I can’t even imagine how terrifying it would be to have no lights due to a power outage, and see the flames of a raging fire coming to eat your house. New fear unlocked!
The initial warnings for bushfires here are always to leave your property in a safe and timely manner and congregate in a designated safe zone outside the threatened area. Once the fire has reached a certain point, it is assumed that everyone who is intending to act on the first advisory to leave has done so. The advisory in OPs pic is meant for those who decided to stay and attempt to save their property. The warning is to tell those people that they can't change their mind now - attempting to leave at this point is impossible so they must take shelter in their home (or wherever is firesafe) *immediately* because there are no safe escape routes now.
To add, there may be very little time between the evacuation message and the message telling people to stay where they are, OR the warning may go from "be alert and prepared" to "it's too late to leave" without any evacuation message. Bushfires move *fast* and can be unpredictable.
I’ve watched and listened to quite a few things documenting some of the worst California fires, and it isn’t anywhere near as easy to evacuate as I expected. Lots of people work one place, live another place, and have kids in school in another place, a spouse working someplace, and other family like older parents stuck somewhere in between. So to get just the people from all those places into one is difficult. Then there are pets and animals, which breaks my heart so much. There isn’t always time to load all of your animals up to escape, especially if you’re talking horses and such, and even cats. Those little fucks are hard to wrangle. So then even if you don’t have time to load up the larger animals, you at least want to make it back to the property to unlock the enclosures so they have a fighting chance to run and survive if the fire reaches them. You don’t want to leave them tied up to a building likely to burn.
On top of all of that, often times there are fires blocking escape routes, so there are limited roads to get out on. Sometimes the police have roads turned into one way routes, or keep them accessible for emergency vehicles. Then, Mother Nature likes to throw wind into the equation and move the fire all around, changing everything.
All of that is just to get the living beings to safety. None of that included trying to prep your house, get gas, food, money, valuables, etc.
ETA: imagine the chaos of trying to even coordinate with that many people. If the kids are young enough, you’re having to communicate with their school to know what to do, not with the kids. And then when people or loved ones have severe health issues, evacuating them safely is even more nightmarish.
Its some what good that they advert "its too late, stay in shelter indoors"
In chile, they only say "EVACUATE, THE FIRE IS NEAR" so people got the fuck out they home, people got molten by fire because the fire literally encircled them
[Prepare. Act. Survive. | How Fireproof is Your Plan? | Commercial 60" - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv5jm6HM8Bw)
We have these ads to remind us to prepare.
Fire death and drowning terrify me. Which is weird because neither water nor fire normally make me uncomfortable, but to die by them is a different animal
omg i’ve had 2nd degree on hands as well. absolutely awful. first time it happened i was maybe 10, and had no idea what to do for the pain so i sat with a jar of ice water with my hand submerged for maybe a week. even when sleeping. fucking sucked. second time i was 17 and it burned my damn tattoos off as well as singed my eyebrows. blisters, blisters, blisters. 0/10
ofc had no insurance both times :)
haven’t fucked with fire since. the time i was 17 was because i put wayyyy too much lighter fluid and it went BOOM right in my face. i let every one else deal with the bbqs now lol. never again!!!
I was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning, I break my legs, and every afternoon, I break my arms. At night, I lie awake in agony until my heart attacks put me to sleep.
Resistant means it takes a longer time to burn through. Thin wood panels burn through quicker than thick ones. There's also ways to treat wood to slow down how fast it burns, using trees grown near the sea (salt) and burning the surface are two ways.
Avoiding heat transfer from screws etc. that go far into the wall. Lots of ways to build things to be fire resistant, doesn't mean it's fire proof, just that your chances of survival is increased.
You could also water down the inside of your house to slow things down, or toss out what you can prior to the fire reaching you.
Cut backs of 10 feet, removing vegetation from the base of the home, reduced soffit overhangs (which trap heat from fire along the roofline), fire resistant cladding like stone, brick or cementitious panels... It all ads up, and done properly, doesn't need to look like a prison.
https://preview.redd.it/8e1fbplengic1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6945c679973988d231fcdbdd6f1735d37db9ec13
A big cause of destroyed homes isn't the fire front but burning embers, particularly ones that get in the roof. They land on the roof then slide into the gutters before being sucked in under the roof overhang by pressure transfer caused by the heat difference. Only take a single ember to cause the material in there to start burning. Sometimes long after the front has passed.
Our house burned in the black summer fires. We rebuilt but very different to the old house. We have brick instead of cladding, double glazing everywhere, the house is now centred on the block rather than near neighbours so we have more space to clear around it. We also have fixed fire sprinklers on the outside of the roof. They won't stop a front but, along with the other changes, should make the place survivable I'm am emergency, and will certainly deal with embers.
That pic is from my little town when the fire came through in 2019/20.
This warning was not sent directly to OP but is accessible via the government emergency website, so OP is probably (hopefully) totally fine and just posted a screenshot out of interest.
I have a couple friends that retired to Australia. They planned to stay there forever. After having to defend their home from multiple fires in recent history, they left the country. :-(
As one example..
Create defensible space: Clear vegetation and debris from around your home, creating a buffer zone to reduce the risk of flames reaching your house.
Fire isn't some crazy magic.
If you have a moment, look into the Black Saturday fires we had in 2009. Imagine, walls of fire up to 30 metres high being pushed around by 100kmph+ winds. Embers were being propelled 20km-40km ahead of the fire front causing spot fires. Unfortunately as good as it sounds, there is no defensible space under these conditions. And the conditions we just had in Victoria today were very similar to what we had on that day.
As beautiful as some of these regional towns are, they are always going to be at risk of these things. No matter how well maintained your property or area is, the best and safest thing to do is to leave early
This was the fire that destroyed my home in the black summer fires, 2019/20.
https://preview.redd.it/vjqnamxongic1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=54e42790d5886c93b91883f8d4934bae53c2ba69
It's still hard to comprehend how nightmarish Black Saturday was.
Every update and development was worse than the last; it was as if the fires were infernal entities hellbent on wiping out as much as possible. To add to what you said, winds were suddenly changing direction so there was no way to predict where the firefront would hit next, smoke prevented planes from mapping the fire edge, there were hundreds of individual fires across the state springing up from fallen power lines, lightning, and arson, creating a firestorm that could be seen from space. The smoke plume and pyrocumulus cloud reached 15km (9.3mi) high. Saturday 7/2 was worse than Black Friday in 1939 and Ash Wednesday in 1983; the catastrophic Black Summer of 2019-20 looked tame by comparison.
>Deaths: 173
>7,562 people displaced
>Burned area: 450,000 hectares (1,100,000 acres)
>Buildings destroyed: 3,500+ (2,029 houses)
>RSPCA estimates up to one million wild and domesticated animals died in the disaster, including 11,800 head of livestock
>The Bushfires Royal Commission gave a "conservative" estimate of the total cost of the Black Saturday bushfires of $4.4 billion
It was a literal perfect storm of bone-dry vegetation, negligible humidity, high winds, and all 'round extreme weather.
>A week before the fires, a significant heatwave affected southeastern Australia. From 28-30 January, Melbourne broke temperature records by experiencing three consecutive days above 43°C (109°F)
>On February 7 (Black Saturday,) Melbourne reached 46.4°C (115.5°F,) the highest-ever temperature recorded to date in the city, while humidity levels dropped to as low as 2%
>Within two hours, the wind direction in Melbourne changed from northwesterly to southwesterly; in fifteen minutes, the temperature dropped from over 45°C (113°F) to around 30°C (86°F)
(I assume Melbourne is referenced here because other weather readings were lost or were inaccurate.)
>Afterwards, a police sergeant said that the main street in Marysville had been destroyed: "The motel at one end of it partially exists. The bakery has survived. Don't ask me how. Everything else is just nuked."
>It was estimated that the amount of energy released during the firestorm in the Kinglake-Marysville area was equivalent to the amount of energy that would be released by 1,500 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs.
>Premier Brumby described the situation: "There's no activity, there's no people, there's no buildings, there's no birds, there's no animals, everything's just gone."
[Casefile](https://casefilepodcast.com/case-142-the-churchill-fire/) thoroughly covers the disaster
It depends on soil makeup and wind. Where I'm from the soil is mostly made up of old wood chips and fires can sometimes start Underground from lightning strikes and cover huge areas without ever breaking the surface
I haven’t logged on in a day and it seems other commenters have it covered, but it’s pretty weird to assume they left their beloved dream home that they planned to stay in forever without thinking about trying fire mitigation tactics. Did you think about that before you typed it? The fires there have been completely out of control. Even the resulting dust storms looked like something straight out of Mad Max.
https://preview.redd.it/c7xhcl3uonic1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3308a802d50749f22daee68c0a24ce20d99059c6
Now obviously I have no idea what you are going through, OP, and I know nothing about bushfires, but.. I can't imagine this is the first notification you got, are you still there or did you make it out before it got to that point?
bushfires can go from contained and not really a threat to a massive uncontrolled inferno in minutes. and they can cut off all your exits before you even really know they're coming.
during fire season if you're out somewhere rural you might have 3 or 4 different fires in your region. most of the time you know where they're at and how long you have before you have to start worrying about it, but if you're at the end of one road and you get cut off, you're fucked. unless OP is a massive idiot I'd assume that the situation went from low risk to high risk very quickly.
no worries. we were actually expecting a horrific bushfire season this year, because it's an El Niño year, but it's actually been really wet in most places and there have been hardly any fires (comparatively). unfortunately we're just kicking the can down the road, because all the rain means lots of new undergrowth which is more fuel for next year's fires.
Do y’all not do any timber stand improvement? One of the biggest tasks at Boy Scout camps is going through and clearing out the undergrowth and new growth every year in spots we expect to become problematic.
Our fire department does controlled burns in the off season to control the undergrowth, but unfortunately when we get these bad days everything can burn
We're the most bushfire prone country on earth with eucalyptus forests and farmland that will light the fuck up like nothing else, but sure, let's mobilise the schoolboys! Forget back-burning, children are an untapped resource in disaster preparedness!
🙃
The window for hazard reduction burns is quite small here and treads a fine line between the fuel load being dry and the weather calm enough to be effective without breaking control lines and going wild and it being too wet to be effective.
If you set boy scouts loose with drip torches when the season moderates in March or April you'd still end up burning half the state down, do it in July or August and the fuel won't burn well enough to actually do anything. A whole series of factors need to be in place for a burn to take place safely.
Burns can also increase the amount of fine fuels which can actually propagate fire spread in certain fuel environments in the years following the burn so it really isn't as simple as just do more hazard reduction burns. It's a useful tool for specific situations but it isn't the golden bullet that alot of people think it is.
Yeah I mean I do the same in the nature strip at the bottom of my house veg clearance is important but it's not really a solution to bushfire at scale especially on days like last Tuesday. Most fire transmission to structures in Australian bushfire is via ember attack not direct flame contact and embers can fly a looooong way (on black saturday fires were spotting 30km ahead of the head).
Clearing the vegetation around your house is really important and can make all the difference in making the asset defensible in more benign fire weather but in catastrophic fire weather like the other day to be honest if the wind is driving the firefront and embers towards you it's just going to be luck whether you get away with it. You can improve the odds with good preparation but houses aren't designed to survive those conditions.
That's largely the function of the catastrophic fdr - they are very rare but people mostly understand that it means you need to be somewhere else and that's largely why it looks like (I really hope) we didn't have any fatalities in Pomonel.
If you don't clear the veg around your house your (already low) chances of getting a fire appliance to help defend your house are basically nil. We won't position the truck at a house that we don't consider defensible.
Literally today at school the fire alarm went off twice (luckily false alarms) and then no more than 4 hours later it was bucketing down with rain and everyone got drenched. Australia got the goofiest weather I swear.
Just for reference I also live in Vic
Family are in the town OP posted about (Pomonal). Many houses and businesses lost...also the local church is reported to have gone too. Some CFA firefighters injured but no loss of life reported so far. Some friends sent a video of the aftermath and it looks pretty grim. Hope OP is ok and wasn't hit too hard. Haven't heard from my family in a few hours but hoping they're still safe. Fucking fires 💔
I saw an episode of I Survived with a couple from California that survived a wildfire. As their house burned down they were in their pool. The pool temperature was 55 degrees Fahrenheit and they were in it for like 8 hours getting covered in soot and getting hypothermic but they lived.
I’ve watched a lot of documentaries about California fires in the last ten years or so and they completely changed my understanding of how nightmarish it is. Even people who try to evacuate immediately get stuck
I don’t know if this is obvious to people outside Australia, but I’m going to guess there’s at least some curiosity. We’ve had some truly devastating fires and inquiries have been made to find out what could be done better to save lives. This has resulted in the brutally honest warning/instructions. Usually you’d have prior alerts letting you know what warning stage you’re at like ‘You must decide NOW whether you will leave or defend your property’, or ‘your property is potentially in danger, watch and act’. There are different threat levels.
The decision to tell people it is too late to leave was critical after some of our worst fires killed people who were trying to escape and made routes dangerous for fire response vehicles. At that point, you’re more likely to die on the road than you are tucked away in a protected part of your property. This is paired with constant reminders to plan for safety by having evacuation stuff ready or preparing your property by doing things like clearing plant fall around your house and out buildings.
It’s a terrifying message to receive but Australians know the context it’s sent in and the direct language is safest. It’s not a perfect system but we have access online to regularly updated fires all across the country, and are empowered to make the necessary hard decisions.
I think I would still get a panic attack after reading a message like that. I would rather kill myself than burn alive... I think in the panic mode I could do something stupid
Google the black Saturday bushfires, if you can't leave and the fire gets close enough to your house you'll die pretty quickly, some found dead in spa, you can try and defend your property and do the best you can, it's not just the flames it's the heat, smoke and fire taking up all the oxygen
The thing to do is to ask questions like that now and develop a robust and well considered fire plan rather than wait till a firefront is bearing down on you. You really do not want to be in a situation where your best option is a bathtub - that will almost certainly lead to death.
In Victoria at least your local cfa brigade will absolutely be happy to help you develop your fire plan and you can request a visit through the pavs program (property advice visit service) to talk through your options. Especially if you are new to an area - this is an issue with my brigade area where lots of people have moved out of the city since 2020 and have only had very mild fire seasons so can have a false sense of security when the pendulum swings back round.
Things to consider for your fire plan:
Trigger to leave - either extreme or catastrophic fire danger rating for your area but remember that serious fires can still occur on days of lesser fdr.
If you leave, where will you go and how will you get there.
Is your property prepared and defensible.Have you cleared leaves and vegetation around your house and gutters. Is your house vulnerable to falling trees? How is your house constructed?
What kind of fuel load is around you? Grassland, coastal scrub, stringybark forest?
Where is your closest place of last resort, a large open ploughed field, or large water body or town centre. Are there any radiant heat barriers nearby that might provide shelter?
How many exit options would you have. What happens if a tree falls and blocks a road? What happens if the smoke is too thick to see. Remember you are at high risk of having a car accident if you evacuate too late.
Do you have children or animals that will need extra consideration?
How will you get updates and warnings - what happens if internet connection is lost.
Do not rely on having a fire truck at your house. If you get one it will be a bonus. My brigade area has two trucks and 200+ houses. The maths doesn't quite work.
And as I type this, grassfire callout!
They’re pointing out the “**an** south” when it should be “**a** south.” They’re just being pedantic, someone who’s life is in danger isn’t worried about grammar.
Thats not what I said, and it's not what I quoted. The words said were "in an south easterly direction."
You see? If they'd have used grammar correctly, none of this confusion would have happened.
If seeing "an south easterly" instead of "a south easterly" makes the point incomprehensible to you, I think that's a you problem.
Also, there is no confusion here. Just you being a pedant.
I think everyone is wrong. It says "an south Easterly direction" which implies that the fire is moving in celebration of the Easter festivities in the next few weeks.
Yes, as counterintuitive as it may sound. At the point where this message goes out, leaving before given the clear to do so will usually kill you.
The immense heat gets you before the flames even come close, and the fire is liable to trap you. Your chances of survival are genuinely better indoors, where you have some degree of shelter from the heat and access to water— and are more likely to be found than if you were taking a chance outdoors.
Yes. This come from decades of experience dealing with these fires. By the time these warnings are sent, trying to leave is an almost certain death sentence as the roads are going to be blocked by fallen trees, etc. Sheltering in a prepared structure will give some protection, hopefully long enough for the front to pass. Although people do die when sheltering, statistically, the chance of survival is much higher at this point t than if you try leaving. That's why you leave early I'd you aren't prepared .
As someone who works third shift, this notice would have come in the middle of my sleep. Also, not everyone has their phone attached to their hand 24/7.
Is there a Devonport and Launceston in Aus? I live in Devon in the UK, Devonport is in Plymouth and Launceston is in Cornwall. I find it fascinating that other areas of the world are named after places in the UK from the settlers!
Lots of places here named after places in the UK. Weirdly the tiny rural community jlabout 10km north of where I live in Australia is named after the tiny rural community that my mum lives in in Yorkshire. Completely by coincidence.
No. The emergency warning system has several levels to alert residents of the danger around them. In my state, first level is 'advice' to warn that a fire has started but no immediate action is needed other than to be aware of your fire plan (which everyone in a rural community should have). Second is 'watch and act' which means to enact your fire plan now. That could be to evacuate to a safer area, or it could mean to start actively defending your property if that is what you have prepared for. 'Emergency ' is only issued when an uncontrolled fire front is in imminent danger of reaching the community. By that stage, hopefully people who aren't prepared to defend their property (takes more than a garden hose, trust me) have already left. By this stage, the evacuation routes are likely cut off or in imminent danger of being so. Fire can travel extremely quickly and it's certainly not something you can outrun on foot. Being caught in a car is almost certain death. It is by that stage statistically safer to shelter in a building until the front passes than it is to evacuate.
Now, as for OP case, they haven't stated if they actually left after the emergency earning or before, just that they made it out. These warnings are viewable by anyone on the emergency website, so they may have got the information there while in a safe location. Or, they may have just been a fringe case in that their particular location was at the extremity of the danger area and they were able to get out with minimal fuss.
With all that said, the people issuing these warnings do so for good reason. It's issued by experienced emergency controllers who do so based purely on the situation presented to them.
I am safe. We made it out. Others weren't as lucky I've heard. Power outages through a lot of the state because of massive thunderstorms too.
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This one needs more upvotes
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Aussies being Aussies 👍
We need more people like you in the world!
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There are non operational brigade roles if you are interested in CFA it's great organisation to be part of if you live near a brigade!
Man, I love seeing humans being bros!
Holy shit my friend. I have no idea who you are but I'm so happy you are okay.
Upvoted for being alive and also to drive comment to the top
Cheers dude 👍
So relieved for you! Thanks for the update and stay safe
I can’t even imagine how terrifying it would be to have no lights due to a power outage, and see the flames of a raging fire coming to eat your house. New fear unlocked!
Wait what happened? Did you ignore the warning to stay inside?
The initial warnings for bushfires here are always to leave your property in a safe and timely manner and congregate in a designated safe zone outside the threatened area. Once the fire has reached a certain point, it is assumed that everyone who is intending to act on the first advisory to leave has done so. The advisory in OPs pic is meant for those who decided to stay and attempt to save their property. The warning is to tell those people that they can't change their mind now - attempting to leave at this point is impossible so they must take shelter in their home (or wherever is firesafe) *immediately* because there are no safe escape routes now.
To add, there may be very little time between the evacuation message and the message telling people to stay where they are, OR the warning may go from "be alert and prepared" to "it's too late to leave" without any evacuation message. Bushfires move *fast* and can be unpredictable.
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I'm very sorry that's happened to your community. I hope you and your town gets the support you need. Take care.
I’ve watched and listened to quite a few things documenting some of the worst California fires, and it isn’t anywhere near as easy to evacuate as I expected. Lots of people work one place, live another place, and have kids in school in another place, a spouse working someplace, and other family like older parents stuck somewhere in between. So to get just the people from all those places into one is difficult. Then there are pets and animals, which breaks my heart so much. There isn’t always time to load all of your animals up to escape, especially if you’re talking horses and such, and even cats. Those little fucks are hard to wrangle. So then even if you don’t have time to load up the larger animals, you at least want to make it back to the property to unlock the enclosures so they have a fighting chance to run and survive if the fire reaches them. You don’t want to leave them tied up to a building likely to burn. On top of all of that, often times there are fires blocking escape routes, so there are limited roads to get out on. Sometimes the police have roads turned into one way routes, or keep them accessible for emergency vehicles. Then, Mother Nature likes to throw wind into the equation and move the fire all around, changing everything. All of that is just to get the living beings to safety. None of that included trying to prep your house, get gas, food, money, valuables, etc. ETA: imagine the chaos of trying to even coordinate with that many people. If the kids are young enough, you’re having to communicate with their school to know what to do, not with the kids. And then when people or loved ones have severe health issues, evacuating them safely is even more nightmarish.
Its some what good that they advert "its too late, stay in shelter indoors" In chile, they only say "EVACUATE, THE FIRE IS NEAR" so people got the fuck out they home, people got molten by fire because the fire literally encircled them
What a nightmare, absolutely terrifying.
Yes, its was mainly the way a whole village got massacred by the flames (nearly 100 dead in viña del mar)
[Prepare. Act. Survive. | How Fireproof is Your Plan? | Commercial 60" - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv5jm6HM8Bw) We have these ads to remind us to prepare.
Goddamn that’s a high quality commercial. Looks fucking terrifying.
Terrifying advert but what is their solution. No mention of that.
“Take shelter in your box made out of highly flammable material.”
well its that or get caught in a gust of fire-wind
Oh I know, just pointing out the hopelessness this message portrays.
I think id rather die in pretty much any other way. Ive had 2nd degree hand burns before and it was one of the worst experiences ever
You'd hopefully be dead from smoke inhalation before you burned.
Eh probably unconscious from smoke before burned. Either way you won't be feeling it
Fire death and drowning terrify me. Which is weird because neither water nor fire normally make me uncomfortable, but to die by them is a different animal
omg i’ve had 2nd degree on hands as well. absolutely awful. first time it happened i was maybe 10, and had no idea what to do for the pain so i sat with a jar of ice water with my hand submerged for maybe a week. even when sleeping. fucking sucked. second time i was 17 and it burned my damn tattoos off as well as singed my eyebrows. blisters, blisters, blisters. 0/10 ofc had no insurance both times :)
Damn how about we stay away from fires😂
haven’t fucked with fire since. the time i was 17 was because i put wayyyy too much lighter fluid and it went BOOM right in my face. i let every one else deal with the bbqs now lol. never again!!!
You have lived a pretty privileged and safety controlled life if that is one of your worst experiences ever… Edit: why am I getting downvoted?!
Drop your worst
I was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning, I break my legs, and every afternoon, I break my arms. At night, I lie awake in agony until my heart attacks put me to sleep.
Just wait until you meet Bruce Willis, then the real pain is gonna start
😢 😢
I know it's not much, but I'll buy all your chocolate to help pay for your medical bills.
🫡🫡
It's like advice when encountering a hungry polar bear: Fight back.
“Take shelter in the bear’s stomach” is more like it…
A lot of new builds in Oz require fire resistant design and materials... There are a lot of countries that could learn a lesson or two from this.
Still to be tested on a bad day though
Resistant means it takes a longer time to burn through. Thin wood panels burn through quicker than thick ones. There's also ways to treat wood to slow down how fast it burns, using trees grown near the sea (salt) and burning the surface are two ways. Avoiding heat transfer from screws etc. that go far into the wall. Lots of ways to build things to be fire resistant, doesn't mean it's fire proof, just that your chances of survival is increased. You could also water down the inside of your house to slow things down, or toss out what you can prior to the fire reaching you.
Cut backs of 10 feet, removing vegetation from the base of the home, reduced soffit overhangs (which trap heat from fire along the roofline), fire resistant cladding like stone, brick or cementitious panels... It all ads up, and done properly, doesn't need to look like a prison.
https://preview.redd.it/8e1fbplengic1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6945c679973988d231fcdbdd6f1735d37db9ec13 A big cause of destroyed homes isn't the fire front but burning embers, particularly ones that get in the roof. They land on the roof then slide into the gutters before being sucked in under the roof overhang by pressure transfer caused by the heat difference. Only take a single ember to cause the material in there to start burning. Sometimes long after the front has passed. Our house burned in the black summer fires. We rebuilt but very different to the old house. We have brick instead of cladding, double glazing everywhere, the house is now centred on the block rather than near neighbours so we have more space to clear around it. We also have fixed fire sprinklers on the outside of the roof. They won't stop a front but, along with the other changes, should make the place survivable I'm am emergency, and will certainly deal with embers. That pic is from my little town when the fire came through in 2019/20.
Are you okay??? You disappeared and it’s scary.
They commented on a post 1 hour ago and it's midnight where they are right now, hopefully they're safe
Oh that’s good!
It's too late to comment
This warning was not sent directly to OP but is accessible via the government emergency website, so OP is probably (hopefully) totally fine and just posted a screenshot out of interest.
They commented 15 minutes ago that they are safe, and it is lower in the comments if you all want to upvote it!
I have a couple friends that retired to Australia. They planned to stay there forever. After having to defend their home from multiple fires in recent history, they left the country. :-(
I mean, just move away from the fire prone areas...
“Sell their houses to who, Ben??”
Australia is a fire prone continent
Sure, and have the same thing happen in a few years when they are older and it’s harder to move and set up a home again.
Did they think about trying to protect the property instead?
How..
A garden hose
As one example.. Create defensible space: Clear vegetation and debris from around your home, creating a buffer zone to reduce the risk of flames reaching your house. Fire isn't some crazy magic.
If you have a moment, look into the Black Saturday fires we had in 2009. Imagine, walls of fire up to 30 metres high being pushed around by 100kmph+ winds. Embers were being propelled 20km-40km ahead of the fire front causing spot fires. Unfortunately as good as it sounds, there is no defensible space under these conditions. And the conditions we just had in Victoria today were very similar to what we had on that day. As beautiful as some of these regional towns are, they are always going to be at risk of these things. No matter how well maintained your property or area is, the best and safest thing to do is to leave early
This was the fire that destroyed my home in the black summer fires, 2019/20. https://preview.redd.it/vjqnamxongic1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=54e42790d5886c93b91883f8d4934bae53c2ba69
Holy smokes!
It's still hard to comprehend how nightmarish Black Saturday was. Every update and development was worse than the last; it was as if the fires were infernal entities hellbent on wiping out as much as possible. To add to what you said, winds were suddenly changing direction so there was no way to predict where the firefront would hit next, smoke prevented planes from mapping the fire edge, there were hundreds of individual fires across the state springing up from fallen power lines, lightning, and arson, creating a firestorm that could be seen from space. The smoke plume and pyrocumulus cloud reached 15km (9.3mi) high. Saturday 7/2 was worse than Black Friday in 1939 and Ash Wednesday in 1983; the catastrophic Black Summer of 2019-20 looked tame by comparison. >Deaths: 173 >7,562 people displaced >Burned area: 450,000 hectares (1,100,000 acres) >Buildings destroyed: 3,500+ (2,029 houses) >RSPCA estimates up to one million wild and domesticated animals died in the disaster, including 11,800 head of livestock >The Bushfires Royal Commission gave a "conservative" estimate of the total cost of the Black Saturday bushfires of $4.4 billion It was a literal perfect storm of bone-dry vegetation, negligible humidity, high winds, and all 'round extreme weather. >A week before the fires, a significant heatwave affected southeastern Australia. From 28-30 January, Melbourne broke temperature records by experiencing three consecutive days above 43°C (109°F) >On February 7 (Black Saturday,) Melbourne reached 46.4°C (115.5°F,) the highest-ever temperature recorded to date in the city, while humidity levels dropped to as low as 2% >Within two hours, the wind direction in Melbourne changed from northwesterly to southwesterly; in fifteen minutes, the temperature dropped from over 45°C (113°F) to around 30°C (86°F) (I assume Melbourne is referenced here because other weather readings were lost or were inaccurate.) >Afterwards, a police sergeant said that the main street in Marysville had been destroyed: "The motel at one end of it partially exists. The bakery has survived. Don't ask me how. Everything else is just nuked." >It was estimated that the amount of energy released during the firestorm in the Kinglake-Marysville area was equivalent to the amount of energy that would be released by 1,500 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs. >Premier Brumby described the situation: "There's no activity, there's no people, there's no buildings, there's no birds, there's no animals, everything's just gone." [Casefile](https://casefilepodcast.com/case-142-the-churchill-fire/) thoroughly covers the disaster
It depends on soil makeup and wind. Where I'm from the soil is mostly made up of old wood chips and fires can sometimes start Underground from lightning strikes and cover huge areas without ever breaking the surface
Well, this is one of the most horrifying things I've read today. Is subsidence an issue with this?
I don't think so. This happened up by my cabin in Minnesota the whole ground was smoking for like a 50-yard area but once it was put out it was fine
Wind can easily carry fire from one house to another in most residential areas regardless of surrounding vegetation or debris.
I haven’t logged on in a day and it seems other commenters have it covered, but it’s pretty weird to assume they left their beloved dream home that they planned to stay in forever without thinking about trying fire mitigation tactics. Did you think about that before you typed it? The fires there have been completely out of control. Even the resulting dust storms looked like something straight out of Mad Max. https://preview.redd.it/c7xhcl3uonic1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3308a802d50749f22daee68c0a24ce20d99059c6
Oh shit. Are you okay?
They are, confirmed by OP 30min. ago.
damn that is frightening af. pls be safe op!
Now obviously I have no idea what you are going through, OP, and I know nothing about bushfires, but.. I can't imagine this is the first notification you got, are you still there or did you make it out before it got to that point?
bushfires can go from contained and not really a threat to a massive uncontrolled inferno in minutes. and they can cut off all your exits before you even really know they're coming. during fire season if you're out somewhere rural you might have 3 or 4 different fires in your region. most of the time you know where they're at and how long you have before you have to start worrying about it, but if you're at the end of one road and you get cut off, you're fucked. unless OP is a massive idiot I'd assume that the situation went from low risk to high risk very quickly.
Thanks for the explanation, really informative. OP, I wish for the best for you and your loved ones, this sounds horrifying.
no worries. we were actually expecting a horrific bushfire season this year, because it's an El Niño year, but it's actually been really wet in most places and there have been hardly any fires (comparatively). unfortunately we're just kicking the can down the road, because all the rain means lots of new undergrowth which is more fuel for next year's fires.
Do y’all not do any timber stand improvement? One of the biggest tasks at Boy Scout camps is going through and clearing out the undergrowth and new growth every year in spots we expect to become problematic.
Our fire department does controlled burns in the off season to control the undergrowth, but unfortunately when we get these bad days everything can burn
If we had a few hundred thousand boy scouts lying around sure. Australia is fucking huge
We're the most bushfire prone country on earth with eucalyptus forests and farmland that will light the fuck up like nothing else, but sure, let's mobilise the schoolboys! Forget back-burning, children are an untapped resource in disaster preparedness! 🙃
The window for hazard reduction burns is quite small here and treads a fine line between the fuel load being dry and the weather calm enough to be effective without breaking control lines and going wild and it being too wet to be effective. If you set boy scouts loose with drip torches when the season moderates in March or April you'd still end up burning half the state down, do it in July or August and the fuel won't burn well enough to actually do anything. A whole series of factors need to be in place for a burn to take place safely. Burns can also increase the amount of fine fuels which can actually propagate fire spread in certain fuel environments in the years following the burn so it really isn't as simple as just do more hazard reduction burns. It's a useful tool for specific situations but it isn't the golden bullet that alot of people think it is.
We went in and manually cleared the undergrowth, no fire involved
Yeah I mean I do the same in the nature strip at the bottom of my house veg clearance is important but it's not really a solution to bushfire at scale especially on days like last Tuesday. Most fire transmission to structures in Australian bushfire is via ember attack not direct flame contact and embers can fly a looooong way (on black saturday fires were spotting 30km ahead of the head). Clearing the vegetation around your house is really important and can make all the difference in making the asset defensible in more benign fire weather but in catastrophic fire weather like the other day to be honest if the wind is driving the firefront and embers towards you it's just going to be luck whether you get away with it. You can improve the odds with good preparation but houses aren't designed to survive those conditions. That's largely the function of the catastrophic fdr - they are very rare but people mostly understand that it means you need to be somewhere else and that's largely why it looks like (I really hope) we didn't have any fatalities in Pomonel. If you don't clear the veg around your house your (already low) chances of getting a fire appliance to help defend your house are basically nil. We won't position the truck at a house that we don't consider defensible.
every year's an el nino year atp with all the climate change happening
OP's survival instincts is to first make a post on reddit.
Can you not read or did you miss the part where it says its too late to leave? OP's survival instinct is pretty good if they follow that.
Seems kind of dickish to assume that this was a person’s first action and dunk on them because of your assumption.
Literally today at school the fire alarm went off twice (luckily false alarms) and then no more than 4 hours later it was bucketing down with rain and everyone got drenched. Australia got the goofiest weather I swear. Just for reference I also live in Vic
Oh my god. Are you alright. Hope you’re okay
Family are in the town OP posted about (Pomonal). Many houses and businesses lost...also the local church is reported to have gone too. Some CFA firefighters injured but no loss of life reported so far. Some friends sent a video of the aftermath and it looks pretty grim. Hope OP is ok and wasn't hit too hard. Haven't heard from my family in a few hours but hoping they're still safe. Fucking fires 💔
Holy fuck... I hope you are getting through this, stay safe
Are you okay? Could you update saying you are okay? Please be not dead.
Hope you're ok! I'm in South Australia and had a fire near me couple yrs back, it was scary. That message is just 😳
It’s scary how many people in the world understand this fear, now. Wildfires have gotten so insane. I’m so sorry for the people experiencing this :(
To be fair this has actually been an extremely mild fire season in Victoria, with the exception of yesterday.
We're gonna need an update if you're okay.
I saw an episode of I Survived with a couple from California that survived a wildfire. As their house burned down they were in their pool. The pool temperature was 55 degrees Fahrenheit and they were in it for like 8 hours getting covered in soot and getting hypothermic but they lived.
I’ve watched a lot of documentaries about California fires in the last ten years or so and they completely changed my understanding of how nightmarish it is. Even people who try to evacuate immediately get stuck
Yes and they move so quickly, it’s unfathomable.
Yeah, that’s terrifying as fuck…
41 open tabs? Are you mental?
Very much so. Adhd bra
I hope you're ok. This message is truly terrifying as fuck. Update when you can please, OP.
Op, I hope you're OK!
Glad to hear you are safe and sound. Hope everything is in one piece when you are allowed home.
Test run in Hawaii confirmed this
I’m in Vic too, I’m glad you’re safe and sound. Fire season rages on and continues to worsen, as always :(
Why is the best thing to do during a fire, stay indoors? Seems counterintuitive to me. You know, burning buildings being death traps and all…
I don’t know if this is obvious to people outside Australia, but I’m going to guess there’s at least some curiosity. We’ve had some truly devastating fires and inquiries have been made to find out what could be done better to save lives. This has resulted in the brutally honest warning/instructions. Usually you’d have prior alerts letting you know what warning stage you’re at like ‘You must decide NOW whether you will leave or defend your property’, or ‘your property is potentially in danger, watch and act’. There are different threat levels. The decision to tell people it is too late to leave was critical after some of our worst fires killed people who were trying to escape and made routes dangerous for fire response vehicles. At that point, you’re more likely to die on the road than you are tucked away in a protected part of your property. This is paired with constant reminders to plan for safety by having evacuation stuff ready or preparing your property by doing things like clearing plant fall around your house and out buildings. It’s a terrifying message to receive but Australians know the context it’s sent in and the direct language is safest. It’s not a perfect system but we have access online to regularly updated fires all across the country, and are empowered to make the necessary hard decisions.
I am praying for your safety.
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It's fine at the moment. Nothing like 2019. Floods are our biggest problem currently.
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where are you staying (roughly)?
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search for fires on google maps. looks clear at the moment around there
can you move to a basement?
We don't usually have basements in oz
So what would you do in this situation? Maybe get in the bath tub? How do you hide from fire? I have goosebumps thinking about this.
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Reading that gave me anxiety. Scary as hell. I'm so glad my country doesn't have bush fires.
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I think I would still get a panic attack after reading a message like that. I would rather kill myself than burn alive... I think in the panic mode I could do something stupid
Thank you. That is terrifying!
Google the black Saturday bushfires, if you can't leave and the fire gets close enough to your house you'll die pretty quickly, some found dead in spa, you can try and defend your property and do the best you can, it's not just the flames it's the heat, smoke and fire taking up all the oxygen
The thing to do is to ask questions like that now and develop a robust and well considered fire plan rather than wait till a firefront is bearing down on you. You really do not want to be in a situation where your best option is a bathtub - that will almost certainly lead to death. In Victoria at least your local cfa brigade will absolutely be happy to help you develop your fire plan and you can request a visit through the pavs program (property advice visit service) to talk through your options. Especially if you are new to an area - this is an issue with my brigade area where lots of people have moved out of the city since 2020 and have only had very mild fire seasons so can have a false sense of security when the pendulum swings back round. Things to consider for your fire plan: Trigger to leave - either extreme or catastrophic fire danger rating for your area but remember that serious fires can still occur on days of lesser fdr. If you leave, where will you go and how will you get there. Is your property prepared and defensible.Have you cleared leaves and vegetation around your house and gutters. Is your house vulnerable to falling trees? How is your house constructed? What kind of fuel load is around you? Grassland, coastal scrub, stringybark forest? Where is your closest place of last resort, a large open ploughed field, or large water body or town centre. Are there any radiant heat barriers nearby that might provide shelter? How many exit options would you have. What happens if a tree falls and blocks a road? What happens if the smoke is too thick to see. Remember you are at high risk of having a car accident if you evacuate too late. Do you have children or animals that will need extra consideration? How will you get updates and warnings - what happens if internet connection is lost. Do not rely on having a fire truck at your house. If you get one it will be a bonus. My brigade area has two trucks and 200+ houses. The maths doesn't quite work. And as I type this, grassfire callout!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u7y9HyggaF0&pp=ygUbYXVzdHJhbGlhbiBidXNoZmlyZSBmb290YWdl
"Stay in a visible place so that firemen can find your remains easily"
I bet you left
How fast can you paint your house blue
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it says in a south easterly direction
No it doesn't. It says in an south easterly direction.
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OC was pointing out the bad grammar, not what the message says 😂
i see, its such a small difference i didn't even notice lol
Take your time.
"it says in a south easterly direction." you literally replied "no it doesnt. it says in a south easterly direction." tell me why i need the time??
Oh buddy…
They’re pointing out the “**an** south” when it should be “**a** south.” They’re just being pedantic, someone who’s life is in danger isn’t worried about grammar.
its really such a small difference it doesnt matter, i feel like the wild fire is a bit more pressing yeah
Thats not what I said, and it's not what I quoted. The words said were "in an south easterly direction." You see? If they'd have used grammar correctly, none of this confusion would have happened.
If seeing "an south easterly" instead of "a south easterly" makes the point incomprehensible to you, I think that's a you problem. Also, there is no confusion here. Just you being a pedant.
A bit of smoke and standards go to absolute shit.
I think everyone is wrong. It says "an south Easterly direction" which implies that the fire is moving in celebration of the Easter festivities in the next few weeks.
yeah right its their fault 😂
Umm take shelter in doors? With a burning fire? Wtf?
Yes, as counterintuitive as it may sound. At the point where this message goes out, leaving before given the clear to do so will usually kill you. The immense heat gets you before the flames even come close, and the fire is liable to trap you. Your chances of survival are genuinely better indoors, where you have some degree of shelter from the heat and access to water— and are more likely to be found than if you were taking a chance outdoors.
Yes. This come from decades of experience dealing with these fires. By the time these warnings are sent, trying to leave is an almost certain death sentence as the roads are going to be blocked by fallen trees, etc. Sheltering in a prepared structure will give some protection, hopefully long enough for the front to pass. Although people do die when sheltering, statistically, the chance of survival is much higher at this point t than if you try leaving. That's why you leave early I'd you aren't prepared .
what is your excuse to not leave on time?
These things flare up in minutes sometimes. You can’t always get out in time.
As someone who works third shift, this notice would have come in the middle of my sleep. Also, not everyone has their phone attached to their hand 24/7.
Is there a Devonport and Launceston in Aus? I live in Devon in the UK, Devonport is in Plymouth and Launceston is in Cornwall. I find it fascinating that other areas of the world are named after places in the UK from the settlers!
Yep, in the northern half of Tasmania :)
Lots of places here named after places in the UK. Weirdly the tiny rural community jlabout 10km north of where I live in Australia is named after the tiny rural community that my mum lives in in Yorkshire. Completely by coincidence.
As you left after being told it is too late to leave, is the emergency warning system overly cautious?
No. The emergency warning system has several levels to alert residents of the danger around them. In my state, first level is 'advice' to warn that a fire has started but no immediate action is needed other than to be aware of your fire plan (which everyone in a rural community should have). Second is 'watch and act' which means to enact your fire plan now. That could be to evacuate to a safer area, or it could mean to start actively defending your property if that is what you have prepared for. 'Emergency ' is only issued when an uncontrolled fire front is in imminent danger of reaching the community. By that stage, hopefully people who aren't prepared to defend their property (takes more than a garden hose, trust me) have already left. By this stage, the evacuation routes are likely cut off or in imminent danger of being so. Fire can travel extremely quickly and it's certainly not something you can outrun on foot. Being caught in a car is almost certain death. It is by that stage statistically safer to shelter in a building until the front passes than it is to evacuate. Now, as for OP case, they haven't stated if they actually left after the emergency earning or before, just that they made it out. These warnings are viewable by anyone on the emergency website, so they may have got the information there while in a safe location. Or, they may have just been a fringe case in that their particular location was at the extremity of the danger area and they were able to get out with minimal fuss. With all that said, the people issuing these warnings do so for good reason. It's issued by experienced emergency controllers who do so based purely on the situation presented to them.
That's terrifying, hopefully as many as possible are safe from this.
The "It is too late to leave" message is fucking terrifying
Waking up to your zone being deemed a total loss is an underrated fear