Victorian foresters were initially trained in European traditions and believed fire had no place in the forest.
Like many early settlers, colonial foresters only saw bushfire as a threat, particularly to young regrowth, and sought to eliminate it altogether.
A fire exclusion policy, though well-intentioned, shaped forest management for decades with mixed results. Early Forests Commission annual reports are full of references to the lengths of fire breaks built and maintained.
Firebreak work was a big priority during the unemployment (susso) programs in the 1930s. But they were laborious and costly to build and maintain with only simple hand tools available
By the late 1930s, a network of firebreaks had been built to protect the forests across the State, but their effectiveness was severely challenged during the devastating 1939 bushfires.
It was soon realised that firebreaks weren’t enough on their own, which led to a shift in the 1960s to Fuel Reduction Burning (FRB), particularly when aircraft and aerial ignition became available.
It’s true that most fire breaks, or more correctly fuel breaks, are generally ineffective at stopping the run of fast-moving and high intensity bushfires (FFDI > 50), particularly if there is long distance spotting ahead of the main front.
However, these severe bushfire weather conditions don’t occur as often as many might believe. It’s just when the media seems to take an interest. For example –
Over a six-month fire season in Gippsland (180 days) there are, on average, only 3 or 4 days where the fire danger is “Very High” (FFDI > 24) and even fewer spike days of “Extreme” bushfire danger (FFDI >50). And then there are the cooler nights.
Strategic roadside fuel breaks, along with areas that have recently been fuel reduced by burning, have the effect of breaking up the extensive areas of uniform forest fuels on public land into manageable blocks.
Together, fuel reduced areas and strategic breaks have consistently proven very effective at providing access and safety zones for first attack crews and creating anchor points for control lines and large-scale backburning to contain the fire.
In most cases, first attack is successful and bushfires are quickly contained without fuss or fanfare. But these impressive efforts by fire crews go mainly unnoticed by the community and unreported by mainstream media. For example –
In 2023-24, a total of 1,179 fires occurred on Victoria’s State forests and National parks and 92% were kept to less than 5 ha in size, and a whopping 96% were contained by 8.00 am on the day following detection.
Hundreds of kilometres of new control and fallback lines were hurriedly built and widened along ridge tops, roads and old 4WD tracks during the 2002-03 alpine bushfires. Many were rehabilitated only to be reopened and lengthened in the subsequent 2006-07 bushfires. This was both costly and futile. A permanent, well-designed, and well-maintained network was clearly needed.
Building a permanent network of strategic fuel breaks (20 m – 40 m wide) on State forests and National Parks in remote locations, along with asset protection breaks (40 m wide) near settlements, was one of the key outcomes of the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires Royal Commission.
The presence of large and hazardous trees on the boundaries, particularly eucalypts with fibrous or ribbon bark, can compromise the effectiveness and safety of the breaks. They are even more effective if the forest behind the edge of the cleared break is thinned (50 m – 100 m) and the understory fuel reduced by burning or mulching. (See: Understanding Fuel).
Strategic fuel breaks are contentious but much of the debate is often lopsided or misreported with strident critics quick to point out examples where they have failed.
However, based on decades of experience in Gippsland as a senior firefighter, strategic fuel breaks and forest roads have repeatedly proven very useful at keeping remote bushfires small and contained on public land.
Some media commentators have not helped either, by creating an unrealistic and simplistic expectation that, together with fuel reduction burning, the breaks are some kind of “magic bullet” that can prevent and stop the run of serious bushfires and guarantee the protection of life and private property… which they are not…
Furthermore, I do not accept the claim, made by some detractors, that remote strategic fuel breaks and landscape fuel reduction burning offer little or no fire protection benefit, or that widened roads act as wind tunnels.
For example, a notable feature of Victorian summers are the strong cold weather fronts and dry thunderstorms that roll across the eastern mountains from the southwest during the late afternoon, particularly after a hot windy day, sometimes bringing thousands of lightning strikes. (See: Bushfire Flume).
Following the passage of the storms it was not unusual that by the evening, or early the next day, as reconnaissance detection flights resumed and fire towers went back up, to get that familiar sinking feeling as a steadily increasing number of bushfires popped up on the incident battle board, often at some very remote and inaccessible places.
When confronted with these widely scattered, but still relatively small bushfires, one of my first requests as a Level 3 Fire Planning Officer or Controller – after the situation reports and the weather forecasts – was for the latest fuel reduction burning and strategic road maps to identify initial priorities, control lines and fallback options.
Importantly, unless they were quickly attacked and contained during the mild and stable weather in the days after the thunderstorm, these small lightning strikes had the capacity to overwhelm firefighting resources as they grew, and even joined up, to become an unstoppable bushfire complex. (e.g. 2002-03, 2006-07, 2013, 2019-20).
Once the fuse was lit, virtually no amount of heroic suppression effort by on-ground crews or aerial firebombers could overcome the deadly combination of extreme weather, rugged terrain and heavy accumulation of fuels when these campaign bushfires escalated to the landscape scale. (See: Gippsland Zig Zag).
https://www.ffm.vic.gov.au/bushfire-risk-management/strategic-fuel-breaks
Victoria’s Forests & Bushfire Heritage 