Thanks CFA

A few good men (not being sexist, they were all men) came out in their trucks last night to do some fuel reduction burns for us in the paddocks. Hopefully this is the only time we will have flames and fire trucks so close to the house.

 

The guys were here for about 2.5 hours, and then poor things were back at 11pm cause someone called 000 and they were paged. But it was all fine. During the burn off there were 12 calls to 000 so it's nice to see that people driving by are on the alert.

The picture above is how it looked this morning. It's been a long night for deputy fireman Jerry who has been up every few hours during the night checking on the smouldering bits to make sure nothing flares up, particularly as the grass in our neighbours paddock is waist high. Hopefully there will be a bit more rain overnight to really put it all out so we don't have to call the guys back on Sunday (restrictions start Sunday night so everything has to be out by then).

See the fun you city kids miss out on?!

 

Fire update - things calming down

Here's the latest from the fire services.

BEECHWORTH FIRE
Update as of 0200hrs 12/02/09

Yesterday’s continued calm weather conditions have allowed fire fighters to make good progress on a number of important back-burning operations within the Beechworth Fire area.

Fire crews are patrolling and mopping up where possible overnight and will continue to work on containing fires today (Thursday) including back-burning and bulldozer work.

The fire was downgraded from alert to 'awareness' yesterday, and at the community meeting we attended the district commander was reasonably confident that (barring unforseen weather conditions) they would be able to mark the fire as contained by the weekend. There's still lots of work going on down the road from us on mopping up, backburning and taking care of dangerous trees, but we're not in danger - so we were a lot luckier than others further south that are still going through it all.

I just want to say again that I think the CFA are absolutely brilliant! Our favourite winemaker has been out there all week, in his own vehicle, fighting fires. I can't say enough about their tireless (and often unpaid) dedication. Please, if you see or know any CFA / Rural Fire volunteers in Vic or in your state - tell them what awesome humans they are for doing what they do!

We're safe!

Thanks to all the friends and family who've been ringing, texting and emailing (although we only just got the power back after nearly 24hrs without.)

To those of you in Australia that heard about the Beechworth fire - it started about 300m from our property about 6:30pm. We lost power about 6pm and have since found from a neighbour (who reported the fire) that it was sparked by a downed power line in grass. It's now burned over 22,500 hectares. Bloody scary stuff. We went out several times between 6 and 6:30 and saw and smelt nothing. Then Jerry opened the front door and bang! smoke and visible flames and then firetrucks came.

We had filled our gutters in the morning, and had done a tidy up and filled the fire pump as it was going to be such a bad day.

Jerry's never moved so fast! He was out, on with the sprinklers and got the fire pump going (I am so happy we had that to run the water, plus the tanks on the hill so we still had water). I got my gear on and was out putting other sprinklers on. Luckily the wind was blowing away from us so it didn't jump the road to our place, but frankly it's as close as we want to get. We also learned some useful things to adjust our fire plan. We've had power back for an hour or so now, but it's still tense as the fire is moving towards the other side of town, and you just can't be sure what the wind will do. Our road is still closed, and crews are working blacking out and keeping an eye on burning stumps. It is also very smokey.

But so far we are on alert, but safe, and in no immediate danger unless the winds reverse directions. We are VERY grateful that we are no worse off - many, many others have not been so lucky (50 is the latest death toll), and it's not over yet.

Here's some pics: but there are many more on flikr here:

This morning - standing at the bottom of our road. The pic on the left shows our main paddock, the one on the right I turned 180 degrees, so you can see it was pretty darn close!


Trees stumps were burning after 12 hours


See more photos on flikr here

Batten down the hatches

Extreme fire weather is back to bite us, after a few days reprieve from the 40s. This is what the premier had to say in The Age newspaper

Victorians should cancel whatever plans they may have had for tomorrow and take whatever steps necessary to prepare for what Premier John Brumby is calling the "worst day in the history of the state".

With temperatures set to soar to the mid-40s throughout Victoria, Mr Brumby said the conditions were worse than those that preceded the devastating bushfires of Ash Wednesday or Black Friday.

"It's just as bad a day as you can imagine and on top of that the state is just tinder-dry. People need to exercise real common sense tomorrow," he said.

"If you don't need to go out, don't go out, it's a seriously bad day.

"If you don't need to travel, don't travel.

"Don't go on the roads. If you don't need to use the public transport system, don't use it.

"If you can stay at home, stay at home.

"If you've got relatives who are elderly, if you've got friends, if you've got neighbours, please call on them.

"Ring them ... it's going to be a terrible day for anyone who is ill or who is old.

Mr Brumby said he expected Melbourne to reach 43 or 44 degrees with similar temperatures throughout the state, reaching as high as 46 in Mildura.

He said if anything, the expectation was for the day to be even hotter rather than cooler.

He recalled scenes last week of wooden power poles self-igniting.

"I can't stress this enough, I know that the chief fire officer has been out and he said it will be as bad as you can get and he's not exaggerating," Mr Brumby said.

I've swept around the house, done a tidy up, and our fire kit (including new face masks with filters and eye protection) is ready to go. All that remains is to keep everything crossed that we don't need it.

Being Fire Ready

As we head into our 3rd day in the 40s, another total fire ban across the state, and a decent breeze blowing around my thought turn even more to the threat of bushfire. The downside to living where we do is that the lovely bush around us becomes a threat at this time of year. So we have to have a Fire plan, and be fire ready. Not something we ever had to worry about when living in England!!

The CFA (Country Fire Authority) holds fire ready meetings early in the season in and around our area which I always try and attend. It's a good refresher course to make sure our plan has everything covered. They also have very useful website, and Living in the Bush kit its and an interactive CD Rom to help in your fire planning.

In Victoria we have the right to choose if we stay and defend our property, or leave. We can not be forcibly evacuated if fire threatens. But with that choice comes responsibility. We need to have a plan, and most importantly we need to stick to it. We also have a responsibility not to do stupid things that put the lives of emergency service workers in danger (like deciding to leave at the last minute). We also have to be responsible for ourselves and our property. Although they will always do their best, there is no guarantee that the CFA would be able to be here to help us defend our property from fire, and we can't necessarily rely on Elvis being around (not Elvis the king, Elvis the sky crane waterbombing helicopter) . So we have to be prepared. Our Fire plan is to stay and defend the house. As such, we have each year refined and added to our firefighting arsenal and our plans.

The biggest component of our firefighting equipment is our firepump, sprinkler system, and fire fighting tank. The pump runs on unleaded petrol, and will operate our sprinklers in the event we lose power (extremely likely in a bushfire as the substation is in our paddock!). The tank holds 22,500L of water. We fill it up at the end of November then disconnect it from the house system so it stays full and available for fire fighting. This tank should give us a couple of hours to run the sprinklers - more than enough. We also keep the two hill tanks (45,000L in total) topped up so they would be available too. The trick will be not to start the sprinklers too early. We have sprinklers all around the house, and they go 180 or 360 degrees around. We also have gutter plugs to put in the gutters before filling them with water.

Next is the handheld firefighting equipment - which would mostly be used to put out spot fires once the front had passed. On each side of the verandah we have a 250L drum filled with water. This would be used to refill our spray backpacks, waterpistols (The CFA say these are great for "mopping up" around the house - Jerry was delighted! ) a mop could also be put in them and then used to damp down timbers.

A few years ago I replaced the bark chip mulch with stones, to reduce the fuel load close to the house, and we also do our best to keep the immediate house area clear of leaf debris, and to keep the gutters clear.

We have our fire clothing - overalls, long sleeved cotton shirts, face masks, sturdy gloves, hats, and sturdy boots. We will not be insane people watering our house in shorts and thongs! We also have

• a battery operated radio
• an old fashioned phone so if we lose power we can still make calls
• torches
  
• enough food stockpiled in the house to last a few weeks at least
  
• we're members of a local bushfire telephone tree
  

And the last part of our fire plan - insurance. We are resigned to the fact that if a fire comes, we will have our hands full defending the house. The sheds, cars and contents we will no doubt lose - we can't manage it all. If fire breaks out there will be a few things we bring into the house, but the rest....it's insured and replaceable.

So there you have it - that's an overview of our fire plans and preparations. Fingers crossed we never have to put it into action!

Smoke gets in your eyes

and your garden, and your house....in fact everywhere!

L to R: sunrise through the smoke, and view from the garden

Bushfire free - so far

Luckily for us we're not in any immediate danger from the bushfires raging in North-Eastern Victoria, but it's pretty tense all the same. We often have a lot of smoke - and we are waking up to the smell and haze almost every day, even though the nearest fire is probably 35-40klm away. Even though you know the fires are not threatening you, it can be pretty disconcerting.

We're not being idle though - Jerry is on gutter cleaning duty, and we're trying as best we can to keep everything around the house raked up and pruned of any deadwood or other kindling material. The verandahs have never been so tidy! We also have our fire plan, firefighting kit, firepump, waterpistols (great for putting out spot fires according to the CFA - that was all the excuse Jerry needed!), water backpacks, bins, buckets etc at the ready. So it's a case of be prepared, keep fingers crossed, and hope for no more big thunderstorms that bring lightning but no rain.

Whatever happens, it's going to be a long, nervous summer.

http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/incidents/incident_updates.htm for the latest fire update information