Blue mountains NP solid fuel fire ban until April 2019.

[ribuck]

The most recent detailed statistics I could find are from the ABS Australian Yearbook 2004, and are for public land in Victoria, but they're interesting. They show the percentage of burned land due to each cause.

46% Lightning
14% Deliberate
14% Public utilities (e.g. electricity cables sparking)
9% Building fires, fireworks, and other miscellaneous
7% Agricultural
5% Prescribed burn escapes
3% Cause unknown
2% Machinery/exhausts
1% Campfires
<1% Cigarettes/matches

That 1% for "Campfires" will be mostly picnickers and car campers; bushwalkers will be responsible for a vanishingly small amount

[Walk_fat boy_walk]

The most recent detailed statistics I could find are from the ABS Australian Yearbook 2004, and are for public land in Victoria, but they're interesting. They show the percentage of burned land due to each cause.

46% Lightning
14% Deliberate
14% Public utilities (e.g. electricity cables sparking)
9% Building fires, fireworks, and other miscellaneous
7% Agricultural
5% Prescribed burn escapes
3% Cause unknown
2% Machinery/exhausts
1% Campfires
<1% Cigarettes/matches

That 1% for "Campfires" will be mostly picnickers and car campers; bushwalkers will be responsible for a vanishingly small amount

I have it on good authority that NPWS are considering a ban on lightning. Watch this space.

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[tom_brennan]

Cross posted from https://canyoning.org.au/forum/viewtopi ... cd46f#p470
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I'm not sure what to think about this.

Certainly, all reports suggest it has the potential to be a bad fire season. But to make the call now that it's going to be until March 2019 is a big one. It would be easy enough to impose a park fire ban for say a month, and extend it by a month at a time if conditions do not improve.

It is also interesting that formal campgrounds are excluded from the ban. My experience has certainly been that campers at formal campgrounds are a lot more careless with managing and extinguishing campfires than remote bush campers. I wonder what the thinking there is?

Also, the requirement for

... an adequate supply of water (minimum of a bucket)

is unmanageable for most bushwalkers using bushwalking stoves, unless camped on the bank of a creek/river. What's a bucket? About 9L? I've certainly never carried 9L of water!

NPWS should really clarify that requirement as I imagine it will be ignored as impractical by most walkers.

[wildwanderer]

I have it on good authority that NPWS are considering a ban on lightning. Watch this space.
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[Allchin09]

It would be easy enough to impose a park fire ban for say a month, and extend it by a month at a time if conditions do not improve.

How about just declaring a park ban on a day-by-day basis? A continuous 7 month ban is just crazy and far less likely to be respected and followed.

[Neo]

At a display table in Katoomba last year, the fire lady asked if I had a bushfire plan for my house. I explained that I lived in a box (vehicle). She said most of their call-outs were for campers fires that had picked up in the wind and started a bushfire...

So to add to the theory that a 7 month ban on some places will breed contempt, if people are allowed fires in some campsites, they will likely just have a fire wherever.

***Needs to be super simple such as obvious info signs that are UPDATED monthly.

I've seen many a left-smoking or raging fire on a windy day at non-NP campsites up there too