the residents of Preolenna and other rural communities are the employees that the plantation complanies purport to care for so much. Let’s see some evidence of social conscience and not of what looks like deliberate extermination.

Figure 11: An existing Preolenna farmhouse, now invisible due to plantations. Looking Eastwards towards Takone and Hampshire, 2001. It once produced milk, beef, lamb and potatoes.

References

[1] Chen, K. and McAneney, J. (2004). Quantifying bushfire penetration into urban areas in Australia. Geophysical Research Letters, 31, L12212, June issue, doi:10.1029/2004GL020244.

[2] Annecdotal evidence from this months Victorian fires.

[3] The Advocate, Tues, 9th January, 2007. P1.

[4] 53% of the 2000 plantation estate is on previously agricultureal land and 20% was on previous plantation, on second rotation. (Plantations of Australia, Summary Report 2001, Dept Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry – Australia, P8)

Comments

But you can eat trees if you are really, really hungry......

Posted by Dave Groves on 23/02/09 at 06:25 AM

This is where endemic corruption has taken Tasmania. It’s only a matter of time before the

vested interests of a few have had a catastrophic effect on the rest of us.

Posted by Karl Stevens on 23/02/09 at 10:07 AM

I remember reading submissions from various Preolenna residents, including Evelyn Devito, who were doing their utmost to stop this plantation invasion. It is absolutely tragic. I wonder how the PRO-plantation residents of that time are feeling now.

Posted by Maddie on 23/02/09 at 05:37 PM

Amazing how you can select whatever suits you from the net to produce the arguement that you want. What a load of hogwash you have written. I would suggest that prudence would require you to talk to the locals before you write an article like this - you have probably insulted them (once more) as the ones that I have talked to that live there love it there. People have generally moved there for a lifestyle choice. Rainfall is well over 1000 mm so I don’t know why you were talking about 6-700 (bias perhaps!?), the actual township would be the focus by forestry companies, FT and the TFS of any (unlikely) major fire event. Interesting how erosion prone those farms looked in the photos that you presented, all generlly with unprotected streams or waterways. Nowadays it is much more bio-diverse and closer to how it was before the native was removed, and the water is of much better quality.

And, as a summary re the fire prone-ness you were trying to sway us with, it’s a completely different kettle of fish compared to the areas that have burnt down on the Mainland. I could explain in detail why, but beleive that you would have found good explanations why when you were deciding what to quote from the net.

How about a bit less bias and a bit more objectivity.

Posted by Shane on 23/02/09 at 07:01 PM

Shane

Why do you love the industrial tree plantation industry so much?? Please tell us all.

Nothing, it seems, will convince you that these global absentee forest-abuse corporations can do any wrong. They ignore state legislation that states that they MUST engage in particular fire management and prevention activities. This is a CRIME. Okay.

See: Prepared for fire … you’ve got to be joking

Whilst the legislation is ignored the public are told by the forest industry that the law is enforced.

See:

Murchison Forest District Forest Management Plan [Mentions the use of Fire Management Area Committee. They don’t exist!]

Posted by Brenda Rosser on 23/02/09 at 10:57 PM

Good luck with getting less bias Shane. Interesting that all of the photos of the houses are taken from public roads, surely if the residents are as concerned as you state then they would allow you on their property to document their situation. You are comparing apples with oranges when talking about Tasmanian plantations and the Victorian fires.

Posted by francis on 24/02/09 at 10:28 AM

Once again Preolenna presents a clear warning about the unforeseen outcomes of myopic planning – by both government and industry. The fire risk to Preolenna and other similarly effected communities and the need to import potatoes into Tasmania from the U.S. are just the most recent observable results of the flawed MIS scheme. And once again there is uninformed debate about the status of the community of Preolenna rather than acknowledgement of the real problems illustrated by the Preolenna experience.

Preolenna was a productive farming community. It produced potatoes including the seed potato crop for Australia, milk, beef and other crops for almost 100 years with little irrigation and without environment degradation other than the original clearing of the rainforest. Remnant bush in the wetter areas and along waterways provided habitat for a rich and diverse population of native animals and birds. Turning that into a vast monoculture industrial tree plantation would have been an act of vandalism if the outcomes were planned. Unfortunately there was no real planning for the safety of the remaining residents, the economic effects on the small towns of the northwest coast or the production of food for Australia and export.

Shane’s unreasoning response to this article is typical of the response of the timber industry to the questions raised by myself and others about the long-term effects of industrial plantations. For the 9 years I have been involved in this debate, serious questions have been consistently been ignored or sidestepped by paid lobbyists and uninformed individuals within the Preolenna community who act as unpaid spokespersons for the industry.

And Shane, don’t be lulled into complacency by the high rainfall in the district. In the History of the Preolenna Primary School printed in about 1992 there are references to days of bush fires in the district in the 1930s, and that was when there was a much larger human population and far fewer trees.

Refugee from the trees,

Evelyn DeVito

Posted by Evelyn DeVito on 24/02/09 at 11:52 AM

Shane,

I think the point you contest was that plantations have invaded agricultural land where rainfall is more than 6-700mm, not that Preolenna has that amount.

Not all of the houses adjoining plantations are in Preolenna and the rainfall on the NW, as I am sure you know gets lower as you head eastwards. At least that is the case now. No-one knows who will dry out and when, given the nature of climate change right now. Would you have lit a fire in Preolenna on the Friday before Black Saturday? The place is drying out and climate is changing FAST .."abrupt" is the term. When was the last fire in the Tarkine? last year .... wet rainforest, just behind Preolenna. When was the one before that?....

The plantation companies and policy makers have been told that fire given the fuel mass of a plantation is uncontrollable after 3-6 years of growth. They know and they moved in regardless! The sorry arses are not just those of a few so-called retired tree changers and ferals.... it might even be your sorry arse.

If I had got the evidence of risk out of a journal (as one was), would you argue that I could get anything off a piece of paper to make an argument to suit my ends? Like porn or old fish batter?

Just like the firefighters who are saving the sorry arses of those who live in amongst the native bush, I would hope that you see the same motivation behind the pictures of Preolenna. Any fool can see that having plantations so close to houses when backed by square kilometres of fuel is unsafe! It is just that no one at a policy level is prepared to do anything about it. And that’s what it takes to save sorry arses and not risk firefighters’ lives.

Perhaps we should send in more pictures of non-Preolenna houses for the next few weeks just so you actually get the point (I thought two houses was enough).

I think your arguments are small-minded, disingenuous and illogical. I suspect you are not a contractor or forestry worker, because you cant even see that such policies require an increase in employment. They usually have an affinity with the bush, same as farmers, tree changers and ferals. I suspect you are a media plant intended to burn up time and energy. Thanks for standing up on the golf tee.Thwack!!

Posted by Neo Conned on 24/02/09 at 01:26 PM

Plantation or no plantation, we are in a new ball game with regard to fire hazard.

Here is a very intelligent response about the Victorian fires from non other than the Firefighters Union -

If logging interests do not take on the risk of climate change seriously they will carry very heavy legal liability down the track. No amount of apology will cover their backsides.

Posted by Chris Harries on 24/02/09 at 01:40 PM

10.

Hi Shane,

I grew up at Meunna on a dairy farm just 15 km from preolenna. My brothers and I and 20 children from Meunna attended the local school at Preolenna, which had around 60 pupils from kindergarten to grade 9. It was a community of approximately 250 people with a cricket team and a close supportive community.

The 9 original dairy farms at Meunna have all been converted to plantations. They were clearly earmarked because of their productive soils, appropriate altitude and consistent rainfall. This land at meunna supported 50 people, 9 dairy herds and some of the best, if not the best, seed potato growing regions of this nation. Each of the 9 properties were around 120 hectares. Interestingly, all contained significant areas of rainforest and wet sclerophyll forest, with the obvious biodiversity contained within those areas. I can remember abundant Tasmanian devils, native quolls, eagles, fw crayfish and burrowing crayfish. I can also remember “helping” my dad and other residents run the power lines and also tending to the local phone exchange.

As the plantation industry moved in, the phone lines, power lines, milk tankers and families moved. The school at Preolenna closed. The productive dairy and seed potato farms were replaced with fire prone monocultures. The biodiverse areas of rainforest were clearfelled and replaced with plantations.

I still visit the area regularly and am certain from both a scientific perspective and from anecdotal observations that biodiversity has been diminished - how could it not be?

The tragedy of all this is that the logging industry, supported by both Labor and Liberal, want to build a bridge at Hilders Crossing, just 8km from my old home, to access the remaining accessible rainforests and old growth forests in the Tarkine region, thus destroying its potential for creating 1000 jobs and $60m pa in tourism.

And you are trying to tell me that this has been all good for the community of Preolenna and for biodiversity?

Paul O’Halloran

Posted by Paul OHalloran on 25/02/09 at 03:33 PM

11.

This is a very badly planned development. What do the insurance companies think of this? Are there any significant assets exposed to risk? Will a competent court grant to a resident of the locality, a Declaration that the development is unlawful? Not a cheap option, but the insurance companies might have to threaten this to force the relevant planning authority to act.

What do the residents think? How many are likely to be unable to escape given 30 mins warning? What does the local member think?

God help the residents. The whole point of plantation developments is that they be sustainable. They must provide jobs at all stages of development. Thinning and fire-breaking has to be done. There has to be a local saw-mill. Small scale at first, but later, it saves transport costs to partly finish timber. Where is a rational business plan? Is the timber insured? By whom? Who are the investors? Is this to be set afire deliberately, soon, to realize cash now needed due to losses elsewhere? Have the police at the regional HQ, been informed that lives are at risk?