Harps' fire

[jomeder]

Hi,

I figure fires and such are manshit so thought I'd post here. Glad to see you came through the fire mostly unscathed Harps (beehives and socks excepted).

Fire is kind of a subject close to my heart. We had a house burn down in the village a couple of years ago. The village is mostly bush and a lot of it is highly flammable stuff. It was a big wake up call to everyone. I think it was the first time the village fire fighting gear had been used and it didn't go super well, with the nearest hydrant broken and loss of water causing poor pressure and several hoses splitting. The rural fire water tanker also wasn't able to get up the hill into the village with a full tank! Fortunately the rural fire service now has a newer 4WD tanker.

In lots of ways we were quite lucky it had snowed recently, the bush was pretty damp and it wasn't windy, otherwise it could have ended a lot worse.

We've since improved the gear and hydrants and have had fairly regular drills, although we haven't had one in a while.

The closest fire station is 40 minutes away but the verdict seems to be if we haven't been able to get it under control ourselves by that time we need to be looking at evacuating, especially considering the flammability of the bush and the steepness of the village. Sobering stuff.

Great to see the bird houses survived too! I like the blue one :-).

Regards,

Jo

[Harps]

Thanks Jo,

The swallows were very stressed during the fire. I know they have eggs in the houses, lucky they weren't hatched or they may have smoke damage.

Fire is an awesome and horrible thing... just about everything we do depends on it, yet we take it for granted and it often bites us in the ass.

It's really unfortunate that you lost a home, I hope you didn't loose to many irreplaceable valuables.
Your new home is absolutely stunning though...



I think drill, drills, and more drills are very important! Even with the best gear available if the crew isn't ready to use it and if they panic under stress there will be trouble.
I find that the first thing to go in budget cuts is the training and practice. Also without the occasional disaster, we never learn from our mistakes and never improve. Then we cut all the unused safety items, because we never use them... disaster waiting to happen.

[jomeder]

Hi Harps,

It wasn't actually our house which caught fire, thank heavens. I guess I said "we had a house burn down" because it ended up being such a community thing.

That fire started due to a problem with a car. It had just been serviced and caught fire when it stopped in the garage and the gas kept flowing out of a bad connection or something. That's a freak accident but talking to people afterwards quite a few had small "events" with ash from log burners. Every house has them and a lot are holiday houses so you don't know if the people renting them are used to dealing with ash and such. Every once in a while a rubbish bin melts down because someone's put hot ash in one at the end of the weekend. Normally I wouldn't think too much about that but it just goes to show how you take the fire service for granted. When it's up to you to try and keep things at least minimally under control until the fire service is actually able to get there it gives you a different perspective on things.

I definitely take your point about drills.

It's interesting that the swallows nest in the boxes. Here they usually make little mud nests sticking out from walls and such. Do they make make the much nests inside the boxes?

Regards,

Jo