TheBanyanTree: The edge of the inferno

[Anita Coia]

That was a very vivid account, Robyn; I'm very glad you and Roger didn't
have to fight anything. Summer isn't over yet, and I hope your luck holds.  

We have been probably a little tardy in some of our preparations, but
luckily I am married to a perfectionist who has been slashing a perimeter of
about 100 metres in all directions for the last month or so.  The tractor
has already paid for itself, but will continue to pay for itself many times
over in our ability to independently keep our house clear of burnables.  

Our garden rockery is mainly that - rocks, with plants.  There is gravel
immediately around the base of the house so nothing will burn against it.
Embers are (hopefully) reduced by the slashing. It is truly appalling to
drive around Kinglake, where many people died four years ago and many more
lost their houses, and see the long, long grass along the roadside and in
people's yards. There are some big vacant blocks of land abutting houses,
with head-high grass. Sometimes a harsh lesson appears not to be enough.
While perhaps not as dramatic as bushfires, grassfires produce lots of
embers, and that is what burns a lot of homes.  Many houses in town have
junk everywhere, woodstacks, lots of undergrowth.  We are fortunate to be on
50 acres, because we have a lot more control over our environment.

The Murrindindi Council is in crisis, and appears to have no energy to
either mow the roadsides or force homeowners to mow their blocks. It's a
stark contrast to the Alpine Shire Council, which is the local government
area for Harrietville, the location of the other house we are building.
Alpine Shire is also an area subject to regular bushfires due to the large
tracts of state and national parks, but they are militant about reducing
fire risk.  They check all private properties, and if your grass is too long
(even on a house block), you will get a letter from the council ordering you
to mow the grass to a specified height by a specific date in December. If
you don't, you will get a fine and you will also have to pay for the
contractor the council hires to mow your block. 

We were camping at the beach last week, away from the heat thankfully. Our
home in Kinglake was as safe as it was ever going to be. The house has been
built to the new building standards, level 29 (BAL 29).  The only flammable
thing externally is the deck. There are no air vents, the floor is
completely sealed, the external material is galvanised iron cladding, the
windows are double-glazed, 5mm toughened glass.  Sounds like a fortress but
luckily doesn't look like one. However, we are unable to have things like
evaporative air-conditioning or extractor fans in external walls (the ones
in the toilet and bathrooms extract to the ceiling cavity). We do have a
woodheater with a flue, but I imagine this is allowed because the embers
would just end up in a very well-sealed firebox. 

Before we left for our camping holiday, hubby got the last big job done:
installing an attachment to the outlet of the main water tank (110,000
litres) so we can attach the fire-fighting water pump. It's petrol-powered,
as it's highly likely the power will be out if a bushfire comes.  The fire
hose is now looped on a hook at the back of the house near the tank, and the
pump is under the house on a two-wheeled trolley. It weighs a lot, but with
the trolley even I should be able to get it up the short incline to the
tank. We practiced hooking it up and running it just hours before leaving
home - see what I mean about leaving it a bit late?  

We still have a couple of other things we would like to do. We are going to
buy proper fire-fighting clothes so that if we are indeed forced to go
outside and fight embers, we can do so without being burnt by those embers
or the radiant heat. Hubby also wants to install a couple of sprinklers at
the front of the house, which would also cover the deck, so we can focus our
efforts with the house on the back and sides of the house.  It probably
sounds like overkill to some people, and we are lucky we can afford to do
it, but it's the result of reading all the stories that came after the 2009
fires. We have no line of sight more than about 100 metres around us as we
are surrounded by forest and we are down the hill a little - if we are
caught without warning, we will be in the thick of it pretty quickly.  

Ironically, we were more threatened by a fire at the beach, where a
grassfire started just a kilometre or two away. We saw the water-bombing
helicopter and the fire trucks; one unit even came through the camp ground,
which is surrounded by coastal bush. It was controlled quickly, a testament
to the responsiveness of the CFA.  And yet, in the evening of the same day,
which was a Total Fire Ban day, some idiot decided to let off fireworks on
the beach. Some people just don't get it, no matter how much information and
warning is provided.

To Janice's point - In Victoria, I think cool-weather burn-offs can be
conducted on private land with the approval and supervision of the Country
Fire Authority (CFA). Is that not true elsewhere? 

Cheers,
Anita


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