[Bramela]

I am all for some tree preservation, but it is now totally at the ridiculous stage. Greens, yes, but local council policies as well.
A recent case I read in the news
A property owner approached his Council to get permission to cut down trees(which he himself had planted) which formed an avenue along his front drive.
Council refused the permission and continued to do so as the property owner made repeated applications. His grounds were on the basis of the danger the trees as they aged.
No permission.
Then subsequently, one of the trees (or part of) fell and killed the property owner.
The Council Officers involved should have been in court.
I hope the family sued the Council for all it had.

[xjjohnno]

Her's a few useful links for thanking the fire fighters and volunteer work
Thank You Firies
GoVolunteer
For volunteering building skills
Building Commission - Home Page

[Blue]

Thanks Red,

The same thing happened up at Bendigo, and Horsham, both towns that had fire into the outskirts, in the case of Bendigo, fire within the township on near flat ground in grass fuels burnt around 50 houses.

On the subject of fine fuels, one can measure the fuel moisture content of fine fuels with a suitable device. Moisture levels change during the day, and over longer drought cycles. Once fuels get under around 10% FMC or so, expect rapid combustion! (It's why when lighting a fire, you choose fine dry fuels to start.)

A reference for reading about an abridged fire history of Australia over winter:

The still burning bush. Stephen J. Pyne.

And if you are really keen to learn more about the whole thing, PM me, I teach fire management.

Dale,

I think you missed the whole point I was making. Once wild fires are out of control, trees can an do burn. We say them jumping gaps of up to 5 miles in the 2003 fires in Southern California. There is plenty of Eucalyptus in California as well as the native evergreens. This is from northeastern San Bernadino in Oct 2003.

[Dale]

I did miss your point, probably semantics, and good shot btw.

The photo below is from the DSE website Department of Primary Industries and Department of Sustainability and Environment. It shows the view looking back into the direction of fire front from the town of Lorne during the Ash Wednesday fires.

The foreground shows trees with only large limbs left after a crown fire, and ditto with the distant background. In the mid background (top third line and right side third line) is a rather odd thing. A sea of green with a fringe of leaf freeze. (brown colour).

The unburnt area was the site of a fuel reduction burn the season before, so despite being hit by a fire front of the like not seen or measured before, the trees did not burn, as there where no fine fuels. The leaf freeze of around 100m was from fire and flame outside the fuel reduction burn area.

Needless to say that as the spotting distances on that day exceeded ten kilometres, the fire jumped that area in an instance.

Interestingly enough, that veg type carries a fire no problems two years after being burned.

[Redfish]

Exactly what we have in our area, though the bark load on the stringybark is moderate to high, so we have a bit more risk in that component of the total load. The Chum Creek fire has brought home to me the importance of reducing surface load, and especially the elevated load. The neighbours who lost their places were surrounded by dense, extreme elevated fuel. The fire crowned and burnt trees to sticks in those locations, but not ours. I really am learning a lot since the fires here!

The assessment of fuel loads needs to be taught to everyone living in the urban interfaces too. Its simple to understand, and easy to implement a plan. It's just hard to fly blind or (worse) ignorant.

[Dale]

Hey Red,

All you need is a 1x1m grid , chuck it onto the ground, collect everything inside it smaller than a pencil, then microwave it enough to remove the moisture, then weigh the residual and convert to tonnes per hectare.

Enter the relevant data here and then check the effect on slope.

I'm sure you guess by now that it is a simple thing to create a map showing fire danger areas calculated by slope (steeper = worse) and aspect (more northerly = worse) and add in fuel loads, and last burnt area.

Another web resource is the DSE training site, have a look or sign up to do a course on line.

And sorry to bump the post with the latest news of more fires today, with house(s) lost. At least one of those fires will cause trouble this coming Friday when we have 39 deg forecast.

I could see the Dalesford fire from my place, 100km away. The convection column was huge.

Funny enough there was a lightning strike this arvo in the Otways that started a fire, right in the middle of a prescribed burn from two years ago! No wind, so it looks like it has been rounded up well.

[RichardS]

We are blessed by rain It probably won't put all the fires out, but it's a start

I once heard a weather person from the UK saying that somewhere was cursed by rain and I paused for a while wondering what she meant. How can you be cursed by rain?

[Mechan1k]

You can be cursed by rain .... just look at North Queensland .... when your entire house is completely underwater due to it ... I'd class it as cursed.