New eBOOK – The Bushfire Solution Papers

This is a collection of background papers that discuss concerning issues as stand alone papers and then put the pieces together under a redefine goal of protecting the house from damage. Why? When we protect the house, we protect the person and the house.

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We are very concerned about the continuing decline of fire protection standards in Victoria. We hope these Papers will highlight the vital need to turn them around.

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The Papers cover the issues that we are most concerned about at the moment, for example
• The government relies solely on suppression to protect the community, knowing very well that the fire brigade model has a limited design capacity and that when running fires escape control, there is no Plan B for the unprotected communities they attack.
• The government blames proximity to forest and trees as the major measure of danger, yet there is no valid evidence. It is nothing more than a dogmatic belief. But, on this basis, it requires new houses to fortify at great expense and declares towns extreme risk and encourages evacuation
• Investment in fire equipment and bureaucracy is steadily growing, but the bushfire performance statistics are getting worse. The CFA now has assets of over $1B and annual budget of $0.5B,
• Bushfires are regarded as natural disasters but they are controllable at the source and prior to the ignition. With natural disasters, there is an acceptance of collateral damage as inevitable = house loss. “Houses will be lost anyway, so let’s get the people out of the way”.
• Evacuation is the people protection tool yet researchers say house loss increases with vacancy rate. Evacuation is the easy option that creates more problems than it solves.
• Researchers tell us their findings, but we do not apply them

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We will highlight specific Papers over the next few weeks.