Fire devastation

[Stevie777]

Stevie can you please accept that you don't know much about this? Given that two people have died, many have lost houses and I know this area and the people intimately, I'm finding your insistance that you know the answers very annoying.

The vegetation has survived because it has evolved to be fire-resistant. Are you satisfied now?

I find your post to not only be very annoying but very rude. Please point out where i said i had all the answers and feel free to add to my idea for fire suppression with your vast knowledge on all things wildfire and fire suppression.... My guess is you, like me dont know and are only hazarding a guess. Well guess what...My Guess is as valid as your guess...

One minute the temps involved are the equivalent of the surface of the sun now we have have fire resistant trees.?

And please spare me with the "people have died and lost houses" guilt trip nonsense. People die every day from various tragedies, Houses have been destroyed here in the UK from flooding. People dying, houses lost and especially you sure as hell wont stop me from voicing my opinion on on the subject or any subject on how to prevent this from happening.

 

[Stevie777]

Stevie - the water supply is a problem. Where is it to come from?

We aren't talking about a country with abundant water!

Looking at the Map Yarloop looks to be less than 2 miles from the sea..Last time i checked the sea was made of water...feel free to correct me here.

 

[dewi]

Looking at the Map Yarloop looks to be less than 2 miles from the sea..Last time i checked the sea was made of water...feel free to correct me here.

You can use salt water to put out a fire, and it will extinguish the fire... but its doubtful anything will grow on the land for a good while.

 

[mrcharly]

Stevie, you've ignored virtually everything I've said. I'm not going back over it with you.

Yarloop is a lot further than 2 miles from the sea.

Yarloop and the nearby community are where my parents spent the last years of their life. I flew my family out there to get married (second marriage) and for my children the only memories they have of Australia and Yarloop in particular. It has now all been burnt to the ground. I'm not going to spare you the 'guilt trip nonsense'.

Just give it a rest.

 

[Toddy]

It's a horrible thing to contemplate and it must be devastating for the folks who lived there too.
Are the trees there particularly resinous ? and why did the houses burn, but not the nearby trees ?

I know Australia has huge water issues. My big brother and his family live there. They were appalled at the waste of water here….until they realised that the rain really was not stopping, and it was normal and not some seven year gap between downpours.

A couple of years ago there was a Canadian fellow who visited the forum. He was trying to sell his house that was in a remote area. Remote enough that access was by a plane with floats, iimmc.

His advert made much of the fact that his house had never been burned down, despite it being surrounded by forests which had.
He did have a sprinkler system. It was apparantly a great selling point.
How it was powered or provided for, I don't know. That it worked, and the forest around him which had burned was only about seven years into re-growth, was undeniable though. Most of his fruit and vegetable gardens survived too.

M

 

[Tengu]

I favour the fireproof safe idea.

Like the Japanese; your house is disposable but your valuables are in a fireproof Gowdown.

(Chinese, I cannot recollect the Japanese for it)

(I wont dwell on the amount of fatalities due to fires in Japan over the centuries either.)

 

[mrcharly]

It's possible to build a fire-resistant house. Needs very careful planning. All that won't help the existing houses. A place like Yarloop is, as I've already said, mostly built of wood. Nothing is going to save houses like those if a fire sweeps through.

The trees are not resinous - the oils in the leaves are very combustable. The bark is fire-resistant. So unless there is a break in the bark, the leaves tend to burn away (very rapidly, with incredible heat) but the trunk survives. So you can have radiant heat that kills, causes structures to burn, but the trees survive.

 

[Toddy]

I wondered how that worked. Makes sense too; resinous leaves, they burn off, nothing else to quickly sustain the flames so they die out. The bark, and presumably fallen seeds in the leaf litter, sprout again.

Pity we can't build houses that just re-grow

M

 

[Mesquite]

A couple of years ago there was a Canadian fellow who visited the forum. He was trying to sell his house that was in a remote area. Remote enough that access was by a plane with floats, iimmc.

His advert made much of the fact that his house had never been burned down, despite it being surrounded by forests which had.
He did have a sprinkler system. It was apparantly a great selling point.
How it was powered or provided for, I don't know. That it worked, and the forest around him which had burned was only about seven years into re-growth, was undeniable though. Most of his fruit and vegetable gardens survived too.

It helped that he was only a couple hundred yards from a lake that was probably 2 or 3 square mile or bigger.

Tap a self powered high capacity pump or two into that and you have an almost inexhaustible supply to keep fires at bay.

 

[Toddy]

It most certainly was a great boon

The reports said though that the actual fires were only alive for minutes though. How much water does it need to keep a mist going for that long ?

Dry old wooden houses though, in a very dry climate, and filled with modern plastics and the like…..not going to be easy, is it ?

M

 

[dewi]

Considering the speed and ferocity of the fires they have down under... I wouldn't want to bank my house on a sprinkler system.

How do you build a fire resistant house though? I've seen the concrete dome one that survived in a forest fire... not sure where it was... but I doubt many would want to live in a concrete dome.

 

[Robson Valley]

We get firestorms. The fire crowns in the conifers distilling the flammable oils from the leaves like gasoline fumes. The fire makes its own wind. Sprinklers can not keep anything cool enough. Moving at 40-60mph, it's really scary how fast it all happens. The updrafts are strong enough to lift 1" flaming branches and toss them all over the perimeter or ahead of the flame front.

I lived in Melbourne for some years. Late 1968 - early 1969, I really wondered what kind of a hell-hole I had arrived in. Their forest fires perform a lot like ours do, that's why we share fire fighting personnel when we all can. Mrcharly, I really sympathize with you and your people.

 

[lou1661]

How much water does it need to keep a mist going for that long ?

well, if you run with ballpark figures of 100 litres per min, and what, 50 heads at a guess, thats five cubic meters of water every min, running for 10 to 15 mins (50-75 tonnes) which would be more than the town main could supply, and add multiple properties. Internally, only a few heads operate, and keep the water usage down. How effective it would be is anyones guess.

Louis

 

[mrcharly]

Considering the speed and ferocity of the fires they have down under... I wouldn't want to bank my house on a sprinkler system.

How do you build a fire resistant house though? I've seen the concrete dome one that survived in a forest fire... not sure where it was... but I doubt many would want to live in a concrete dome.

Best designs (and constructions) I've seen are rammed earth, with sealed eaves. They work well in the climate, just haven't taken off for some reason. They've been around since I was a schoolkid but are very rarely built.

The sheer mass of the walls provides effective resistance to the heat.

 

[dewi]

Best designs (and constructions) I've seen are rammed earth, with sealed eaves. They work well in the climate, just haven't taken off for some reason. They've been around since I was a schoolkid but are very rarely built.

The sheer mass of the walls provides effective resistance to the heat.

Sort of like bunker walls? Hard exterior, couple of feet of packed earth then a hard interior?

 

[Toddy]

Does Adobe withstand fire well ?

We have vitrified forts in the UK. Wooden and stone structures that are contentious in their interpretation. Deliberately built and fired to fuse the stones, or done accidentally as an attack ?

M

 

[mrcharly]

Rammed earth is a monolithic form. Heavily compressed by hydraulic rams and held within a former, the surface gets a polished finish.