They did controlled burning in Australia this year too. They are not completely thick. They know how to manage fires. They have a lot of experience of it. This year, conditions got the better of them ... hotter, drier and windier than normal. Hot and dry means that the fires that did start grew bigger and sent burning embers higher. Windy means that those burning embers, that already started off higher, were carried further, far beyond traditional firebreaks, into more hot, dry ground. And so the process repeated.