Bushfire Safety Awareness

Many thanks to https://www.facebook.com/MelliodoraHepburnPermaculture, the Bushfire Safety Primer is now free to download.
If you have the slightest concern about bushfire affecting your property, print it out and stick it on your fridge! The Primer is the preface to Joan Webster’s Essential Bushfire Safety Tips, which brings a message of hope and empowerment: that with appropriate knowledge, preparation and awareness, towns, homes and people can survive wildfires. We hope that you, your family and your home stays safe this fire season. Download the primer here: https://holmgren.website/bushfire-free-download" https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1D6rn4msZm/

The Bushfire Safety Primer is now free to download.

If you have the slightest concern about bushfire affecting your property, print it out and stick it on your fridge!

The Primer is the preface to Joan Webster’s Essential Bushfire Safety Tips, which brings a message of hope and empowerment: that with appropriate knowledge, preparation and awareness, towns, homes and people can survive wildfires.

We hope that you, your family and your home stays safe this fire season.

Download the primer here: https://holmgren.website/bushfire-free-download

Always timely to refresh and share the knowledge.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AN EMBER IS BLOWN INSIDE A HOUSE
What happens when an ember is blown inside a house, it ignites some item, smoulders and flares. It may ignite curtains and send flames quickly to the ceiling.
Or land on and ignite carpets, furniture, bedding, or papers. Flames spreads through furniture and furnishings, clothes and kitchen contents, papers and plastics and fly-sprays and volatile cleaning fluids. Bottles explode The intense heat generated as all this burns melts fridges and washing machines. Fire moves on through the house and structure until only ash and twisted metal remain.
Closing internal doors is a safety precaution that can prevent such spread.
When embers enter the roof/ceiling space, they ignite highly flammable dust which eventually burn rafters. Fire here grows slowly if it has been cleaned and insulated and can take hours to develop. Or quickly if the space contains stored goods, birds’ nests, or is very dusty. Heat then builds until flammable gases are produced that lift off the roof and the ceiling collapses.
This is why it is so dangerous to shelter in an inner room, and necessary to have easy access to an exit door.
DANGEROUS FURNISHING MATERIALS:
Cotton, rayon, linen, and acrylic; the plastic coating of fibreglass fabrics; nylon, terylene, dacron and other synthetics; polyurethane foam padding; synthetic carpets. Smouldering wall linings, fittings and bench tops can give off lethally toxic gases.
PROTECTIVE FURNISHING MATERIALS:
Pure, untreated, heavy quality wool; natural leather; good quality vinyl; good quality lino; tiles and slate floors.
EMBERS CAN ALSO
• lodge in cracks in timber walls and infiltrate through vents, smouldering until a flame from them flares up the wall cavity.
• Blow under the house. If this has not been cleaned out, they burn dry grass or stored goods and spread fire to floorboards and frame.
• Land on and ignite doormats, sending sparks under the door.
• Land in and ignite fibrous hanging baskets, sending flames to the eaves.
• Lodge in rough gaps between deck timbers.
• Catch in creepers on walls and pergolas, endangering the timber beneath them.
This is why pre-bushfire ember proofing of a house gives it the best chance of surviving a bushfire even if no-one is there to protect it.

The next few days are predicted to bring severe bushfire weather.DON’T WAIT to prepare for a bushfire to appear. NOW is the time to put your plan into action: whether it is to evacuate, defend or simply shelter. If your plan is to evacuate, you should be preparing now to leave this evening.
Evacuation, home protection and sheltering in place each have their own perils. Either choice can lead to injury, death or survival. Thorough knowledge and careful preparation are imperative for safety.
THE ABILITY TO EVACUATE SAFELY DEPENDS ON:
• Severity of weather conditions, particularly of air dryness and wind speed.
• Multiplicity and distribution of fires burning throughout your greater region or state.
• Severity of ember shower and speed of any fire in your area.
• Having protective clothing, a pure wool blanket and water flask.
• Leaving well before a fire starts in your area or is likely to start near your route.
• Sufficient advance packing and safe storage of precious possessions.
• Knowing where to go for refuge, whether community shelter or private house.
• The ability to get there safely.
• A reliable car, and thorough knowledge of how to shelter safely in it.
THE ABILITY TO PROTECT YOUR HOUSE SAFELY DEPENDS ON:
• Its distance from volatile vegetation in forest or garden.
• Its distance from neighbours’ buildings.
• Thorough preparation of grounds by plant management and clearance of hazards.
• Thorough preparation of house and outbuildings to minimise ember entry.
• Frequent practice of bushfire emergency plans.
• Protective clothing, a pure wool blanket and water flask.
• Enough physical, mental and emotional strength and determination.
• Sufficient and suitable fire extinguishing facilities.
• Thorough knowledge of how to shelter safely if this becomes necessary.
THE ABILITY TO SHELTER SAFELY DEPENDS ON:
• A shelter location that gives protection from radiant heat, smoke and toxic fumes.
• In-house shelter being near a door that leads to a non-hazardous outside area.
• Ability to check safely what stage the fire has reached.
• Protective clothing, a pure wool blanket and water flask.
• Exiting when flames have died down and flammable shrubs/grass are black.
• Any outside shelter site being distanced from flammable vegetation.
STAY/GO DATA
• During most bushfire threats, well-prepared homes can provide safe shelter.
• Stayers who have died have usually not known how to do so safely.
• Most well-prepared and knowledgeable people can safely defend their homes.
• The house survival rate more than doubles when someone is present.
• Early-enough and careful evacuation may provide personal safety.
• But leaves your house vulnerable. Increased losses are almost inevitable.
• Most deaths occur while evacuating through embers, flames or smoke.
• The close second highest is when people are outside and not protectively clothed.
• The third highest is when people shelter inside too far from an exit.
EXCERPTED FROM the CFA endorsed ready reference Essential Bushfire Safety Tips (‘A book that certainly could help save lives within the community’)
To be safe from bushfires you need to start preparations early.
To prepare, you need the best possible information.
Essential Bushfire Safety Tips provides this.Feel free to also share your tips here. READERS’ COMMENTS:
• ‘Your tireless efforts have been the only reliable safety advice for some time.’ - N P Cheney PSM FIFA, former Head of CSIRO Bushfire Behaviour and Management.
• ‘Essential Bushfire Safety Tips is truly an outstanding achievement.’ - Steven Warrington, Former Chief Officer Country Fire Authority, Victoria
- ‘Kangaroo Valley is arguably the best example of a prepared community. Much of this on account of Essential Bushfire Safety Tips. This book definitely saved lives and property in Kangaroo Valley on January 4, 2020.’ - Matthew Gray, Chairman, Community Bushfire Planning Committee, Kangaroo Valley, NSW.
• ‘I am alive today because I read Essential Bushfire Safety Tips’ – Robyn Mitchell, Woombah, NSW, 2020.
ESSENTIAL BUSHFIRE SAFETY TIPS https://store.holmgren.com.au/product/bushfire-safety-3ed/
THE COMPLETE BUSHFIRE SAFETY BOOK https://www.penguin.com.au/.../the-complete-bushfire...

Essential Bushfire Safety Tips - 3rd Edition Essential Bushfire Safety Tips covers everything needed to protect lives and homes and make the best bushfire safety plan to suit your situation.

Many thanks to Ben Marden for sharing this story with me. I was very aware of the Kangaroo Valley, NSW experience during the Currowan fire January 4, 2020 as a group of residents, determined to protect their homes, formed a Community Bushfire Planning Committee based on the information in Joan Webster OAM books plus individual and group, phone hook-up, discussions with her. I will re share that story again too. But first, take some time out to watch ‘A Community Under Fire - Banding Together’. It is profound, as real as it gets and warms one’s heart of how a community under fire can band together and save it. A Community Under Fire - Banding Together is Braidwood's story about its fight against the Black Summer bushfires in 2019/20.

A Community Under Fire - Banding Together A Community Under Fire - Banding Together is Braidwood's story about its fight against the Black Summer bushfires in 2019/20.