Protecting your environment

What to do for established homes

Have a fire extinguisher handy inside your home for small fires. Make sure everyone knows where it is, that it is easily accessible, and that they know how to use it.
Install smoke detectors inside your home. Install them in areas where a fire is likely to start, and people can hear them and so make a quick evacuation and in places. This could be in the kitchen closer to where people might be sleeping or living in the house, near a central heating source, and so on (as the alarm will go off at the slightest sign of smoke and still give people time to either combat the fire or escape).
Install the better types of smoke detectors that connect directly to your electricity mains (you may need an electrician to do this job for you) as well as a battery for backup in case of a power cut in the home. As for the battery itself, always use a long-life lithium ion battery.
Smoke alarms should comply with Australian Standard (AS) 3736. Alternatively, smoke detectors that meet the Scientific Services Laboratory SSL Specification CLP 124 or Scientific Services Laboratory AS 3786 are acceptable.
If you are purchasing a battery-powered smoke detector, make sure it can run for at least a year on a single battery (for standard cadmium batteries). It should also have a low battery warning. For a much longer life, use a lithium-ion battery.
In the event of a smoke alarm going off, you should have planned an escape route. Clearly mark escape routes in case there is a lot of thick smoke in the house. Keep low and move quickly when leaving the house. Feel doors (e.g., metal door handles carefully) before opening them. If they are hot, the fire is likely to be on the other side. So take an alternative route.
To prevent electrical fires in the home, make sure all appliances are in good working order. Any repairs to electrical appliances or wiring in the home should be done by a qualified electrician.
Switch off appliances you don't need, including the electric blanket, especially if you do not intend to be there to keep an eye on them or benefit from their use.
Give adequate space around appliances for them to keep cool when in operation. Do not cover ventilation slots on appliances.
Do not overload power points. Connecting a large number of appliances to a single powerpoint can cause an unexpected surge of excessive current through the wire lying behind the powerpoint. This will either melt the insulation on the wire, or cause the current to jump across the exposed plugs that are close together just behind the pointpoint socket ,resulting in an electrical spark. Any electrical sparks produced by the current will cause a fire.
If you have an open fire in your fireplace, use a metal fire screen.
If there is an imminent fire outside and you need to protect your house, do not deadlock the doors on the inside. If the house catches fire, you need to escape the house as quickly as possible. No fire problem yet? No need to worry. Just be prepared for an unexpected fire in the house by not deadlocking the windows and doors. If you have sliding doors in the bedroom, do not deadlock them on the inside. You must have at least one quick escape route in the event of a fire in the house.
Keep all heating appliances away from combustible items such as clothes drying on a nearby rack, piles of old newspapers, curtains and furniture. At least one metre from the heating source is recommended, and even then, always check from time to time that combustible items have not been knocked over by children or pets in the direction of the heating source.
Keep the house clear of old newspapers, magazines, old rags and other household rubbish just in case a fire starts in the house and the clutter of flammable items could feed the fire.
If there is a fire outside that is heading for your home, keep as many buckets handy inside the house. If there is a bush fire and the house catches alight in the roof cavity, doors or near windows, use the buckets of water to extinguish the fire. Of course, before the fire arrives, the buckets should be filled with water. Do it before the electricity cuts out on your property. Fill the bath tub, and bathroom/kitchen/laundry sinks with water. Use large wet towels to plug the down pipes and fill the roof gutter with water. Run an independent petrol-driven house water pump (or an electric pump powered by your own Tesla lithium-ion battery or solar panel) connected to a house or garden water tank, and use hoses long enough to place sprinklers around the garden and on the roof.
If you are using solar panels and lithium-ion batteries, do not overload them by running unnecessary appliances. In the event of a fire, you should only need the electricity to pump water around the house. Nothing else.
A Tesla lithium-ion battery and voltage regulator unit must be kept cool. If these items are connected to the house, they should be kept in a cool and protected place. Ideally the battery and regulator should be stored underground or surrounded by concrete or metal enclosures at least 10 metres away from the house. Or else keep the units cool by some means (e.g., put them inside their own metal boxes with ventilation grills underneath and spray water on top and let it fall as this will cool the metal and everything inside).
Solar panels will not be as efficient at producing electricity if there is heavy smoke outside. To make them more efficient, make sure there are no leaves covering the panels. Consider a fully charged Tesla lithium-ion battery for a more reliable power supply in the event of a fire. Or use a petrol-powered water pump for all the water you and your home are likely to need.
Have spare batteries and bulbs ready for radios and flashlights in case the standard mains electricity to the house fails. Use the latest LED torches, which uses less power, are bright enough to help you see where you are going, and have a much longer life as LEDs are unlikely to require replacement for decades.
Use a fireproof safe to store important documents and valuables. The word "fireproof" is particularly important. There are many safes you can buy, but few are genuinely "fireproof". By "fireproof", the safe should be made of a high-temperature metal that can withstand temperatures of up to 1,000 ° C, and there should be a vacuum or ceramic insulation inside the wall of the safe to prevent the radiant heat from penetrating to the final inner metal layer. The safe should be able to withstand a serious fire for at least one hour at very high fire temperatures.
Get to know your local rural fire brigade if your home is in the countryside. Understand their strengths and weaknesses, such as what equipment they have and how quickly they can arrive in the event of a fire. In most cases, you will probably have to fend for yourself. But do what you can to help out by preparing your home and supporting the brigade in local fund-raising activities.

What to do when building a new home

Building a new home? Consider the following, especially when designing and building a home in a fire-prone area such as neighbouring a nature reserve or located in the middle of the country:

Install aluminium or steel window frames. Do you need blinds? Install metal blinds rather than the wooden variety. Or obtain metal shutters than can close the windows and protect the house from hot flying embers.
Multiple exit points such as extra sliding doors in bedrooms as well as a main front and back door is recommended.
Use metal fascias, metal gutters and metal down pipes with metal leaf guards.
Decks and verandahs should be made of concrete or metal.
Use bricks, metal (e.g. corrugated iron) and/or concrete for the external wall of your house.
Install metal fly screens on all windows and sliding doors.
A concrete floor is preferred over an elevated timber floor.
Use steel gaze lined vents and weepholes.
If living out in the country, consider tin or steel roofs instead of tiled roof systems to help minimise openings where hot ash can enter the roof cavity.
Strategically place external house taps where you are likely to need them (i.e., watering the side of the house where fire is likely to come). Use metal sprinklers with a large hole in the top to help distribute water over a large circular area. Get the ones that distribute water in a 360 degree range and with no moving parts as they are the most durable, compact and can withstand vehicles rolling over them or the effects of a fast spinning nylon thread from a wipper-snipper hitting it. Buy several of these sprinklers for each tap around the house.
Purchase and install an independent petrol-driven house water pump next to the house water tank or garden tank in the event the mains water supply loses pressure and you don't have adequate water supply.
Keep the driveway from the main road to the house clear at all times to allow the fire brigade to enter the property safely. Keep trees lining the driveway at a safe distance and avoid the trees' canopies overhanging the driveway. Otherwise use no trees at all. Also design the property to have more than one driveway to a main road to ensure you have an alternative escape route.
For an inner protection area around the house, avoid planting trees near the house where it is likely the canopy of a fully grown tree can overhang the building. Plant trees and bushes in isolation or small clumps with at least two metres of clearing between fully grown trees and bushes. Do not design a garden with trees and bushes close together and lined up in such a way that a fire has a clear path to the house. Use fire-resistant plant species appropriate for the area (i.e. can grow in your area and will attract native wildlife) when designing and planting your garden.
The outer protection area can have more trees, but keep the under storey vegetation to an absolute minimum. Ideally the under storey vegetation should be removed in dry areas to ensure no more than 8 tonnes per hectare of vegetation exists. Develop windbreaks in this outer protection zone using suitable fire-resistant plants. The only exception to this is if you know there is plenty of water to keep everything green and lushes. If not, you need to choose the right plants and weave in between clumps of trees and bushes flat areas to act as firebreaks. Position these clumps of plants to act as wind breaks for the more delicate plants and valuable home and people living further in.
In country areas, build sheds away from the house in case they catch fire and could affect the home. This is particular true if you intend to store any kind of flammable materials, such as a petrol can (although in many instances, you are probably better off putting all the flammable stuff on flat open land and put dirt around it, or dig a hole, far from your home. If they explode, they won't affect the home).
Consider the shape of the house and orientation. If most fires in your area are likely to come from the west, design the house to have the minimum surface area facing the west. Use the right building materials to ensure hot ash cannot stick to the building and burn on that side of the house, such as smooth metal exterior cladding (e.g. corrugated iron sheets), or use more brick and concrete material.
Place gas cylinders away from the house and certainly not on the side of the house where fires are likely to come (e.g. the west). Relief valves of gas cylinders must point away from the building. Or consider not having gas cylinders at all.
In extreme cases where all the best designs of a house cannot save you in the event of a fire, do you have a location in the house where people can be protected such as a large underground cellar (fully sealable)? Otherwise assess the situation when a fire is predicted to arrive in your area and determine well in advance whether or not to stay in the house or leave the area immediately. Depending on the fire-resistant design quality of your home, the size of the approaching fire and the amount of vegetation outside and how close it is to the home, you may consider protecting your home so long as the house is well designed to withstand the fires. But if your house is old with wooden cladding on the outside and definitely not designed to withstand a fire, you should consider taking your most important belongings, your family, your pets and leave the area immediately. Have a plan ready to know where people and pets can find safe shelter, and act on the plan well before the fire arrives.

What governments and the fire services can do for households

Give adequate warning of any impending fire and provide adequate and up-to-date information. To make this achievable, use infra-red satellite technology where possible or perform regular surveillance of fire fronts by helicopter as well as gathering adequate weather information such as wind speed and direction. The most important thing here is for rural fire services and the government to distribute up-to-date and accurate information about fires on readily accessible communication channels with the public such as the internet, free-to-air digital television, and radio. Because the most important information people need to know is:
1. the location, size and direction of the fire front; and
2. how fast the fire front is advancing.
Mark on a map the estimated time of arrival of certain fire fronts to various towns. Local radios should be informed when a fire is nearing suburbs, townships or specific rural areas so they can transmit the latest information to households. The more information households are given about impending fires, the better their decisions will be.

What if I cannot save my house?

If all else fails, protect yourself and those around you. Don't try to be superman/woman and save everything. Do what you can to prepare for bushfires in your area, such as keeping the grass well-mown, trimming branches around the lower trunks of trees, removing rubbish, and having a plan for caring of your pets and other animals. Then assess how likely you are to be able to fight the fire yourself or with family members (and even with available firefighting equipment using reliable and powerful petrol- or electric-driven water pumps) if for some reason the fire should still reach your home. Can you cope with a worst-case scenario where the fire crosses a critical boundary on your property and embers start to hit your home? If not, have an evacuation plan and implement it as early as possible, well before the fire reaches your area. At the end of the day, your health and the well-being of those around you is far more important than any property you may lose.

If you want to minimise the emotional impact of losing your valuable possessions, we recommend that you make sure you have insured your home, you home contents, equipment and fences on your property, as well as yourself against fire with a reputable insurance company.

You should also protect all your most personal possessions with some kind of fire-proof system. For example, consider purchasing a fire-proof safe to hold your most important documents.