Indigenous fire practitioner Victor Steffensen wants to see a change in the way Australians manage the land.

Brian, you were the first person who told me and then I spoke to Vic Jurskis about it and scientist David Packham. You are the first person who said to me the intensity of these fires burns the humus content in the soil right down to the mineral layer and you then told me that it will rain because we have the flooding rains after the droughts and that topsoil is washed away and floods into the creeks and clogs them up. It’s absolute degradation.

I mean once upon a time, a lot of our areas of our national parks used to be a forested country and the sawmillers had a sustainable industry and they used to manage the bush they used to do a lot of the hazard reduction burning, people tracks open and because they value timber, timber was important. Now, we’ve closed them all the forest industry down virtually.

We’ve locked up the parks we don’t let people into them. We’ve closed all the trails off and our timber just gets burnt and wasted and meanwhile overseas they’re cutting down rainforests to supply Australia with timber. I mean how crazy is that?

It appears that scientific bush fire experts have been warning for several years that a catastrophe would be coming and yet these warnings have not been heeded by governments or their bureaucratic officials. Why is that, and what does it tell us about Australian society? John Adams and Martin North discuss. Is this also true of impending financial disaster?

Theo is 4 years old. He sent the following message to all firefighters via the VFFA web site.

Owners say the property was saved by the traditional Indigenous technique of cultural burning conducted on their land three years ago.

Aboriginal cultural fire practitioner Dennis Barber led a series of cultural burns on six hectares of bushland at Ngurrumpaa in 2015 and 2016 – the first burns in the area since a wildfire swept through in 1994.

Here’s how to prepare a evacuation “go bag” that you can quickly grab in case you ever need to evacuate.

The Volunteer Fire Fighters Association (VFFA) is being flooded with offers of support and assistance.

The VFFA has received many inquiries from people who are wanting to:

1. donate money,
2. donate food and water, and
3. provide logistical support and assistance.

The following information is provided for anyone who wishes to support firefighters or the firefighting effort in NSW.

The VFFA congratulates the NSW RFS after receiving a positive feedback story from one of our members.

The 2019 Summer edition of the VFFA magazine is available now in hardcopy, view online or as a download.

As former State Fire Chiefs call for a summit on bushfires, expert and scientist David Packham explains that it has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with fuel-loads.