Fighting bushfires or preventing them?
Bushfires occur in Victoria and Australia too often to be ignored. Australian fires and floods appear to be falling from the sky and surprising authorities the first time, and every time. Professional fire prevention is not considered to my knowledge so far.
Numerous government documents and reports can be found online – however, I am not seeing how can real problems be resolved with them.
Advertising for fire
Statistics are telling us that humans light 85% of bushfires and we do virtually nothing to stop them. Read more here.
So what can we do about it? Instead of notifying all residents about high fire danger on hot days, we should notify all to go to the beach or pools. We had the opportunity to see in the last two years – during Covid when a fire was not advertised there were no big fires.
Firewood collection
Great initiative to have firewood collection from the forests in Victoria link here. However, we have more than logs in the bush as fire fuel. Timber bark, dry branches, and leaves can be used in many industries. Some of them are Modwood– wood and resin composite materials, pellets, and structural chipboard,… Forest management should allow those industries to collect wood material from the forest floor.
Abundance of oxygen
Against the popular belief about the carbon footprint, Australian bushland has a dangerous oxygen concentration. In combination with the thunderstorm, it is easily combustible. Custom-designed antennae can be used to capture the electrical energy from a thunderstorm and store it in a battery. This stored energy can then be used to power homes and businesses, reducing the need for fossil fuels. In addition, this process can also help to minimize the bushfire risk by providing a source of electricity that does not require combustible materials. As a result, custom-designed antennae could play a major role in reducing carbon emissions and preventing bushfire risks.
Traditional owners and fire
Any property is well kept if it is cared for like your own backyard. Australian land belongs to the Aboriginal nation. So wouldn’t it be logical for them to manage it as well? I propose forming 1000+ Aboriginal groups of all tribes and providing them an opportunity to live in and around all bushland. They will protect the bush with a vested interest. Then, get their leadership to provide traditional burns with the understory that was not previously cleared or collected for various industries that use timber and timber dust. With such care from the first nation bush rangers, new stories will be created and old will be kept.
Role of urbanism in preventing bushfires
Urbanists can be engaged to strategize all aspects of territorial fire safety, site analysis, prevailing winds, prevention methods, and the practicality of fighting fires. Protecting houses from fire danger or constructing them to be fire resilient will be one of our next blogs. Further discussion and examples to follow.
*Note 1 Featured image from the CSIRO website. Link here