All complaints relating to smoke should be lodged with the Environment Protection Authority (EPA)
24/7 contact number phone 1800 005 171 (see above).
Parks planned burn information can be found at http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/index.aspx?base=26614
All complaints relating to smoke should be lodged with the Environment Protection Authority (EPA)
24/7 contact number phone 1800 005 171 (see above).
Parks Managing Smoke from Planned Burns document:
“Impacts on populated areas are avoided if possible, particularly in conditions that would lead to high levels of smoke impacting on communities for more than a few hours.”
There is no safe level of fine particle pollution. Smoke of any duration or intensity is known to be harmful; and especially harmful to vunerable groups. This ‘few hours’ goes against the World Health Organisations findings that air pollution in its entirety causes cancer.
Parks and Wilfe smoke can be in addition to other agencies smoke.
The Co-ordinated Smoke Management Strategy (CSMS) allows for the maximum amount of smoke to be put into an airshed on a given day.
It does not allow for smoke from previous days burns in the calculations by any of it’s voluntary participating members, or smoke from other outdoor burning.
Tasmanian air sheds as defined by the Co-ordinated Smoke Management Strategy.
Click on the graphic to enlarge
Here is an example of a Parks burn
24th March 2015 – Click on the picture to read the full story.
Go here to read more about the new State Fire Management Council Chairman
Report recommends axing 5pc fuel reduction burning!
Click on the above photo to read the ABC News story for 22 May 2015
If smoke causes cardiac arrest in men why are we persisting with deliberate burning when there are other smokeless ways for fire mitigation?
Joel Wright – “The Language of Fire.”
Did Australian Aboriginals burn as we are told?
Fuel reduction and ecological burning etc. are based on the assumption that all Aboriginal people undertook fire-stick farming. Joel Wright, traditional owner in southwest Victoria, is an indigenous language, culture and history researcher. He finds no evidence of wide-scale burning in Aboriginal language and culture.
Jan 2019 – Dry lightning fires in Tasmania – An informative page from PWS
Oregon: They like their fires, they like their smoke. They haven’t heard of climate change?
Seems like they are so far behind in protecting their people’s health.
2017 – A new quantitative smoke forecasting system for Victoria/Tasmania
AFAC’s Predictive Services Systems Working Group sponsored a webinar on 19 December to demonstrate the Bureau of Meteorology’s new Smoke and Air Quality Forecasting System (AQFx) modelling application for forecasting smoke and air quality in…. Tasmania.
“We are currently using the AQFx system internally to predict smoke travel in Tasmania.
As this is still an experimental system, the results are not available to the general public. Some emergency management and land management agencies are able to see the smoke forecasts via a registered user page.
The system can predict smoke from planned burns prior to the burn taking place as well as smoke from existing planned burns or wild fires. The facility to predict smoke from planned burns depends on getting information on these burns from other agencies, and this may not currently be implemented in all jurisdictions.”
“Various proposals over the years have been floated, to exempt controlled burns from air quality rules. That does not make the air cleaner. It only makes it legal to smother towns and communities in smoke”
– Californian resident and Retired firefighter David Sandbrook who studied fire science at Colorado Uni.
Local and regional smoke impacts from prescribed fires
Abstract : Smoke from wildfires poses a significant threat to affected communities. Prescribed burning is conducted to reduce the extent and potential damage of wildfires, but produces its own smoke threat. Planners of prescribed fires model the likely dispersion of smoke to help manage the impacts on local communities. Significant uncertainty remains about the actual smoke impact from prescribed fires, especially near the fire, and the accuracy of smoke dispersal models.