Laura Newell: Burn-off smoke effects worth living with if our bushfire risk is reduced

Sneezing 20 times in a row, my poor little girl looks up at me from red-rimmed eyes and asks “why do they have to do so much burning, Mummy?”

I give her the same answer I’ve given her for the past couple of weeks: “Because it keeps us safe, darling”.

I feel her frustration and match it with my own, also being horrendously allergic to something in the smoke that drifts over our northern suburbs home for weeks as the State undertakes prescribed burn-offs around us.

But unlike in previous years, my attitude to the inconvenience of the smoke haze that seems to linger for longer and longer each spring is less annoyance and more relief.

Our home was mere metres from the blaze front that ripped through Mariginiup and Wanneroo in November last year. It is a miracle our hero fireys managed to save it (and those of family and friends close by) and one we don’t take for granted.

The Parks and Wildlife Service are blunt about why they undertake burns: it lowers fuel load helping to reduce the severity and size of bushfires. In short, the experts tell us that we need to do it to prevent tragedy this upcoming bushfire season.

Sadly, that doesn’t make the effects of those preventative burns any more pleasant for those of us affected medically by them. Especially those who are so badly affected it prevents them from enjoying day-to-day activities or even lands them in hospital.

As with so much when it comes to risk reduction in all things, we have to balance the harm and benefit. And having watched that terrifying wall of flames bear down on us last November, this is one harm I’m prepared to put up with.

Someone pass the Ventolin and Zyrtec around would you?