A mate’s 75yr old parents are directly south of the Bunyip Fire. Adamantly refusing to leave. Completely disbelieve the seriousness of the situation. They’re in the probable path if a grassfire takes off tonight, which would probably happen when they are in bed asleep. Awesome. Their plan is to jump in the car if they see fire, even more awesome. Ideally they’d just be at their daughters house spending the weekend with their grandchildren, but no.
Defending a property is next level stressful. The physical and mental effort is immense, and most often done without practice. Fires run fast. They change behaviour in minutes. One moment everything is calm and peaceful, the next it’s coming towards you at speed. Standing in front of that isn’t something to take lightly. The minutes before a fire hits are both spectacular and absolutely terrifying.
I’ve seen home owners start off confident and ready to act out their plan. Then as things get real they start to panic, by which time it’s too late for them to leave without putting themselves in significant danger.
I can understand why people start to disregard warnings, it’s the boy who cried wolf. But when do you put out an emergency warning? 5% chance of your house getting torched? 20% chance? People need time to prepare, so warnings need to be early. When there’s a real risk, but out the window looks fine, people decide they know better and ignore them.
I’m venting. The last thing fire crews want are underprepared people who didn’t understand the danger they were in. The best things a fire crew wants to see are either empty buildings or extremely well prepared ones.
Anyway, here’s some action shots from the public domain.
