Is the humble back shed under threat?

I’ve been approached for assistance with the preparation of a Bushfire Management Overlay Bushfire Management Statement to support an application for a planning permit to erect a shed in a residential backyard — in this case approximately 30 metres from the family home. I doubt anyone well-prepared for bushfire would choose the shed when the house is so close, but surely that’s a matter for the family to plan.

The request for a BMO Statement for a backyard shed seems unreasonable, so I provided the inquirers with information on the BMO as I understand it and recommended they approach the shire planner to query the validity of the request.

The following extract from Clause 44.06 Bushfire Management Overlay in the Planning Scheme (NOTE: VC 83 of 18 November 2011 replaced by VC 109 of 31 July 2014) (click here) concerning “buildings and works” permit requirements states:

A permit is required to construct a building or construct or carry out works associated with the following uses:

• Accommodation (including a Dependent person's unit)
• Child care centre
• Education centre
• Hospital
• Industry
• Leisure and Recreation
• Office
• Place of assembly
• Retail premises
• Timber production

This does not apply to any of the following:

• If a schedule to this overlay specifically states that a permit is not required.
• A building or works consistent with an agreement under Section 173 of the Act prepared in accordance with a condition of permit issued under the requirements of Clause 44.06-4.
• An alteration or extension to an existing building used for a dwelling or a dependent person’s unit that is less than 50 percent of the floor area of the existing building

Clause 44.06 in turn calls up Clause 52.47 Bushfire Protection: Planning Requirements in the Planning Scheme (click here).

While some may argue that a “leisure and recreation” facility covers the back shed, sub-clause 52.47-6 refers to defendable space for “dwellings and dependant person’s units”, sub-clause 52.47-7 refers to defendable space for “industry, office and retail premises” and subclause 52.47-8 refers to defendable space, etc for “other occupied buildings”. In my opinion a back shed is not within any of these categories of occupancies.

To explain the BMO and assist permit applicants the Victorian Government Department of Planning and Community Development Melbourne published “Practice Note 65, November 2011, Bushfire Management Overlay and bushfire protection: planning requirements”(click here).

On page two of Practice Note 65 under the heading “How does the BMO regulate new development?” the first paragraph:

Where the BMO applies to land, a planning permit is required to construct a building or construct or carry out works associated with land uses that are likely to increase the number of people in the overlay area.

I don’t claim to be a complete expert on planning matters, but before anyone begins to prepare a BMO Bushfire Management Statement for a shed in the backyard they should first query the validity of the request with the Planning Manager of the municipality involved.

Knowledge is power

Unlike a scrub or forest fire that liberates burning leaves and bark to be carried ahead of the main fire front to start new fires known as spot fires, grass fires generally don’t have the spotting problem, except where they involve trees or shrubs in their path.

Photographs taken after a fire on the side of the Calder Freeway near Sunbury earlier this year show shrubs close to the side of the Melbourne-bound lane that had been involved in fire.

Under the influence of a strong northerly wind the fire quickly “spotted” across the two lane carriageway and into the centre medium strip. The grass having earlier been slashed, the flame height was not high enough to reach across the north-bound two lane carriageway and continue on towards Melton. With no shrubs or trees in the median strip, there were no wind-borne embers to cross the carriageway. The short grass assisted brigades to contain the fire to the centre median strip.

The western side of the north-bound carriageway with stock in the paddock beyond. The fire brigades did fine work under severe conditions to keep the fire to the centre median strip.

The message here is that if grass is cut low or eaten out by animals the flame height will be low, with a consequent reduction in fire intensity and duration of the fire front.

A wind driven grass fire moves quickly across the landscape, often too fast to ignite well-constructed buildings and other forms of vegetation in its path. The real damage is done when the grass is left uncut up to the edge of a building, as around this house on the western side of Wallan when photographed early in January 2003 (one of my before/after series to use for instructional purposes and I’m looking forward to learning if that house is still there) or the fire burns under nearby trees or shrubs and the building is showered with embers. When photographed there was an LP gas cylinder alongside the barbecue on the timber veranda

With the grass left uncut, no ember protection and someone in attendance to extinguish small fires around the building it may eventually be lost if the fire brigade does not come to its rescue. Most of the film and photos I’ve seen show houses burning down from the inside, clearly the effect of ember attack.

Click on a very informative video clip available on "The Age" web site that shows the effect of the Mickleham fire travelling north towards Darraweit Guim after the wind change.

Look closely at the condition of the vegetation around the houses lost, it's very informative. Having viewed it several times I'm of the opinion that many of those houses could have survived. Ember-proofing the houses, cutting the grass short for at least 30 metres around them and removing rubbish from under plantations is important.

In the video look at the condition of shrubs and trees around the lost houses, and some motor vehicles that the fire seems to have gone under or around without igniting them and a large LP gas storage cylinder that seems not to even have its paint damaged. Grass fires are relatively easy to protect against and wind-driven grassfires go past very quickly

Knowledge of fire behaviour is a critical factor to consider when contemplating evacuation — ‘knowledge is power’ and we should never consider ourselves powerless when dealing with bushfire. When fire does threaten, to understand what is really happening we need to disregard the awesome smoke column and the dramatics of the media and make our own assessment of the threat. And be aware of our own emotional and physical limitations

In my next posting I will go into a little more detail on what to expect as a grassfire approaches and explain the Fire Danger Index and the CFA fire danger warning messages.

You don't expect it to happen to you

Launching this blog last Saturday 8 February evening I mentioned the following day, Sunday 9 February being "heralded as a bushfire shocker scenario". How right those prophets of doom were and here is one family who were clearly shocked, commenting "you don't expect it to happen to you" in a story in The Age last Tuesday.

In the aftermath of 2009 bushfires and subsequent Royal Commission with its 67 recommendation, many have still not woken up to the fact that bushfire can reach them in or on the edge of suburbia where they feel safe and secure in their homes and have priorities other than bushfire.

Welcome to Australia and the Australian bushfire, folks and it can reach you well inside the town boundary, as people in the Canberra suburbs found out in January 2003 and in Marysville in 2009.

Referring to the Mickleham fire, which was still burning days after it occurred, it was glaringly obvious the fire caught out many who had no understanding of bushfire — predominantly ‘grassfire’ for the purist and that distinction between a fire in grassland and a forest fire is important, as fires in each vegetation type are quite different.

With Mickleham we had all the necessary ingredients last Sunday for a severe grassfire event, lush paddocks after good pre-season rain, high temperature and low relative humidity to drain the remaining moisture from the already dry grass and the ‘killer punch’ strong wind, initially from the north then the southwest and south after the cool change arrived. Killer punch because it's wind that drives fire. At the height of summer a strong wind can at times drive a grassfire fire faster than a fire truck can keep pace.

Significantly, there are two recordings from the Bureau of Meteorology weather station at Melbourne Airport, Tullamarine that reveal that the dreaded Code Red had been entered on two occasions: FDI 100 at 11:00 hrs and FDI 120 at 12:00 hrs. The short extract from the Weatherzone publishing of Met Bureau observations shows the varying FDIs.

Weather recorded at the BOM Station at Kilmore Gap, which is close to the eastern side of the Mickleham fire, has FDI 109 at 11:04 hrs and FDI 116 at 13:00 hrs.

How people should prepare for a fluctuating FDI and respond to the CFA’s fire danger ratings presents a challenge that I will endeavour to advise on later, but at this stage it’s reasonable to contend that the statement for Code Red that “homes are not designed or constructed to withstand fires in these conditions” needs clarification — as a blanket one-size-fits-all statement it’s INCORRECT hence potentially dangerously misleading.

In my next posting I will go into a little more detail on what to expect of a grassfire and how to reduce its impact.

Bushfire protection - a one-size-fits-all solution is not the answer

Following the 2009 bushfires and the subsequent Royal Commission where I was engaged by Counsel Assisting as an expert witness to give evidence on “fire refuges, stay and defend or leave early policy, evacuation, warnings and management of the fires”, I have observed and indeed personally experienced what I consider to be a developing “them and us” attitude by government that highlights a reluctance to accept a reasonable level of risk to be shared with the community since the Royal Commission handed down its recommendations. Unfortunately, this attitude can only have an adverse effect on community resilience in Victoria.

Yes, the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission made many recommendations across a broad range of subjects, but I find the two introductory paragraphs to the Commission’s 67 recommendations particularly significant:

“In preparing its recommendations the Commission chose not to constrain the State with undue prescription: it wanted to obviate the risk of narrowing policy makers’ vision. To complement the recommendations, the Commission expresses views and draws conclusions in the text of the report, proposing the type of action the State (and others) should take to deal with matters that warrant further attention. The Commission trusts that those responding to the report will attach substantially the same weight to these proposals as they accord the primary recommendations.

“When the term 'State' is used in the recommendations it is not intended to be read narrowly. It applies not just to the elected government and the organisations that form part of the Victorian public service. Depending on the circumstances, it can also encompass public entities that make up the broader public sector, such as the Country Fire Authority, and the 'special bodies' defined in the Public Administration Act 2004, such as Victoria Police.”

What seems to be lacking is an understanding that those citizens likely to be directly affected were not considered to be critical stakeholders to be consulted when policies and practices that would affect them were being prepared — particularly concerning the sharing of risk. And, I would argue that as a consequence some of the policy responses are inappropriately narrow.

VBRC RECOMMENDATION 1

The State revise its bushfire safety policy. While adopting the national Prepare. Act. Survive. framework in Victoria, the policy should do the following:

• enhance the role of warnings—including providing for timely and informative advice about the predicted passage of a fire and the actions to be taken by people in areas potentially in its path
• emphasise that all fires are different in ways that require an awareness of fire conditions, local circumstances and personal capacity
• recognise that the heightened risk on the worst days demands a different response
• retain those elements of the existing bushfire policy that have proved effective
• strengthen the range of options available in the face of fire, including community refuges, bushfire shelters and evacuation
• ensure that local solutions are tailored and known to communities through local bushfire planning
• improve advice on the nature of fire and house defendability, taking account of broader landscape risks.

The emphases in Recommendation 1 are mine and the basis of my objection to a “one size fits all’ approach to bushfire protection, which can result in otherwise avoidable loss of property in a bushfire and unnecessary costs incurred by people seeking to develop their land in Victoria.  

Partially as a response to comments from the Tribunal Member at a recent VCAT Hearing concerning a household’s emergency management arrangements continuing to exist when ownership of a property changes hands, I decided to address a range of bushfire preparedness matters to supplement information provided by the government through its agencies, for my existing and former clients and anyone else who might find them useful.

In doing so I will provide advice to assist families and others to make their own decisions on how they will respond to the current CFA “Leave and Live” bushfire survival policy, and provide what guidance I can in applying for a planning permit where a Bushfire Management Overlay covers the land involved or it is within a designated bushfire prone area.

Launching this blog the day after the fifth anniversary of the 7 February 2009 fires and on the eve of a day being heralded as a bushfire shocker scenario seems appropriate given all the bushfire learning, policies introduced and the experiences of many since that day, and a need to minimise losses due to bushfire in the future while not being panicked.

Finally, in every case individuals must assess what I have to say against their own individual circumstances and make their own decisions. As the Royal Commissioners stated in their first recommendation (above) “all fires are different in ways that require an awareness of fire conditions, local circumstances and personal capacity”.