A surprising number of people plan to take photos, the teddy bear and the favourite pet’s ashes with them in their ‘go bag’ when natural disaster strikes according to recent disaster survey research. The authors note that when asked what was important one participant wrote: “My childhood bear. He is going to the grave with me. Apart from that, nothing matters much’.
But people are generally strikingly underprepared for disasters. A worrying thought as a potentially hot summer shimmers into view.
In case you’ve forgotten, Daylesford is in a bushfire prone area with the Wombat Forest right next door. So far we’ve been fortunate. Daylesford and Hepburn Springs have never been burnt out. But fires threatened in 2025, 2019, 2012, 2009, 1969, 1966, 1962 1943-44, and in 1906 a number of buildings were destroyed.
This year, the climate modelling suggests the fire risk is increasing. With the developing El Niño, fuel loads are high and conditions are likely to be dry.
We have been here before. Recall that then Premier John Brumby tried very hard to warn the Victorian community that the conditions for bushfires on Black Saturday would be the ‘worst day in the history of the state’ in 2009. The day after his urgent warnings to be prepared, !73 people died.
Unfortunately, as the Bush Fire Royal Commission found, despite Brumby’s pleas, the then ‘stay and defend or leave early’ policy was ambiguous. Too many people thought that ‘stay and defend’ was a safe option. Two thirds of the deaths on Black Saturday occured in people’s homes.
The advice has changed. The fire ratings have been sreamlined and simplified to remove confusion. Now we have four straight forward fire risk levels:
- moderate (plan and prepare),
- high (be ready to act),
- extreme (take action now to prtect life and property),
- catastrophic (leave now to survive).
Today the advice is to prepare your property for fire risk and then act on emergency services advice to leave early if the conditions reach extreme or catastrophic levels. Defending property when the fire arrives is dangerous.
Many people still haven’t prepared for the possibility of bushfire. That’s probably true for Daylesford and Hepburn Springs too. Country Fire Authority research shows that even in bushfire-prone areas like Daylesford, less than half the population has a bushfire plan to save themselves and their family.
Leaving early on advice from emergency services when conditions are extreme or catastrophic is the sensible thing to do, but about 1 in five people still think it’s better to stay and defend. Not surprisingly, many struggle with what it would mean to them if they lost their home.
Our personal possessions help us to make sense of our history and identity. But protecting a house in catastrophic conditions, even with a well trained team and state of the art equipment is hard.
People massively under estimate the devastating power of major bushfires. You will not be able to see, hear or breathe. The level of heat on your skin is 3 times hotter than your oven when you are cooking a roast dinner. It is not an environment in which a human can survive.
So apart from the cat, the medications, birth certificate, tooth brush, underwear and the dressing gown, its best to figure out the personally important stuff you want to have in the ‘go bag’ in advance and then leave when emergency services recommend that you do so.
The local CFA advise that they have already had a number of small fires this season but the 8 brigades in the group have been able to respond quickly enough that they have put them out before they got going.
The CFA provides excellent information on planning for bushfires, and VicEmergency has an app that will update you on local risk. Now is the time to check these out, before the hot weather arrives.
