Fire bugs are like serial killers.

StG: "It seems a lot of the dead stayed to fight for their houses or left it too late to leave."

My thoughts exactly. The pictures I saw on TV showed houses that looked like they had been hit by a bomb. Survival in them simply wasn't possible. It seems people did figure out, but the fires were so fast by the time they came that decision escape was impossible and they died in their cars.

If I lived in an area like that, I would now be thinking of installing a "fire bunker" along the lines of the tornado bunkers you see in the US.

Meredith,

PM Rudd used the term "mass murderers" I think when police investigations indicated it was deliberately lit. Thats what brought me in here momentarily. Not to join and follow the discussion. Just to express my amazement that someone could deliberately light it. We have had 'ash wednesday'. It isn't as if people didn't know the potential devastation or at least sufficiently about potential devastation. At a minumum people could be expected to lose everything with thousands of sheep and cattle burned alive and some people killed. In this case a large number got killed.

He did MJ, and for once he is right.

In very dry and hot conditions, bushfires create their own wind which propels them incredibly fast as they hop between the treetops. I remember in the Ash Wednesday bushfires of 1983, a fire moved 12 kms from Deans Marsh in 12 minutes before stopping at Lorne on the Vic south coast. That fire was moving at 60 kms/hr.

You may not even outrun the fire by hopping in a car.

The best solution of all is to not live in forested areas. Barring that, a bunker would be a good idea, provided you got a bit of spare cash to build one. In the latest fires, a bloke backed his ute into a metal shed which started melting around him. He had to get out of the shed. When he got back after the fire had subsided he said that 4-inch steal beams in the shed had warped.

So, if you have a bunker under your house, you'd need a helluva strong metal trapdoor on it to keep the fire at bay.

I've been through a 60'000 acre fire, these ones are much larger.
We learnt a great deal from that experience and I can empathise
with those suffering now. All very sad.

Dickie, your post shows your complete misunderstanding of the
problem. CALM in WA peform regular controlled burns to
lower the fuel load in forests and other areas of Australia
could learn from that. Fact is it works.

Australian eucalyptus trees are loaded with oil and living
in a house surrounded by them, is asking for trouble.

Like other farmers in WA, I maintain a specific fire truck,
at the ready at all times, to deal with fires. Not a season
goes by where we don't have them. Lightning strike is the
biggest cause.

Dickie clearly does not know much about firefighting. Once
the forest is alight, if its loaded with forest litter,
forget trying to extinguish it, it will smoulder for weeks.
Crop stubbles once burning on a large front, are best left
until the edges, a road, a firebreak, or of course the
next grazed paddock.

The best firebreaks are still grazed paddocks, for the
fuel load is minimal and then one has a chance. Livestock
make a valuable contribution in creating firebreaks whilst
munching on dinner.