Thursday
Feb122009
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill One of the lucky few
Feb 12, 2009 
Liam Sheahan was one of the lucky few whose home survived the bushfires in Australia. As you can see from the photo, he cut himself a firebreak a hundred yards wide all around his home.
The council, however, would only permit him a firebreak six metres wide and took him to court for disobeying them. This action cost Mr Sheahan nearly $100,000 in costs and fines.
Even with the wide firebreak he had illegally put in place, it was a close-run thing. His house caught light eight times as the bushfire passed. His is now the only house standing in the area.
There is a lesson for all of us here, I think.
H/T Anthony Watts
Reader Comments (11)
[BH adds: language Mr Zorro! My mother reads this blog, you know.]
You might find this of interest
http://alsblog.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/bingo/
Read what this @rsehole did and then tell me everyone should be allowed to do it.
With or without firebreaks, fuel reduction etc our forests go off like a bomb. If people can't deal with the reality they should stay in the cities.
This land has been used and abused for too long and now that we are finally stopping the onslaught we get fat turds like this clown taking the law into their own hands and trying to retrospectively vindicate their criminality.
http://www.mitchellshire.vic.gov.au/Files/12_Sept_05_Minutes.pdf
The fires have let all sorts of lowlifes come slithering out from under their rocks.
I don't think the council has any business telling him what he can do with his land. It's also worth noting that their policies say that they seek a "safe and secure environment". Given that they actually seem to have been seeking a highly dangerous one, Mr Sheahan seems to have been meeting their policies rather better than they did.
You seem to suggesting that death by incineration should be treated as an occupational hazard.
Would you have the same opinion if someone moved in next to you and started doing something you found offensive? Loud parties featuring the burning of religious iconography and intimate relations with animals spring to mind but if you really are that liberal in your approach to the rights of landowners I guess you'll cheerfully tolerate such things.
We have planning processes so that civilisation can remain civil. The Shire's planning process takes bushfire risk into account. The cretin, Sheahan, believes he is a law unto himself. His responses to the council's planning processes is evidence of his anti-social tendencies. If he'd adhered to the planning guidelines the money he spent clearing trees in excess of the guidelines could have been invested in fire fighting equipment such as a sprinkler system. The dickhead would have been at least $80K ahead. I suspect the whole debacle had nothing to do with fire safety in the first place, he smells like an ego driven redneck maverick arsehole to me.
The fact that this redneck survived is not proof of the efficacy of his reckless and lawless approach to responsible citizenship in a fire prone area. We had houses in paddocks burn and houses in dense bush survive.
The most disgusting aspect of this whole tragedy has been the unseemly rush by redneck zealots to push their scientifically illiterate folk wisdom down the throat of a shocked public. The bodies were still warm when it began.
This opportunistic miscreant is amongst the worst examples.
We live in a fire prone country. In some circumstances, such as occurred on Black Saturday, we are at the mercy of the elements. No human resources could contain the inferno.
The knee jerk response and opportunistic policies pursued by rednecks is likely to favor succession and recruitment by fire adapted species thereby making our forests even more flammable and fire prone in the future. Just what we need!
If you don't believe me, at least by-pass the self serving drivel of the fat idiot and read the scientific literature.
Since you published the link to the article, perhaps you are partial to self serving drivel and propaganda?
Could you point to this scientific literature you refer to? I'm interested in what it has to say. The reports I pointed to in my various articles about the bushfires are all fairly clear that vegetation was too close to houses and that this presented a major source of danger to householders.
You are mistaken if you think we have planning processes to keep society civil. We survived perfectly happily without them until quite recently. They are a source of income for politicians.
The sprinkler system won't contain the fire but it will improve chances of saving life and property. He could have built a fire bunker as well as install a sprinkler system with money he spent illegally clearing vegetation.
There is no evidence that fuel reduction burns would have significantly limited the intensity and rate of spread in the conditions that prevailed on Black Saturday. In most instances, fuel consumed in prescribed burns accounts for a small % of total fuel loading in a forest. The fire intensity would have exceeded 40kW/m2 at times.
"Could you point to this scientific literature you refer to?"
You could start here: http://www.bushfirecrc.com/ ,or here: http://www.csiro.au/science/Bushfires.html
http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/DSE/nrenfoe.nsf/childdocs/-F0742D393D25B993CA256DA6000E8B75?open
"The reports I pointed to in my various articles about the bushfires are all fairly clear that vegetation was too close to houses and that this presented a major source of danger to householders."
What reports are they? They're not linked on this page. Are they scientific reports or media opinion?
The Mitchell Shire specifies legal distances for clearing vegetation. From my reading of the planning provisions there were other breaches when Fathead went his merry way.
The specified distance of vegetation from the house would have been determined after extensive consultation with scientists with relevant expertise in bushfire risk management.
http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/planningschemes/aavpp/52_17.pdf
http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/planningschemes/aavpp/44_06.pdf
This cowboy clown seems to think he can do as he likes but that's not how it works. I know his type, they're all for individual rights but when things become anarchic and violent they squeal like stuck pigs.
I reckon he's cleared for the view from his hilltop eyrie and neighbours, who have to look at the ugly results of his stupidity, have dobbed him in. Going by Google Earth, he would have pissed a lot of people off.
Furthermore, the fat, lying turd didn't tell people that he lives on the upper north eastern flank of the fire and by the time it got to him on the day it would have been nowhere as severe as it was earlier. The fire wouldn't have got to his property until well after the cold front had cooled the air down and the winds had abated.
"You are mistaken if you think we have planning processes to keep society civil. We survived perfectly happily without them until quite recently. They are a source of income for politicians."
When you say recently, I guess you mean 19th century? Life's a bit more complex these days. I think you'll find politicians don't make money out of it either. That sort of spiel probably goes down well with the assembled mob with their pitchforks but it doesn't wash with the sophisticated and cosmopolitan folk round here.
Try giving your tin foil hat a tweak.
http://bushfirecrc.com/search/downloads/_%20FEF_D1i-StringencyAS3959_final.pdf
I am going to assume that you have some capacity to interpret this paper in a useful way with regard to your query about the efficacy of firebreaks and vegetation buffers.
Canberra 2003 "Some houses were >100 m from the bushfire"
"Technically speaking, houses as far as 510 m from the interface have been lost during a fire event (Canberra 2003)." (that's the bush/urban interface)
Fires here can "spot" (new ignitions caused by embers carried by the wind) more than 20km ahead of main fire front. Are you suggesting a 20km buffer around every house?
The Kinglake fire jumped a major freeway and burned through plantations and paddocks and burned out houses before it even got to forested areas. It also jumped numerous firebreaks, roads and tracks as if they didn't exist.
Read up about FFDI and you'll begin to understand why pissy little buffers around houses are no guarantee of safety in extreme conditions. We had FFDI ratings estimated at between 150 and 300. Previous highest on record was 120.
We had our highest temperature on record, preceeded by a record run of days over 43C, the longest drought on record (12 years), low humidity and high wind.
You appear to be having a hard time grasping the physical reality of the Australian environment. We have already created enough desert down here and we won't be creating more to appease a noisy, ignorant redneck minority. If they want guaranteed security from bushfires they can move to the cities or buy already cleared land and pay for their own mineral earth firebreaks around their homes.
The council acted in response to complaints from locals - and part of their investigation involved getting an ex CFA fire expert to assess Sheahans mess. He found that Sheahan had actually INCREASED the fire hazard for himself AND HIS NEIGHBOURS by piling up tones of dead trees just before the 2002/03 fire season.
And who think we are spposed to treat this self centrered nohoper some sort of HERO??? You have got to be kidding!!!
The council acted in response to complaints from locals - and part of their investigation involved getting an ex CFA fire expert to assess Sheahans mess. He found that Sheahan had actually INCREASED the fire hazard for himself AND HIS NEIGHBOURS by piling up tons of dead trees just before the 2002/03 fire season.
And who think we are supposed to treat this self centrered nohoper some sort of HERO??? You have got to be kidding!!!