North America adopted a strident fire suppression and exclusion policy on its National Forests after the Great Fire of 1910, also known as the “Big Burn”. The firestorm razed over three million acres, obliterated several townships and killed 87 people, mostly firefighters. The fire shaped and cemented the US Forest Service for many decades to come.
But in the late 1960s and 1970s the US Forest Service and National Parks Service developed a “Let Burn Policy” as a major shift away from total fire suppression, recognising fire as an essential ecological process.
The policy allowed natural, lightning-caused fires to burn under controlled conditions in wilderness areas for ecological purpose and to reduce fuel buildup.
But major fires in Yellowstone National Park in 1988, which became uncontrollable and deadly, forced a serious rethink.
Some people occasionally suggest that a similar let burn policy should be implemented for lightning strikes in remote State forests and National Parks of Victoria.
But letting fire burn freely in the flammable Australian bush during the hot summer months and then waiting until they break out onto private land before attempting to suppress it presents an unacceptable risk to a modern built-up society living along the interface with roads, fences, farms, livestock, houses and permanent settlements, as well as forest visitors.
Victoria’s Code of Fire Practice has provisions to deliberately let bushfires burn and just be monitored. It generally only occurs late in the fire season and when there are minimal risks, but there is a huge amount of paperwork to get approval.
But if it goes wrong and escapes, the community, armchair experts, politicians and the media are quick to criticise and are very unforgiving.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_fires_of_1988
Victoria’s Forests & Bushfire Heritage 