So, could something similar happen in major Australian cities – and how prepared are we? The answers are: yes, and not very.
Poorly. Very poorly.
We use the outer suburbs as a fire break. No trees left to burn there. Just roof and road.
It the people of officer could read they’d be very VERY upset right now.
Sad but true.
You think modern houses — more glue and plastic than solid timber — aren’t going to explode into flames? Modern suburbs are tinderboxes.
I can see this being picked up by the right as an argument against walkable urbanism (“all that density is a deathtrap!”) and in favour of the car-dependent quarter-acre-block sprawl that is Our Sacred Way Of Life.
In reality, the thin boundary between forested country and built-up areas is the problem. A solution would be to have farmland as a buffer around the cities, as pastures and fields of crops don’t burn as well as either.
If a suburb has older housing stock with older gardens, for instance, it’s absolutely ripe for a fire to spread quickly. If you have more modern housing stock (which is usually better at defending against ember attack), and the houses are more spaced apart and the gardens are clearer, then you might be OK.
ok but what if we have “more modern housing stock” clad in flammable material and clustered together up each others arses cheek to jowl and excuse me, 1666 London is calling…
Every city makes a fire break around the whole city.
Just tow the fire out of the environment.
Just move away from the fire zones? It’s like building sand castles among the reefs at low tide.
LoL. Building in the tidal zone, eh?
Well yeah, it happened in 2019. Pretty sure the bushfires started in August
Same way we cope every year our country burns…
