The smoke smell became noticeable at about 1.00 am in the morning; infiltrating our closed up house.
At about 6.00am it was evident how much smoke was about and I could not go outside without covering my nose and mouth.
At about 8am it had dispersed somewhat at our property. However, you could see it thick wherever you looked and the stink was right throughout the house. It was now worse inside than it was outside but you couldn’t open up the windows!
Time was used to pack the car with life saving drugs and devices, I was pleased to get out to attend an appointment in Launceston but the smoke was as far as you could see in every direction.
When I arrived back home mid afternoon I put on my half face respirator mask and went out in it to take some pics. The smoke was disgusting.
I met a chap at Brady’s Lookout. He asked me if I had a spare respirator he could use.
When I got home I phoned Tas Fire Service. They said there were a couple of small fires but they wouldn’t be big enough to smoke out the whole north like it was.
I filled out the FPA’s smoke complaint form, but it would not submit. Probably because they are not employing their Combined Smoke Management Strategy from October thru December, even though Forestry Tas has a current burn today and private forest planned burns have been happening.
I did all the other phone a-rounds to lodge complaints, but calls went unanswered.
Next I contacted the Environmental Health Department. They weren’t aware the Smoke Strategy was not operating and they were/are party to it and seemed genuinely surprised.
They also believed my complaint form should be able to be processed.
Owing to the widespread concentration of environmental smoke in the north of Tasmania that was directly affecting my health I left it with this department to come back to me.
This smoke is serious stuff we are dealing with, on a grand scale, over a long period of time, not just today by any means.
Below are some of the photos I took between 11.30am and 4pm.
Some are looking south towards Launceston … I say towards because Launceston is not visible!
More pics were taken in other directions that I could see from my vantage points showing the extent of this deliberate pollution.
Check out the following pics, and …
Please fill out the following form at
http://www.fpa.tas.gov.au/index.php?id=135.
Make sure you print it out before you send it otherwise you won’t have a copy.
All complaints will be given a receipt number and have to be responded to.
An annual report is provided to the government.
You can Google “wood smoke dangers” or “particle pollution” to find out how this smoke in Tasmania is affecting your health. Tell them the symptoms you are experiencing, they are well documented.
Links to information can be found on my site as well. It is not our job to tell these people, that sit in offices, where the smoke is coming from, but if you know you can put it on the form.
Please fill the form out every day smoke is experienced.
If amenity is affected it is causing problems.
Remember even if you can see a haze you will probably be breathing particle pollution because distances are so small in Tasmania. We have to protect ourselves, our children and the elderly.
Cancer and asthma statistics in Tas. are the highest in Australia.
30/10/2009 smoke pic legend:
007a_1 – Taken from Legana looking towards SE and towards Launceston
30472a_2 – Taken from Grindelwald looking E over the Tamar River and towards Launceston. No mountains are visible.
3047a_3 – Taken from Grindelwald looking over the Tamar River towards Mt. Barrow, barely visible.
3055a_4 – Again from Grindelwald looking north Note the smoke has come right up into the nearest trees and most other features are smoked out.
3056a_5 – From Brady’s Lookout to the north. Visibility was from a few hundred meters to about a 1 or 2 Km.
3058a_6 – Looking over the beautiful? Tamar River. Everything was greyed out from the blue smoke.
3059a_7 – Looking over Exeter. The smoke is always bad in that town.
3061a_8 – Another northerly view. It is all smoke. Using the visible smoke chart this would be determined as unhealthy to hazardous.
3064a_9 – From Brady’s Lookout to Mt. Arthur or what you can see of it.
3065a_10 – Towards Mt. Barrow
3068a_11 – From Brady’s Lookout to Grindelwald in the smoke. Nothing is visible towards Launceston.
3069a_12 – Another shot of Grindelwald. The smoke makes this look like it was taken by a cheap camera! At times the auto focus feature had nothing to lock onto with the smoke and manual settings had to be used.
3070a_13 – Launceston was not visible from the West Tamar highway.
Anne Layton-Bennett says:
Below is the complaint form the State Government Forest Practices Authority for general public use to register concern re smoke levels in our environment. They are required to answer each compaint and list complaint details and numbers in annual reports etc
http://www.fpa.tas.gov.au/index.php?id=135
We need to encourage people to take their power back and report smoke and their own discomfort level such as itchy or sore eyes, running noise, smoky taste in mouth, shortness of breath, fatigue, chest tightness, anxiety etc etc on every occasion. These are all possible symptoms of smoke and air pollution which can have serious health effects. There is information on Google for people to inform themselves about smoke pollution side effects.
The more often we register our concerns, the sooner the government will have to deal with the potential health problems being caused by forest burns.
Please circulate this to others and ask them to report any similar pollution incidents as we are entitled to clean air all the time.
