Leave or Stay!
For most families, their house is the biggest investment they ever make. You can protect your investment by preparing your house to survive a bushfire, and by deciding whether you will PREPARE, STAY, fight the fire and SURVIVE, or LEAVE EARLY, and trust that your preparations will reduce the chances of your house catching fire from embers.
Defend Your House!
The single most important factor in your house surviving is the presence of an able bodied person at home to put out all the small fires started by wind-blown embers. However, the chances of your house surviving will be significantly influenced by the slope it is on and the type of "garden" you have around the house. If you want your house to survive the passage of a bushfire, you must establish a zone of safety around it - a "defensible space". - and you can do this by modifying the density and the types of plants you have in your garden. It doesn't matter if your garden is a formal one with exotic species, one with mixed exotic and native species, or a "bush garden" which is just the extension of the bushland you live in.
Fuel is Important
The "safety zone" or "defensible space" around your house will give you a fighting chance by reducing flammable material, sources of embers, radiant heat, and the chances of flame contact onto your house. On flat ground the minimum distances should be about 10m, and on sloping ground the minimum distance you must modify is about 30m. Look up! If you have trees, you should eliminate low branches and fine "fuel" which could carry flames from a fire burning on the ground, up into the bark and canopy of trees. If "elevated" fuel catches fire then you house will be showered with more embers, increasing the likelihood that one of them will catch your house on fire ! But be cautious. Don't remove all your trees because they act as wind deflectors, and ember catchers, and can actually reduce the chances of your house catching fire. Just don't have them too close, or overhanging the roof !
One of the most important things to realize is that although many publications talk about, and list, "fire resistant plants", this is seriously misleading. All plants, regardless of their moisture content or their exotic/native status, will burn readily if there is enough heat present! Don't even bother with these lists, because the best thing to do is to landscape your garden taking into account the proximity and continuity of the plants in the garden !
All Vegetation is Flammable
Why ? Well, during a fire any plant species can burn, even though some may be a bit slower to catch fire than others. Fire spreads by pre-heating fuels (your precious plants!) to a flammable point, and igniting them by direct flame contact or wind blown embers. But, fire cannot easily spread through discontinuous fuels. Space out the shrubs in your garden. Up close to your house, thin out the shrubs, make sure they don't directly touch each other or the house, and clean up dead material and leaves. Further away, the plants can be larger, but don't let them touch so that their canopies form a continuous "fuel layer". Clean up dead plant material on the ground, and prune the shrubs and trees so the tops of the shrubs are well away from the lower branches of any trees
Mulch
Consider the sorts of mulches you use. These can burn readily. Fine mulch is more flammable than chunky pine mulch, but all of them will burn if the conditions are right!
Don't Encourage Weeds
The other real problem you should consider is that the lists of "fire resistant plants" contain mostly non indigenous species, exotic species, or species known to be environmental weeds ! If they don't fall into any of these categories then they are most unlikely to thrive in the drier gardens with limited water which are the ones most prone to bushfire !
Forget these lists - they are ill conceived and mask the fact that a fire safe garden depends on HOW you plant not WHAT you plant !
Top |
Fire and Environment |
Christmas Hills Fire Brigade