Fire Awareness Workshop

[zebra363]

I worked 42 of the 58 hours between Monday morning and Wednesday evening, spent another hour sitting up at 4am writing out accounting entries to try to understand something, finally got home last night after being away since Sunday afternoon (financial report lodged, hooray!), and then spent this morning at a fire awareness workshop held in a

Comments

[victorian_tweed]

Thank you so much for this excellent report, Zebra.

I keep a blanket and water in the car, but I might make up a proper kit with those instructions you outlined, printed out.

I hesistated on reading the distressing stories, but did click. The things emergency people must see...I don't think any amount of training could ever prepare one for it.

There is so much confusion and inconsistency and complexity involved in the whole vegetation issue. I try to read about it, and the varying views from different experts just about does my head in.

[zebra363]

They gave tons and tons of other useful advice on preparing your property and house, but they admitted that some of it was debatable and you just have to use your best judgment in the circumstances (when you probably won't be able to think straight). They also showed a really interesting film about five women who were in the Tenterden fire in the south of WA in 1993. One was very well prepared (mobile firefighting unit, lots of pumps and water) and stayed to successfully defend her house with help from her parents and teenagers. One left early, thinking she couldn't fight a fire and supervise young children. One took her children and sheltered in a dam in a cleared paddock, thinking it was too dangerous to try to leave and knowing her house had too much vegetation around it. Another was a first-aid volunteer and felt her place was in town treating burns, even though she thought she was probably sacrificing her house in making that decision. At the end they all gave one piece of advice and several said: write all your

[victorian_tweed]

write all your instructions down

Absolutely. I bet they mentioned this, but here is a downloadable fill-innable plan template:

http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/documents/living-bush-workbook/Litb_plan_liftout_guide.pdf

I'm thinking I won't replace that bush I just removed!

Fair enough too!

I am still reading up on stone/pebble/slate mulch. (Even visited a quarry last week!)

[sarren]

Thank you for posting all the fire advice, especially for the reminder of all the flammable stuff we own, and could possible store more safely.

Why are you supposed to leave the engine on?

[zebra363]

Because it might be hard to start again afterwards and so you don't drain the battery by leaving the headlights on (which are for visibility in the smoke). There were questions about that - it does sound strange.

They showed a video of a demonstration of a armchair smouldering gently from one tiny little spark to the entire room being engulfed in flames. While the total time was two minutes, the time from enough smoke being generated to set off the smoke alarm, to their being enough smoke in the room to kill you, was just seconds. (You might have seen that video - it's pretty old and I think I saw it for the first time in school.)

[kremmen]

Quite a number of people were killed in cars in the recent fires over here and I find it easy to believe. Cars have pretty much no insulation. The closest I've ever been to a bushfire was in Karrinyup a few years back. Even with the fire in the reserve and being in a car on the main road, the heat just blasted straight through the car and visibility was down to bugger all.

One guy whose place survived the Vic fires, while those around him burned, had sprinklers on the roof, water pump and generator. Seems like a good way to do it, given that the embers landing on roofs are the main problem for houses and you can't rely on any utilities being functional.

[zebra363]

Oh, they absolutely weren't saying you'd be safe in your car, just that you have a better chance in it than outside it. I can think of lots of examples of people being burned to death in vehicles - remember that team of firefighters including a 17-year-old in Victoria in maybe the early 1990s? Knowing that you may be killed anyway would make it even harder to stay put!

They highly recommended roof sprinklers, if you want to pay for them, and said they're now mandatory in all buildings in part of the US.

[transcendancing]

Thank you for the write up Zebra - it's very interesting and useful.