TomW
And if you don't have a mobile/computer or it's not turned on or maybe the phone lines are down?
Cherry gardens had the right idea a set of fire sirens and pre-organized people who looked after the hearing impaired and those who need help.
PS I have a mobile but it's rarely on, the computer irregularly and I'm often away from the land line.

Yabby,
My point exactly building regs for houses in or near bush *must* be far more stringent see my list from SA. Bugger private (rights) priorities, these priorities can lead to deaths not only yours but others.
People in general neither know nor can be trusted to get those priorities right. We're talking lives here, dreams and or lifestyle are fine but when someone else's life is at stake, fireys et al near enough isn't good enough.
Also bricking a house or clearing the yard may not save it...the flying embers heat and the wind often are. Ash Wednesday I remember in Melton central being on the neighbour’s roof in a searing gale re-tying down their tiles and fighting embers 5 blocks from the fire front. We could see the wall of flames 20/30 feet high and hear the deafening roar. Later we saw how groups of houses not at the fire front had burned. Despite experiencing bush fires before it was Ash Wednesday and the Adelaide hills fires taught the difference between a ‘cold’ grass fire and a crown or (‘hot’) fire storm. Different animals all together, like comparing an angry dog to a charging herd of pissed off rogue elephants bent on making human jam of you and your property. The latter (fire storm) isn’t defendable on the scale of your house face it and be prepared. Don’t risk the fireys brave lives and others because of your misguided/selfish priorities.

examinator wrote 16 February 2009 9:47:17 AM:

>Tomw, And if you don't have a mobile/computer or it's
>not turned on or maybe the phone lines are down?

Yes, but whatever technology you use, it will have its limitations.

I was suggesting making use of mobile telephones. Most mobile handsets have batteries and so will continue to operate during a power failure. They are wireless and so do not depend on phone lines into the subscriber's home. But of course this assumes the cell towers and the links to them survive and that infrastructure has an independent power supply.

> ... fire sirens and pre-organized people who looked after
>the hearing impaired ...

Rural fire stations have sirens, but covering a wider area would be prohibitively expensive. It took a lot of infrastructure for the NSW Government to cover just the Sydney CBD with an audio warning system: http://www.oa.com.au/component.php?productid=5&componentid=9
When tested several of the units failed.

Using the mobile phone network is not a complete solution, but is relatively cheap, simple and reliable. This is something easier to build into a network than add later. As an example Canberra's Transact fibre optic broadband system was designed with two levels of backup power supply. The part of the network used for phone calls was given more standby power than that used for Internet data service. This was because the phone service was considered more important in an emergency. The whole network could have been made more reliable, but that would cost more.

During the Canberra firestorm, the Transact network held up well, apart from where the infrastructure was physically destroyed. The fibre optic cable to my apartment is underground and so protected from fire, but much of the network is strung on poles and vulnerable. The network uses fibre optic rings: one break in a ring does not result in loss of service, asthe data is routed around the other way. See: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/01/canberra-firestorm-report.htm

11am news report - announced fires are now in the
Dandenong Ranges (Belgrave).
They're believed to be caused by arsonists.

Bad news...

Dear Antonios,

Natural tragedies are not the making of people and
Governments. The Premier of Victoria as well as
the Prime Minister of Australia can only react
after the event. Which they are doing.

You may as well blame God for these events and ask
Him to resign.

And who will take over?

As there are so many mobile-phone tower around and increasing their numbers anyhow, how hard would it be to fit sirens on them, activated by heat from a fire. Example: if towers are say 2-5 klm's apart in bushland and on top of hills where they are generally placed (these spots will get the first heat too), and the closed tower to the heat will send the signal to the surrounding towers to activate the sirens and simultaneously a signal to HQ for immediate action and response.
No messages should be send to radio stations etc, because that will inflame fire-bugs curiosity.
Bunkers were all in vogue in Melbourne, had to fill in most of them.
As an industrial painter in the sixties I had to use graphite based paint on factory (steel) chimneys in Europe which was fireproof up to 900 Celsius for hours at the time. That sort of coating should resist external applied heat for longer then the bush fires, even though the fires are well above that to make steel melt.So, gal water tanks and fire equipment sheds and bunker doors should be treated with similar coatings.

Belly,

You ask ". . .Have you breathed air from a pumped up truck tube?. . ."
Yes, and it's not nice at all, tastes of rubber, fermented dead lurgies that were in the air, compressor lubricant and stale moisture but it sure as hell beats no air at all.

Yes better than nothing the air in a tube, but good enough?
Could that lubricant become inflammable?
No joy in seeing the Victorian fire bug was a fire fighter once, I spoke of this reality in early posts.
We should not take it out on the hero's who have done so much , the yellow overalls are worn by more hero's than idiots.
No easy task, for even those close to them, picking out the fire bugs.
Sentencing must concentrate on the victims not the mental state, or alleged mental state, of the fire bugs.