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The best, smartest post about the bushfires you'll ever read

An irritated firefighter has hit back at the misinformation that has circulated on social media about the current bushfire crisis in Australia.

He took to Facebook to bust some myths that were spreading about the bushfires, their causes and the barriers that they face as firefighters.

“First of all, does being a firey give me all the insight to this complex issue? Not even close and I need to make that clear,” the decorated firey began.

“However I’ve felt a strong need to say something here because I just can’t stomach some of the false science and outright lies being peddled on social media as news or facts.

“No, the Greens haven’t been stopping hazard reduction burns from taking place. We still do them and yes we should absolutely do more of them.”

NSW Rural Fire Service Shane Fitzsimmon agrees with the firefighter, saying that there are “challenges” with hazard reduction.

“Our biggest challenge with hazard reduction is the weather and the windows available to do it safely and effectively,” Mr Fitzsimmons said in an interview on Sunrise.

“Sure, there’s environmental and other checks to go through but we streamline those. There’s special legislation to give us clearance and to cut through what would otherwise be a very complex environment.”

The viral firefighter said that drought and extreme weather conditions have made their jobs harder.

“Yes, conditions have been so bad this season that fires have still burnt through areas where hazard reduction burns were completed earlier in the year,” he said.

He has said that the government needs to invest more into hazard reduction burns.

“NSW for example, as an estimate, would need to increase their budget from $100 million to a half billion, a five fold increase and that money needs to come from somewhere,” he said.

He then went on to challenge both sides of the political bubble saying that people should look outside their social media feeds.

“No, a video on Facebook of a guy in the bush screaming at the greens is not facts about what caused these fires. No, a video of someone shouting at ScoMo for not funding the NSW Rural Fire Service (state gov funded) is not facts about what caused these fires.”

Viral posts about the bushfires have spread misinformation, with a popular post saying that fires were started by firebugs. Another popular post said that the fires were started by climate change activists to prove their point about the issue of climate change.

Queensland University of Technology researcher Timothy Graham has said that the information has been spread by Twitter accounts using a hashtag to get their point across, #ArsonEmergency.

“The motivation underlying this often tends to not be changing people’s opinions about the bushfire itself and how it’s happening, but to sow discord and magnify already existing tensions in polarised political issues,” Dr Graham told the ABC.

Another University of Queensland lecturer in critical thinking, Peter Ellerton, said that the information is being spread so rapidly due to people looking for information that confirms their existing belief.

“This is a wonderful example of ‘motivated reasoning’, where we justify how we hold onto a world view that’s served us in the past but as the evidence mounts against it,” Dr Ellerton told news.com.au. 

“The attempts to preserve it are becoming more and more disparate and chaotic. You see this kind of thing happening more intensely.”

With some posts suggesting that Muslims have lit fires as some kind of terror attack, Dr Ellerton calls for caution when reading the posts.

“That stuff is only shocking if you begin with the assumption that people make decisions based on facts,” Dr Ellerton said.

“They don’t. And we seldom have.

“We’re far more persuaded by narratives than we are by facts. Facts are important, there’s no question about it, but they’re not enough.”

Tags:
twitter, fires, bushfires, social media, misinformation