Australia counts the cost of bush arson

Sydney - Well over half of Australia's forest fires are deliberately lit. Most culprits get away with it because arson takes just a few seconds, requires no more than a cigarette lighter and is damnably difficult to prove in court. Firebugs cost the nation 77 million Australian dollars (57 million U.S. dollars) a year, an Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) survey found. Incalculable is the misery of gutted homes, dead farm animals and blackened national parks. 'The deliberate lighting of bushfires is essentially an Australian phenomenon,' Justice Minister Chris Ellison admitted. 'Australians are all too aware of the devastation bushfires can cause and that knowledge is only made worse by the fact that so many are deliberately lit.' It's an abiding puzzle why so many are drawn to kindling flames that since 1967 have killed over 230 people and injured 5,000 more. 'They are extremely dangerous because they are unpredictable and because their fires have no boundaries,' psychologist Rebekah Doley said. 'They also tend to be serial offenders and, in my experience, will not stop until caught.' Doley, a lecturer at Charles Sturt University, who has interviewed dozens of convicted arsonists, says there are multiple motivations with the classic arsonist a bit dim-witted, unemployed or in a low- paying job, and craving a bit of attention. In the 2002 bushfire season, more than 3 million hectares of forest was lost. In Canberra, eight people died and 500 houses were razed. At the end of that bad season, a report recommended that convicted arsonists be monitored during the annual bushfire season to deter them from re-offending. It's a proposal that is still on the table. There has also been a greater effort to prosecute firebugs. In New South Wales alone, there are 63 full-time fire investigators who are getting more and more adept at pinpointing the source of fires and providing the forensic evidence for prosecutions. In 2004, after investigations into 130 deliberately lit fires, 21 people were hauled into courts to answer arson charges. Assistant Police Commissioner John Laycock said at the time: 'We find they fall into three categories: childish pranks, kids lighting fires in the parks; then the people with mental problems, there are generally a few of them around; and you get the serial arsonists, the Grade A people, who get that buzz out of lighting a fire.' A particularly worrying element is the rogue firefighter the Rural Fire Service (RFS) volunteer who gets a kick not just from extinguishing fires but from lighting them as well. Nine RFS volunteers have been charged with arson in the last five years. Phil Koperberg, the RFS head, says inside jobs are to be expected. 'We have 70,000 people in our organisation and among that 70,000 is a representative sample of people who are inclined to do this sort of thing,' Koperberg said. © 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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John AndersonJan 26th, 2006 - 17:22:09

They're still dealing with the bush fire on the ground, like ants.

They've never had a decent-sized fixed-wing firefighting aicraft.

Maybe that's because no State, on its own, can justify large fixed-wing and would need to coalesce on a national firefighting program. Coalescing is not what States do very much of in Australia. Maybe that's because air power isn't highly regarded.

No excuse: the Australasian Fire Authorities Council had by far the most extensive testing of any western nation on the IL-76 waterbomber; by for the world's most powerful, proven firefighting airplane. They said nice things about it.

Use it? No way! We're Aussies and bloody good at fighting the bush fire the way we've always done it: with disasters followed by belly-gazing, go-nowhere inquiries.

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