3708 Building In Bushfire Prone Areas

The Black Saturday Bushfires in Victoria; it’s cause, aftermath and the Victoria Royal Commission provision

On 7th February 2009, the Australian State of Victoria went suffered through a series of bushfires, termed together as the Black Saturday bushfires because it happened on Saturday. It can be taken as Australia’s worst bushfire tragedies. The main reason behind such disaster is high bushfire weather condition which took away hundreds of lives from the heart of Australia. In the bushfire, it has been surveyed that almost 180 people died, 414 were highly injured due to the fire. There were 400 more fires subsequently on the day(abc.net 2018). Since then, taking into consideration, the day and its aftermaths, the date is widely referred to as Australia’s Black Saturday.

The structure of more than 3,500 buildings were completely devastated causing damage to few places. The most affected towns were Kinglake, Narbethong, Flowerdale, Marysville, Strathewen were highly damaged due to the event (Orr 2018). The reasons behind such fires can be attributed to the climate change in Australia in summer 2009. It has been surveyed that the temperature of Melbourne broke records by exceeding 45 degrees Celsius (113.2 degrees F) on 30th January, considered to be the third hottest day in the History of Australia (Orr 2018). The southeast part of Australia where the majority of population resides is susceptible to fires. This area experiences the Mediterranean weather, rainy in winter and hot-dry inn summer. Rains help to grow greenery but the parching heat waves and draughts invite fires. The strong wind helped to spread the fire around.

It has been observed that most of the houses which were within 100 meters of the bushlands were burnt down and the houses which were within the 700 meters of the bushlands got affected by some way or the other. First of all, the building premises needs to be kept clear up to 40 meters (Kelly et al. 2016). Having less shrubs around will reduce the propensity to catch fire. The garden should also be kept clean of dry leaves and the plants should be regularly watered to avoid dryness within the leaves (Cao, Boruff and McNeill 2015). The roofs of the houses are not supposed to be made of fire-leaned materials. It is better to use concrete roofs. The modern fire shelter can also be used as survival safeguard. It is made of two layers of aluminum and silica between the air gap. It absorbs the convective heat and reflects the radiant heat and protects the user from fire.

The disaster like Black Saturday bushfires became a catalyst for the Victoria Royal Commission to change some strategies. The commission decided to examine the surroundings of the State of Australia. The final report helped by spreading the bushfire warnings identifying the risk, by distributing the knowledge among masses of how to relocate under such fire conditions. The ‘stay or go’ policy enables the majority to stay or leave since not all houses can defend fire (Handmer and O’Neill 2016). A special technique to build houses in bushfire prone areas is provisioned by the Victorian government. These steps would be helpful in eradicating further damages and deaths caused by bushfires.

Wye River/Separation Creek fires; the scenario, the cause, intensity of loss and the success/failure of the Bushfire construction provision

The location of Separation Creek is in the coastal area of Shire of Colac Otway, Victoria, Australia. It is a small village situated on the Great Ocean Road, which also connects Wye river with the place. On 25^th December of 2015, the Wye river bushfire burst out and rapidly spread out all over the place. The fire probably sprang up from a lightning strike (theguardian.com 2015). It destroyed more than 116 houses in the seaside hamlets but fortunately nobody was at home, thereby leaving no death records (theguardian.com 2015). There are many factors responsible for the incident. The Otway ranges are among the driest area of Western Australia prone to bushfires. The west part of Australia is full of fuels to catch fires.

There have been surveys depicting the failure of some bushfire protection construction provisions. More than five bushfire rated constructions were burnt down instead of the comparably less epidemic size of the fire than the Black Saturday in 2009 (Mannix and Willingham 2016). It puts Victoria’ risk management policy into question. However, the Emergency Management department claims that these policies worked truly well in an extremely strong fire. BAL (bushfire attack level) provide a standard based on which new homes should be constructed in the bushfire prone areas (Mannix and Willingham 2016). According to Stephen Kip, one of the Bushfire Building Council members of Australia, says that the building standards of the houses were faulty in the case of Wye river bushfire (Mannix and Willingham 2016). He one by one points out that there was no requirement of gutter guards, no need to consider the location of gas water heater, there was no prohibition on sing wood pile near the house. As a whole BAL approval is not everything, it needs further consideration on related issues before building house in bushfire prone areas.

The CSIRO researcher Justin Leonard highly criticizes the bushfire building standards in his report to the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission (Mannix and Willingham 2016). He minutely presents the problems saying-  Ignitable timbers were allowed to be make doors and window-frames. There were no requirements to use non-flammable materials to make stairs, verandas and decks (Leonard et al. 2016). There was no need to plan for grassfires. The Emergency Management Commissioner walked into the place just after the burns occurred and argued that though BAL rated houses underwent destruction, there were few which survived too (Mannix and Willingham 2016). Hence, a mixture of success and failure of the provisions are apparent in this incident. It worked to some extent but as a whole it could not resist the fire.

Reference:

abc.net.2018. Black Saturday fires caused lasting mental health issues: report. [online] ABC News. Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-29/black-saturday-bushfire-study-finds-mental-health-issues/8073514 [Accessed 29 Aug. 2018].

Cao, Y., Boruff, B.J. and McNeill, I.M., 2015. Defining sufficient household preparedness for active wildfire defense: toward an Australian baseline. Natural Hazards Review, 17(1), p.04015021.

Handmer, J. and O’Neill, S., 2016. Examining bushfire policy in action: Preparedness and behaviour in the 2009 Black Saturday fires. Environmental Science & Policy, 63, pp.55-62.

Kelly, M., Watson, K., Bennetts, I. and Leonard, J., 2016. Structural design options for residential buildings in bushfire areas. In Australasian Structural Engineering Conference: ASEC 2016 (p. 289). Engineers Australia.

Leonard, J., Opie, K., Blanchi, R., Newnham, G., Holland, M. and Authority, C.F., 2016. Wye River/Separation Creek Post-bushfire building survey findings.

Mannix, L. and Willingham, R. 2016. Bushfire-proof houses burn down in Wye River and Separation Creek as experts cast serious doubt on effectiveness of building standards. The Age. [online] Available at: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/bushfireproof-houses-burn-down-in-wye-river-and-separation-creek-as-experts-cast-serious-doubt-on-effectiveness-of-building-standards-20160225-gn3n9d.html [Accessed 29 Aug. 2018].

Orr, S. 2018. Wake in Fright and Walkabout: is the threat of Australia’s landscape all in the mind?. The Guardian. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/08/wake-in-fright-and-walkabout-is-the-threat-of-australias-landscape-all-in-the-mind [Accessed 29 Aug. 2018].

theguardian.com 2015. Great Ocean Road bushfire: homes destroyed as five towns evacuated. The Guardian. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/25/australias-north-braces-for-christmas-cyclone-as-bushfires-threaten-south [Accessed 29 Aug. 2018].