Australia's Fire Season Lenghthens And Intensifies, Window For Prescribed Burns Narrows

Climate change is having an impact on every level of fire management, the New South Wales rural fire chief has said on the first anniversary of the Blue Mountains bushfires.

The NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said with more days of high fire danger, there is now a shrinking window of opportunity to carry out back-burning and other hazard reduction.

"If our window of opportunity continues to shrink, in order to get those really important pre-season activities underway then, yes, there's a broader argument that needs to be had around matters of climate change and its effect on fire management and fire seasons," he said.

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Commissioner Fitzsimmons said that coupled with the outlook for more days of extreme weather, the RFS was facing what he called "a bad legacy situation" with more than 1.2 million homes in NSW built on the edge of bushland. "If we had our time again we wouldn't have built half of the homes in the way that we have or in the location we have if we were considering bushfire (risk) properly. There's no doubt about that," he said.

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-17/climate-change-forcing-rethink-on-fire-risk-bushfire-chief/5821386