Get Ready: prepare your house

Senior Deputy Captain Michael Pratt, Deputy Captain Aaron West and firefighter Rebecca May of the Helensburgh Rural Volunteer Fire Brigade answer your bushfire questions

Will there be a fire truck at my house to defend it?

Michael: There are never going to be enough fire trucks to go to every house in Helensburgh.

Aaron: You have to be prepared not to have a fire truck. Right day, right conditions, depending on where a fire starts in Helensburgh, there is a probability the fire could be impacting on properties before trucks even get out of the station.

So you have to be prepared that you won’t have one. The RFS and Fire and Rescue New South Wales will do everything within their power to make sure they have as many trucks as possible, to get into the town in the event of a large fire. But how quickly that happens will depend on how many trucks we can actually get in.

And considering the town is surrounded by bush, where these trucks are coming from, they will be presented with other problems. Our highways are surrounded by bush, there’s issues in actually getting vehicles or fire trucks into this town.

Michael: It comes back to preparation. If the house has been well-prepared and is ready to be defended, we can defend it. Even people in the middle of town have to prepare their house because they can be impacted through embers, and if houses start to burn it will just grow.

So the key to it all is preparation.

Rebecca: It does come down to little things as well, like ensure all the spider’s webs and things like that are cleaned away from your home.

Embers get in them, the spider webs actually catch fire. So you get fire potentially under your eaves, your gutters and around the corners of your home. Fire is very clever. It can infiltrate your house so easily. Underneath your doors and through your windows. If you’ve got little gaps, embers can come in. So if you clear away those spiderwebs and things that get up in the corners of our windows, it’s stopping another hazard.

I have sprinklers on the roof, have a generator, a portable pump and a water tank. Am I able to defend my house?

Aaron: To stay and defend, you need a substantial amount of water.

For instance, if you take our fire trucks, our biggest tankers hold 3300 litres.

When we’re doing property protection, although our flow rate is high, we empty our tanks out within five minutes. We are pumping out up to
450 litres a minute out of the nozzles, with two lines running off our truck.

So … look at how much water you actually have and how long you think you can protect your property. If you look at us and see that in five minutes we’re out of water, that’s possibly a good indication of how much water is going to be needed, to be able to protect your property.

Plus, our trucks are hooked into hydrants and able to sustain that for a long period of time.

What else should I be aware of?

Aaron: The water mains can break down for a few reasons. Whether it’s loss of power where the pumping stations are, which is highly likely in catastrophic conditions, to a blown main.

Michael: If you’re prepared to stay and fight, make sure you’re in good health… it comes through like a freight train. It’s loud, it gets very dark. It gets very confusing. The smoke can be very debilitating.

Again, our biggest suggestion is: leave early. You can rebuild your house. You can’t rebuild your life.

MAKE A PLAN

Visit www.myfireplan.com.au

If you would like to hear more about preparing for bushfire season in the 2508 area, watch the video on Facebook @NSWRFSHelensburgh

If you have questions, contact your local brigade via Facebook @NSWRFSHelensburgh or call the Bush Fire Information Line,
1800 NSW RFS (1800 679 737)