Bushfire-proof houses may not save lives

26 Aug 2009, 6:35 pm   -   Source: AAP
0 Comments
Share This
+ Comment
0

There can be no guarantee a house built to withstand bushfires will save lives, the Victorian bushfires royal commission has heard.

There can be no guarantee a house built to withstand bushfires will save lives, the Victorian bushfires royal commission has heard.

Ivan Donaldson, general manager of the Australian Building Codes Board, told the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission that regulations covering building in bushfire-prone areas only reduced the risk faced by residents.

The building code was only part of the solution, and not sufficient to deal with the risk to human life, he said.

"The ultimate intent or desire is that no one is injured or dies," Mr Donaldson told the commission on Wednesday.

"It's an aspiration. It is what the community would hope and anticipate.

"The reality is that you're faced with needing to deal with reducing rather than eliminating (risk)."

The commission earlier heard that people living in grasslands could be at risk during fires because there were no standards for building in those areas.

Mark Chladil, a fire management planning officer with the Tasmania Fire Service, said grass fires could be just as dangerous as forest fires, but no standards currently applied for building in grasslands.

Mr Chladil said 41 people were killed by a grass fire in Tasmania in 1967.

About half the northern end of Victoria's Kilmore fire which killed 121 people on February 7, Black Saturday, raged through grasslands, Mr Chladil told the commission on Wednesday.

The commission, led by former Supreme Court justice Bernard Teague, heard on Tuesday from a Country Fire Authority (CFA) member who lost his home in St Andrews on Black Saturday, despite the fact there were barely any trees and only very short grass on his property.

Mr Chladil, who is also a representative from the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council, said he would be shortly submitting a proposal about standards for building in grasslands to Standards Australia.

The commission also heard that houses did not spontaneously ignite due to exposure to heat during a bushfire.

The commission has previously heard claims that some houses literally exploded during the February 7 bushfires, which killed a total of 173 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes.

CSIRO research scientist Justin Leonard said that in its own surveys the CSIRO had heard similar descriptions of houses "exploding".

But further investigations had often found those houses had caught on fire, and the blaze was fed by combustible material such as fuel, gas or paint tins, which ultimately caused the explosion.

Mr Leonard also told the commission a tool being developed to assess the defendability of homes against fire could be ready to trial later this year.

  • Follow us: 
  • Follow us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Follow us on Youtube

Join the Discussion

Name
City / Suburb E.g. Artarmon, Sydney
Title
Comment
You have characters remaining.
Validation
What's this?
This is a captcha-picture. It is used to prevent mass-access by robots.
All submitted comments become the property of SBS. They are moderated, so we reserve the right to edit comments and remove HTML tags. Not all submitted comments will be published. Publication does not mean we endorse the opinions expressed. Please read our terms and conditions for more information.