General Chat

I didn't want to put this on the other fires thread but, I am sure I have heard of there sometimes being a haze around eucalyptus trees where they have so much oil in them but maybe I am imagining this.We have all had cold so we know they have plenty of oil in them ad isn't oil highly flammable?

Would it not have been logical to plan in fire breaks between settlements among the gum trees?

But even if they did that, everything was so dry, I expect whisps were floating all over the place.

Then there are the arsonists....... :-|

I suppose that there have always been wildfires in Australia and that the Aboriginal people probably have always made sure to inhabit the places where it is less likely to happen. (This is purely surmising on my part.)

It is a bit like this area where the locals don't live right by the sea because it is not always aesthetically pleasing. However, people from other places dream of and flock to buy houses right on the beach.

Apparently, the majority of fires were started by 'dry lightning'.

or by arsonists :-(


Sharron ............ you are quite correct about the evaopration of oil from Eucalyptus trees.

When we lived in Melbourne in the mid-70s. there was an automatic ban on ALL outside fires, including BBQs, when the temperature reached a certain high. That was when the oil began to evaporate and greatly increased the fire risk.

The problem was that it was an automatic ban, no announcement, so we as visitors did not know about it, until we noticed our Australian neighbours in the complex were no longer cooking outside, and asked why.

As for fire breaks, Sharron, they are OK for small fires, but the very large fires generate their own 'weather' systems

https://www.9news.com.au/wild-weather/how-bushfires-create-their-own-dangerous-thunderstorms/b26cc4e3-d955-4714-8efa-2c60ca76f887

Also, embers are carried by the winds ahead of the fire front which cause spot fires. In rural WA (I don't know about the Eastern States) the standard width of a firebreak on a property boundary is 1.5 metres, so for two adjoining properties a total of 3.0 metres.

Ignoring bush fires, if one of those houses goes up in smoke that distance is adequate. Not so in a bush fire :-(

As an aside, back in 2016 when major bush fires close to where I live razed the town site of Yarloop, we had thick ash falling in our garden and we were fifty kilometres from the active fire

...and some of that ash could have been hot?

No, we were lucky, Maggie, just ash no embers

When we had the cabin in northern BC, the standard distance between house/building and trees was 30' (ca 9 metres).

OH removed young trees that had sprouted, but we had contractors come in to cut down larger trees to give us that 30' distance before we put the property on the market. Unfortunately, none of the trees were "marketable", so we had a lot of logs to use as firewood.

I remember in Melbourne that the air smelled very strongly of eucalyptus oil when the hot spells were happening.

Recommended vegetation free distance here, Sylvia, is 20 metres. Grass can be grown as can the usual flowers and veggies, but no dense bushes or trees

My mum cousin just confirmed the same thing Sharron, the oil in the air isn't helping the situation.

The Bible story of the Garden of Eden relates the trouble & consequences caused by an apple tree.