Smoke has been hanging over Melbourne and parts of Victoria for days recently as the Country Fire Authority (CFA) and its partner agencies take advantage of the cooler weather.
Chief Officer of the CFA, Jason Heffernan said the Authority was making the most of cooler autumn conditions to conduct fuel reduction burns to lower bushfire risk for communities, while farmers and private landholders also took the opportunity to ignite stubble burns on their properties.
“Combined with weather conditions that will prevent smoke from dispersing into the upper atmosphere, it was predicted that smoke may hang over the city and parts of Victoria throughout these periods,” CO Heffernan said.
He said that although CFA and Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMV) worked closely with the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) and Bureau of Meteorology to keep smoke impact as low as practically possible, smoke in the State’s regional and rural areas could still come from a number of sources.
“Along with the important planned burns that are conducted in our forests, parks and reserves led by FFMV and the many kilometres of road, rail and grassland burns that are led by CFA, this time of year also sees a large amount of smoke coming from the necessary burn-offs that our farmers and rural property holders complete,” CO Heffernan said.
“These are part of traditional farming practices where burning off crop stubble is often needed to kill weeds and return nutrients and carbon back into the soil,” he said.
“As the weather cools, smoke will also come from the many thousands of wood heaters households rely on for their autumn and winter heat source.”
CO Heffernan said smoke from wood heaters would often settle in the local area where they were burning.
He said this localised smoke or smoke haze could often be misinterpreted as coming from planned burns from a long way away, but this was not always the case.
