Rural fire service rejects Port Stephens mayor's hazard reduction claim

Spokesman denies responsibility for lost houses, saying residents are permitted to carry out hazard reduction burns
ire on Shoreline Drive in Fingal Bay, Port Stephens.
Sunday's fire destroyed six houses in Port Stephens. Photograph: AAP/Twitter Jessica Darkness TWITTER/AAP

The NSW rural fire service has insisted there is no restriction on conducting fire hazard reduction burns after the mayor of Port Stephens claimed houses had been lost due to the supposed anti-burning stance of the "fire service, the politicians and the greenies".

Mayor Bruce MacKenzie said a bushfire in the NSW region, which firefighters think was started by sparking power lines, was exacerbated by residents' inability to safely burn materials that could fuel the flames.

"I believe several houses have been lost, which is a disaster as far as I'm concerned," MacKenzie told ABC radio. "The rural fire service, the politicians and the greenies have a lot to bloody answer for."

The fire tore through 50 hectares in the Port Stephens area on Sunday, resulting in six homes being lost. A separate fire nearby burned through 177 hectares.

A NSW rural fire service spokesman told Guardian Australia residents could carry out fire hazard reduction burns on their property as long as they had a certificate.

"[MacKenzie] is out of the loop a bit. Hazard reductions in the area are far above the state average," he said. "The fire service has done really good work out there and there is no impediment on them reducing risks on public land. The only impediment is the weather itself."

Jamie Kirkpatrick, a professor of geography and environmental studies at the University of Tasmania, who has studied the effectiveness of fire hazard reduction, said the tactic could work in certain circumstances.

"Obviously it reduces fuel, which means there is a lesser chance of a dwelling burning down if there is a low amount of fuel around it," he told Guardian Australia.

"But just burning bits of bush doesn't have any effect whatsoever. In severe conditions the fire will just leap over substantial obstacles in a single bound, like Superman. There are burning sparks that can fly 20km ahead of the main fire front.

"Whenever we have a big fire people want to blame someone or something. After the bushfires in Victoria in 2009 people even blamed the trees and cut them down."

The then Fairfax columnist Miranda Devine said green activists should be 'hanging from lamp-posts' for allegedly prevening hazard reduction burns before the 2009 Victorian bushfires, which killed 173 people. The Royal Commission into the bushfires recommended the amount of prescribed burning to reduce fuel load should be increased.