The nature of bushfire Part 3 ... how fire moves across the land

I’m back with more to say on wildfire management after a break in Scandinavia and Scotland, with a few days in Berlin to learn about the rise and fall of the Wall or as the now defunct East German government or GDR named it, the "Anti-Fascist Protective Wall".

On the GDR side in a somewhat macabre outdoor museum and memorial to those who lost their lives trying to escape to the west.

While in Berlin I also took the opportunity to visit the Stasi Museum, formerly the Stasi headquarters. Stasi was the GDR's very secretive security organisation that had wives spying on husbands and vice versa, etc, etc and virtually everyone reporting on someone.

Chilling in many respects and I can relate the behaviour of the dictator Eric Honecker and his predecessors and their unelected functionaries to the behaviour of some “public servants” back home, but maybe a little more about this later. However, I imagine there are “victims” of Victoria’s Bushfire Management Overlay (BMO) and other aspects of wildfire management or I should say mismanagement in various areas of Australia, who would see some connection.

For some, the agony goes on. Shortly after returning home I came across this story "Single mother with five children forced from home after Yarloop bushfires has nowhere to go".

Wye River–Separation Creek (Vic) and Yarloop (WA) both succumbed to the spread of embers or firebrands into the settled areas and in some cases house-to-house spread, an issue I've already mentioned in an earlier blog posting that refers to the role of "spot fires" in fire spread. How did fire enter Wye River–Separation Creek?

The four following photos courtesy of Mark Strachan, Tony Maly, Matthew Stoios, Channel 7, ABC and Hamish Blair show the fire entering the residential areas of Wye River and Separation Creek and an example of its effect. They are very instructive!

This photograph shows many small fires commencing in Wye River. The green arrow at bottom left indicates Wallace Avenue with the Great Ocean Road the prominent white-lined bitumen strip. The yellow arrows indicate "spot fires" caused by embers or firebrands falling out of the convection column forming above the area. The red arrow indicates 'Tottie's Place at Wye River' (see below) about to succumb to ember or firebrand attack.

This photograph shows houses already lost due to ember or firebrand attack in the Mitchell Grove area of Separation Creek indicated by the green arrow.

Tottie's Place at Wye River prior to the fire.

and following the fire. Note the virtually unaffected trees, and 'singed' garden plants in the foreground.

The following two photographs were taken at ‘Narmbool’, near Elaine, on 24 December 2015, a few days after the Scotsburn fire ran across the property.

The photos show the effect of embers landing in isolated patches of garden and under plantation shrubs and trees. A couple of issues to note:

1. A hot fire in vegetative mulch under garden shrubs that extended to the gate before being extinguished by people who remained to defend the structural assets. The mulch under the shrubs around the house became involved, too, and it’s not hard to imagine the outcome if there’d been no one there to extinguish the initially small fires.

2. Fires under shrubs that can only have extended into that area by ember attack. Note how the fire was not sufficiently hot to ignite the shrubs, as was the situation in much of Wye River–Separation Creek .

On staying to defend a dwelling, this video was recorded as fire travelled across a property at Anglers Rest in 2003 . Note that the passage of the fire is a series of spot fires that then move forward to spot again and eventually burn into already burnt ground, and no tree canopy or crown fire. Nothing special about this building, which now has a timber dwelling added to it.

Also, note the conditions inside the building. The man operating the hose to wet down around the building moves inside for a short period when the convective heat outside becomes too uncomfortable. All done without fire brigade assistance and a very instructive video that I'll refer to in a forthcoming posting. Suffice at this stage to say that this property was in forest or woodland, hence a lot more difficult to handle than spot fires occurring in Wye River–Separation Creek residential areas.

It is well known within within the rural fire service community or should be that most houses are lost due to ember or firebrand attack — Dr Caird Ramsay, CSIRO and Justin Leonard, CSIRO.

Why then the BAL–FZ and BAL–40 nonsense being inflicted on the people of Wye River–Separation Creek seeking to re-establish themselves after the losses of the Christmas Day wildfire? Maybe a damages class action offers an opportunity to put the state and local government people involved into the witness box and question them on their fitness for the roles they are playing and reasons for their positions. It may be that all that glitters is not necessarily gold.