Generations of accepted wisdom tells us that hazard reduction burns – reducing undergrowth, or “fuel loads” through targeted burning – reduces the severity of bushfires. But an increasing number of scientists are casting doubt on the practice, arguing the climate has become too hot and the areas of risk too vast for safe and effective hazard reduction.

Before bushfires ignited into firestorms last week, scorching through more than 404,000 hectares of Victoria and counting, an alliance of farmers and firefighters issued a stark warning about a “critical lack of firefighting capability” across the state.

The Walwa bushfire in northeast Victoria grew from the Mount Lawson State Park last week.Credit: VicEmergency Hume

The groups, headed by United Firefighters Union secretary Peter Marshall, CFA Volunteers Group president John Houston and Across Victoria Alliance’s Andrew Weidemann (who plans to field One Nation candidates at the next election), wrote to Premier Jacinta Allan threatening legal action if any firefighters lost their lives in the looming fires.

Amid warnings of catastrophic fire conditions, the groups wrote: “Premier, collectively we place you on notice that we do not have the resources or equipment to confront such a scenario”.

“Firefighters, both career and volunteer, will again be asked to risk their lives to protect Victorian communities,” they wrote. “However, they will be doing so under conditions that your government has allowed to become dangerously unacceptable.”

Predictions of catastrophic conditions were realised when a raging fire north-west of Corryong grew so fierce it developed its own weather pattern: a pyrocumulonimbus cloud producing its own lightening and thunder.

Cattle killed by bushfire near Terip Terip in central Victoria.Credit: Jason South

Climate change........

© The Sydney Morning Herald