Aussie Bush Fires
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@Snowy said in Aussie Bush Fires:
@JC said in Aussie Bush Fires:
Without wanting to detract from the actual story, the increase from 10mm diameter to 15mm is a 125% increase in volume, not 50%. So, much worse.
Got me interested in the maths there.
Assume that you did this: 10mm circle has an area of 78.5 mm sq, 15mm is 176.7 mm sq, so ended up at %125 increase? Multiply by height to get volume of disc.
A 15mm tree is presumably much taller so it gets even worse in terms of volume of fuel. Not sure that girth of a tree has a direct correlation to height but they must be bigger.
Yep.
Thicker trees will also burn for longer and as he says will generate more heat.
It genuinely is an escalation of the problem -maths aside - and really does suck.
My sister is in a rented apartment as the ceiling cavity in her house caught fire due to a lightning strike in that storm a couple of weeks back. Having escaped the bush fires that went and happened...
That’s bizarre. For me it’s easier to picture if I imagine Mother Nature wearing a big black No11 jersey and everybody else wearing white ones with No15 on the back.
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I've mentioned this before, but if people want to live amongst the forests in this country and don't want their homes destroyed, they should build them according to the relevant standard (AS 3959) :
AS 3959 divides bushfire prone areas into six bushfire attack levels (BAL), based on the severity of the building’s potential exposure to ember attack, radiant heat and direct flame contact:
- BAL-LOW - There is insufficient risk to warrant specific construction requirements.
- BAL-12.5 - Ember attack.
- BAL-19 - Increasing levels of ember attack and burning debris ignited by windborne embers, together with increasing heat flux up to 19kw/m2
- BAL-29 - Increasing levels of ember attack and burning debris ignited by windborne embers, together with increasing heat flux up to 29kw/m2
- BAL-40 - Increasing levels of ember attack and burning debris ignited by windborne embers, together with increasing heat flux up to 40kw/m2 and with the increased likelihood of exposure to flames.
- BAL-FZ - Direct exposure to flames from fire, in addition to heat flux and ember attack.
An acquaintance built a new home in the Blue Mountains and making it as fire proof as possible cost an extra $600K.
That way you hope you're unlikely to come home to this:
I expect insurance agencies will take care of this problem anyway by making it impossible unless they meet the design standard.
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@antipodean I wonder if the ratings will change based on the increased severity of the recent fires? So say a house was in a BAL-29 zone it is now a BAL-40, do people then need to continually upgrade their homes as the climate changes?
You also have to think how many thousands of homes are in these zones that were built prior to the standards or knowledge, should all of these people tear down and rebuild? It really is a tricky situation but I agree Insurance will likely dictate this moving forward.
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Interestingly I purchased the property I now live in just over a year ago. I cannot recall being asked by banks or insurance companies what standard the dwelling was or what risk level the property is. I am now feeling very naive as I am pretty close to the bush. The dwelling is steel frames and colourbond external but again I have no idea what standard it is.
I am thinking that perhaps all houses when sold should have the rating displayed and the area where the house is situated has an easy to understand risk rating.
I highly doubt most people would know to be honest.
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@chimoaus said in Aussie Bush Fires:
@antipodean I wonder if the ratings will change based on the increased severity of the recent fires? So say a house was in a BAL-29 zone it is now a BAL-40, do people then need to continually upgrade their homes as the climate changes?
You also have to think how many thousands of homes are in these zones that were built prior to the standards or knowledge, should all of these people tear down and rebuild? It really is a tricky situation but I agree Insurance will likely dictate this moving forward.
I think that it'll be two fold: Councils will dictate new builds and ultimately owners will be advised by insurance companies they won't insure unless it meets a certain standard.
Given recent commission and enquiries, politicians will step in to ensure that insurance companies can't blanket refuse existing builds, they'll just make it prohibitively expensive.
As I used to say about the Richmond - Windsor floods; live on a floodplain, buy a boat...
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@antipodean Looks like I am on the verge from BAL-40 and BAL-FZ. The house is only 5 years old so I assume it was built with that rating in mind. Guess I should probably check.
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@chimoaus said in Aussie Bush Fires:
@antipodean Looks like I am on the verge from BAL-40 and BAL-FZ. The house is only 5 years old so I assume it was built with that rating in mind. Guess I should probably check.
If nothing else, for your own peace of mind.
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@antipodean said in Aussie Bush Fires:
politicians will step in to ensure that insurance companies can't blanket refuse existing builds, they'll just make it prohibitively expensive.
Thing is, for major events like this, it will likely be the re-Insurers that dictate terms and costs to the Aussie Insurers, I doubt the Aussie politicians will have much sway there.
Similarly post Christchurch Earthqaukes, re-INsurers told NZ INsurers they could no longer offer replacement cover based on the SQM of homes, an amount needed ot be specified...many insurers are now offering SQM replacement for non-Natural Disaster events, but for ND events, still limited to a specified sum.
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I live on the mornington peninsula , no problems where I am ,
Was considering buying an investment house in Warburton as a possible retirement option for down the track ,
Fire risk would be pretty high up there , will need to do some research
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@kiwiinmelb said in Aussie Bush Fires:
Fire risk would be pretty high up there , will need to do some research
... and that is pretty much the long and the short of it.
There is extensive information available to the public on real estate - markets, town planning, flood, fire, construction - from numerous sources at minimal cost. The omniscient young have been better educated though, by television shows like My Home Renovation is Better Than Yours, and are focused on sourcing floor tiles from Grenoble.
It is not well known that spending your money without properly understanding the risks and rewards is not real bright. As for prohibitive insurance premiums in non urban fire prone areas - they are flat out keeping up the insurance on their essential Holden GTS Maloo ute! Anyway, the government should do something about it. But.
The Blue Mountains Council has had detailed bushfire protection requirements for more than 20 years that I am aware of. They have people who spend a good deal of their time listening to home owners demanding agreement to encroachment of their splendid new home on the exclusion zones a little bit here and a little bit there to better accommodate their home entertainment pod/module/suite. Sometimes they get what they want, then they cop it when the fires come every 5 or 7 years and cry like babies.
So we end up with what we see in the photo posted by Antipodean, featuring the dimwit between his 4WD (assembled largely with products supplied by the evil coal industry) and the ashes of his home. His strident call for CLIMATE ACTION NOW means, I assume, that government must DO SOMETHINK, like install a 1000 metre x 925 metre lift up dunny seat cover on the White Island volcano, to ensure it never happens again.
You couldn't make this stuff up.
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Bit dry on the West Island:
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Scott Morrison had a political day to forget yesterday.
Made to look even worse when you get "national shame" Nick Kyrgios donating his own money, and an American in LaMelo Ball giving up a month of his salary.
I find the politicisation of disasters to be distasteful, but Morrison has played this so fucking badly.
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@mariner4life said in Aussie Bush Fires:
I find the politicisation of disasters to be distasteful, but Morrison has played this so fucking badly.
I can't think of an exception to the statement "every decision has been wrong or clueless about the optics".
That firefighter had lost his own home.
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@jegga said in Aussie Bush Fires:
From the bbc
Thats terrifying, I see there has been an arrest in Gippsland
What I don't understand is how do they even catch people doing this? Surely once a fire takes hold then evidence is gone.
edit. Answering my own question, witnesses and what appears to be a whole lot of dumb luck
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@Rembrandt pretty frightening alright.
I suspect like many crimes, criminals arent always the smartest so usually find a way to get caught.
But gee, starting fires in Aus, WTF!!
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@jegga said in Aussie Bush Fires:
From the bbc
Cough:
A 2015 satellite analysis of 113,000 fires from 1997-2009 confirmed what we had known for some time – 40 per cent of fires are deliberately lit, another 47 per cent accidental. This generally matches previous data published a decade earlier that about half of all fires were suspected or deliberate arson, and 37 per cent accidental. Combined, they reach the same conclusion: 87 per cent are man-made.
Research has shown about 8% of officially recorded vegetation fires were attributed to malicious lighting, and another 22% as suspicious. However, about 40% of officially recorded vegetation fires did not have an assigned cause. When unassigned bushfires were investigated by fire investigators, the majority were found to be maliciously lit.
But official fires are just the tip of the iceberg: the actual number of bushfires in Australia is thought to be about five times that recorded. Virtually none of these unrecorded fires are investigated.
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Test
Oooops - pardon me. I was trying to understand the page layout in the context of whether the post to which I was responding was made by Antipodean or Jegga.
Thank you and good afternoon. May your wives produce for you many sons.
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Fires are starting to get a little close for my liking, I have already moved valuables etc into the inlaws house. Will be packed and ready to go tomorrow should we have to evacuate. I really feel for all of those people already impacted by the fire. I am feeling a little sick in my stomach waiting for tomorrow. At least we are lucky to have technology today that warns us re the risk and sends us a message on our phone.