Thread: Fires . . .

Thanks PAR. The death toll is already over 180 and rising. These fires are in Victoria, the state in the southeast of the mainland. Many of the regular contributors to this forum are from Victoria and there will certainly be many who'll have been affected by this tragedy. Our hearts go out to them. Rick

however there are many fires burning in New South Wales

yet ironically farther North about 2/3 of queensland is flooded

Thanks Paul

Several mates are over there now helping. Hoping to go next week. Maybe.
Not the biggest fires we've ever had, but the people living in those areas & towns
impacted were probably the least prepared people who have ever lived in our bush-
lands. Tree-changers & townsfolk who "just don't do bush-fires".

Clearly, we rural fire services have to seriously modify our message so that people
hear "Plan & prepare to fight OR plan to leave early" rather than whatever suicidal
stupidity they are hearing now.

The saddest thing is that the loss of life & community destruction has been largely
avoidable. After the Black Friday fires in 1939, Judge Leonard Stretton’s 1939 Royal
Commission handed down recommendations of land management practices to
preserve life & property. Those recommendations have been largely ignored, or
discarded as being politically unacceptable, or too expensive. summary at
http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/dse/nrenfo...256dab0027ecc4

This then, is the consequence. I feel unutterably empty, even worse when I look at
my own area & see that people here are failing to prepare themselves in exactly the
same ways. This disaster will happen again. And again. And again.

cheers
Alan J.

Originally Posted by b.o.a.t.

Thanks Paul

This disaster will happen again. And again. And again.

AJ............what can I say mate except a big "DITTO"..............well summed up..........when will they ever learn???????

Got the phone call a few day ago to go but SWMBO put her foot down saying to leave it to younger people this time............bummer!!!! Still on the list for IMT if needed later though!!!

Several areas of our country also experience these wild fires. On our west coast, in California, the wealthy like to build multi million dollar homes in the hills overlooking the ocean. Unfortunately, if the mud slides in the rainy season don't wash them off the cliff, the wild fires will burn them out. The average home has a life span of ten years out on these cliffs.

Here in Florida, we're in the dry season and the current alert is high for brush and wild fires. I get pretty nervous this time of year as we have about 10 acres of heavily wooded land. The smell of wood burning will wake me from a sound sleep, just to walk the property lines. It scares the hell out of us.

I've installed a second well which is my fire back up. It is used for irrigation, but also has the ability or hook up a 3" fire hose. I have enough hose to defend the house and the barn. I hope I'll never need it.

Originally Posted by PAR

Several areas of our country also experience these wild fires. On our west coast, in California, the wealthy like to build multi million dollar homes in the hills overlooking the ocean. Unfortunately, if the mud slides in the rainy season don't wash them off the cliff, the wild fires will burn them out. The average home has a life span of ten years out on these cliffs.

Here in Florida, we're in the dry season and the current alert is high for brush and wild fires. I get pretty nervous this time of year as we have about 10 acres of heavily wooded land. The smell of wood burning will wake me from a sound sleep, just to walk the property lines. It scares the hell out of us.

I've installed a second well which is my fire back up. It is used for irrigation, but also has the ability or hook up a 3" fire hose. I have enough hose to defend the house and the barn. I hope I'll never need it.

Paul,
Thanks for your concern, one thing that has already been expressed by the survivors is the gratitude they feel for any support be it direct or a simple "you OK mate?".
Another common comment is no matter how good the physical preparation was most said they were mentally unprepared for the terror of 60mph fireballs coming at you.
People living in fire prone areas are urged to have a well developed fire plan however with this terrible loss of life the concept of stay and try and protect the house is now being questioned.

Mike

Originally Posted by m2c1Iw

Paul,
with this terrible loss of life the concept of stay and try and protect the house is now being questioned.

Mike

Which is itself a terrible shame. The thing that stands out most grotesquely in
interviews & footage is how few people actually put the full message into practice...

"The smoke was over our heads all day but we had no warning when the flames
arrived..."

"hero hoses down roof in shorts & thongs..." ('thongs' is the Australian term for 'flip-flops')

"the flames arrived so we jumped into the car & drove like crazy through the smoke,
unable to see 6 ft in front of us..."

Mike, I cannot begin to put into words how frustrated & angry these phrases make
us fire service people feel... air-time given to people who were dead lucky to survive
**despite** doing everything wrong. Which translates into teaching thousands of
others to do the wrong thing, because so many are uncritical about what they view on
the Teev.

The message th fire authorities nationwide are pushing is

1. prepare your home. no prep = no choice - you MUST leave EARLY. So many only
'heard' the stay and defend message... they didn't prepare - they stayed at the
indefensible until it was too late. A genuinely prepared house will almost certainly
outlast the fiercest of fires. It may be well and truly burning once the front passes, but
it will have done its job of saving the lives of it occupants. Fancy sprinkler systems &
the like come a distant 4th place behind the cheap but labour-intensive removal of
combustible items from next to the buildings, reducing & modifying the vegetation
fuels around the buildings, and ember-proofing buildings. In about that order of urgency.

2. plan your actions - stay or leave early. That means putting together a "stay kit" &
maintaining & using it. Alternatively, it means putting together a "go kit" & using it
EARLY.
It also means that, having made your decision, you are irrevocably committed to it.
This particular contract has no cooling-off period - no go back & do it over clause. You
live or die by your decision.
The car is the worst place to be in a fire. The bigger the fire, the worse it is. Terror is
not a good enough reason to leave a **prepared** building for a death-trap vehicle.

3. practice your plan. Too late to be wondering where the kid's photos or the gutter
plugs are when the fire reaches the back door.

Hardly anyone has died doing these 3 things.
Hundreds have died by not doing them.

Yours, frustrated & annoyed by the unnecessary waste of lives
AJ

Well said AJ

I feel for you AJ. I road an ambulance for a number of years after I got out of the service and being prepared is an anal thing with myself and the other half. She's much worse then me about it. We could live off what's in the pantry for a few months. We have back ups for everything, but I know if a wild fire comes, we'll likely not be able to stave the house, just too much fuel to battle. I'd be exhausted, before it was through and I'd burn up or we'd have to leave after trying our best. That's our basic plan, fight as hard as we can, but leave when we're beat. I'm a fairly stubborn person, but my fear of losing my animals and the one who must be obeyed would likely force my hand before it got too bad.

The one thing I've noticed of all the BBC broadcasts I've been hearing, is the speed at which it seemed to travel. It just roared through, overwhelming areas. Man, I can't think of a more horrifying thing to face.

Hang tough down there.

i am in southern tasmania and the thing i find wrong is no one has stressed the level of fitness required to defend your home i am mid fifties with a few health problems for me to stay and defend my home would probably be stupidity on my part. so prepare the house and leave early. that's why we have insurance.

terry

except I'm in souwest vic

Originally Posted by terry arnold

i am in southern tasmania and the thing i find wrong is no one has stressed the level of fitness required to defend your home.

Terry.............the main thing is to prepare your house and its surrounds in accordance with the TFS guidelines. Have you got a copy of the DVD yet??.......if not I can arrange for you to get one (PM me your postal address) or you can download it from the TFS website. Obviously fitness level is something that only you can decide. You also have to take into account those who may be with you at the time. The main thing to remember is that once you make the decisio to stay or go you are committed........no changing your mind when the flames start to get to close.

If your house AND LAND is well prepared it won't take much to look after it. By the same token when the fire brigades do their 'Structural Triage' on your property if it is properly prepared it will be classed as either 'Safe' or 'Defendable' and every effort will be made to protect it. If it is not rated as defendable it will recieve a red cross on the (operations) map and no one will go near it!!!

It is all well and good to rely on insurance but that cannot replace a lot of the family history or sentiment that is lost in a fire. It would also not surprise me if after the wash up of these latest fires, that the insurance council does not (finally) start to look at assessing bushfire risk themselves and setting premiums accordingly......they did talk about it after the Canberra fires. It may not be far away before you will not be able to afford insurance unless you take certain precautions.

Originally Posted by PAR

That's our basic plan, fight as hard as we can, but leave when we're beat.

G'day Paul
I can't speak for your fuel or fire conditions, but here in southern Australia, this is the
plan which yields the most likelihood of death. The worse the day, the more likely
that death will be the outcome.

Unfortunately, it seems to be the plan that a great many people have.

Here it has to be EITHER:
prepare well, and stay until the fire front is past, no matter how tired or frightened you
are, and whether or not the house burns down around you while you do so.
OR
get away out of it before you even think your home is threatened, and stay away until
the severe conditions have passed.

Why ??

Current compulsory annual viewing in our Service is a delightful little video called
"Dead Mans Zone"[1] That is the distance a fire can travel in 5 minutes. At a fire
danger index (FDI)[2] of 80, a fire can be expected to travel up to a mile in 5 minutes,
with spot-fires occurring up to 2 or 3 miles ahead of that. FDIs of over 300 were
recorded last Saturday, so 3 - 4 miles in 5 minutes is probably about right. On Eyre
Peninsula just west of us in Jan 2005, a fire ran over 60 miles in 2 hours over undulating
ground - 20 to the south-east from Wangary to Tulka, then 40 to the north-east to
Tumby Bay when the wind changed. 8 of the 9 fatalities were in cars trying to flee.
6 fled from houses which did not burn down...

As it can take a moderately well prepared evacuee 20 minutes or so to get themselves,
kids, pets & livestock organised & on the road, you can see that people really need to
be gone before they even think a fire might threaten them.

Or have prepared their property to protect them in case of over-run.

Bush people know and understand this. Townies and "tree-changers" generally do not.
"If I am not visibly under threat, why should I act as if I am?"
Guess which demographic incurs most casualties in all our bushfires... (9 out of 9 on
Eyre P., 5 out of 5 at Linton, 3 out of 3 at Grays Point, etc, etc, etc)

cheers
AJ
(educated but lazy 'townie')

[1] http://www.csiro.au/files/files/p1ih.pdf

[2] FDI - a complicated little calculation involving temperature, relative humidity, fuel
moisture content & wind speed. The number produced gives a guide to how a fire will
behave. Anything over about 50 = extreme behaviour. When he invented it, Allan
MacArthur thought that 100 was the worst imaginable fire weather. He was wrong.
Fortunately, there are few days over 50 each year. Some years, there are none.

Well AJ,

I knew the theory ... but to see the facts on how fast it can travel is more than a bit daunting and to compare with the timeframe for doing things to evacuate or protect your property is a rather stimulating comparison too.

Thanks for spelling it out.

MIK