As every firefighter knows, with fires as with first aid, the first moments are critical and can save lives.
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The response procedures, the equipment and aerial support to fight fires are better than ever. But one of the key factors in controlling fires is getting to them early. This is as true for the pot of chip oil left on the stove too long as it is for summer bushfires. It can be a nasty scare smothered quickly or a blaze licking at the ceiling and threatening the whole house within minutes. With bushfires time is even more time critical. A few square metres of burning grass can become an unstoppable wall of flame given the right fuel load and conditions.
The CFA have gone to considerable effort to warn people to ensure where fires are started accidently they have the equipment on hand to keep them small. When the fire conditions are really bad such as when the wind is up and such early intervention is no longer possible, it is all the more reason to heed the warnings and fire bans.
Then of course there is arson, a considerable problem in Ballarat. Its statistics far outnumber other regional areas and reflect an alarming number of unnecessary call outs, risk and wasted resources.
The threats fall into two categories. The first is the traditional firelighter who for some perverse sense of thrill wants to see something burn. It is no secret there are numerous individuals the police have their eye on after repeated suspicious fires in bush and grassy hinterland around Ballarat. The other category, and worryingly increasing, are incidents of arson where delinquents who, in a largely futile attempt to conceal their tracks, set fire to the cars they steal in remote or secluded spots. The arrant stupidity that drives such “half beings” on their path of theft, joyride and immolation is hardly the sort to stop and consider the consequences. “Half-being” because it is a consciousness only half-alive to others. The cognition to be able to identify risk and consequence is probably more acute in the more articulate and certainly more dignified species of primate. The later also have the enlightened state not to continually trash their own environment.
So given most warnings and threats are inconsequential to these cretins, it is up to the rest of us to ensure that if these miscreants continue to light fires the eyes of the community are upon them. Vigilance and swift reporting can make all the difference between a careless crime and an inferno.