The Grampians fire - When? Where? What?

I may be speaking WAY out of school here John but I have another question. For my own curiosity, was any fuel reduction effort made leading up to summer...??? Also, would this fire have had any chance of growing to this monolithic scale had fuel reduction taken place(assuming it hadn't)?

John R
As a NSW RFS officer, in answer to your questions,
Don't you think if it was possible to contain the fire initially, they would have. We don't just sit back and wait for it to get bigger so all can enjoy. We are all volunteers and most have jobs or business's, well I do and we have better things to do than tromp around the bush putting out fires.
I can't speak for the CFA but in NSW we have RAFT (Remote Aerial Firefighting Teams). They are dropped into remote areas to attempt to knock these fires out before they become a danger but they are only done so if safe to.
We have SOP's (Standard Operating Procedures) to follow and the first is the safety of yourself and if an officer the safety of your crew. You may think this is all BS but if the SOP's aren't followed and somebody is killed, criminal charges can be brought against the officer of that crew. Its not much point charging into the forest into the unknown if you have no hope of success except getting fried like the Wingello disaster.
I have just been stood down with in the last hour and a half as I was to fly to Victoria this afternoon with 200 other NSW RFS personnel but due to the rain they stood us down, so that means I can go to work tonight as was planned prior.
By what I have seen about the fire front on the news, there is no way I would put my crew any where down a fire trail in front of that inferno. That would have been suicide.
As for hazard reduction, I can't comment on CFA regulations but in NSW we put paper work in after paper work to do these major reductions and it is constantly knocked on the head by the EPA or National Sparks and Wildfire due to endangered species or for a number of other reasons. There are regs like once an area has been burnt you have to wait seven years before you can do it again. All crap as far as I am concerned. If you do a controlled hazard reduction with low flame height and intensity, the endagered species have a better chance of recovery than when a fully fledged fire front wipes everything out. Unfortunately some snotty nosed person with a degree decides these factors from his desk and usually has no idea about the background of wild fire suppression.
I hope I haven't interpreted your questions the wrong way so please don't take offence of my response. Just trying to put a bit of fact into the background of wild fire suppression and containment.
Cheers
120scruiser.
P.S- I feel for all the victims but at the end of the day we fireys are only human and can only do so much. Sometimes when you have a few crews at a fire you can suppress it quickly before the thing gets bigger and then IMT divisions are introduced which slows the process down. Like anythiing it can get top heavy at times.

A recent forumite (Woodsy) lives in the middle of it all - has a small business at Halls Gap - trust he will be on soon to report that he has survived and maybe an anecdote or two to pass on.

goodday john

i believe it was a lightning strike atop mt lubra in country that wasnt very friendly and that basically i think they had to wait for it to come out unfortunately the weather decided not to play ball and we have the result in front of us
if you have a lookat the cfa site it may give details although i think it was a dse fire so check there sight also

steve