FireNote

Fire Note 79: Vic Jurskis and Todd Walmsley of Forests NSW collected information about  declining eucalypt stands in coastal New South Wales from the Queensland border to the Victorian border.

Fire Note 78: Eucalypt dieback is widespread throughout Australia affecting many forests that are utilised for wood resources or are protected for conservation. The causes of eucalypt dieback are currently unknown but may be related to altered fire regimes and associated changes in the ecosystem, such as altered relationships with beneficial mycorrhizal fungi, which were investigated in this study.

Fire Note 77: La Trobe University Bushfire CRC PhD scholar Claire Johnson studied the extent to which firefighters prepare for the worst during incidents, highlighting the importance of being ready for a worst-case scenario and finding inconsistencies in preparation for such scenarios.

Fire Note 76: The ability to accurately predict woody fuel consumption during a fire is important for both forest and fire management. Information on woody fuel consumption in Australian southern eucalypt forest is scant and the predictive capacity of existing models unknown.

This Fire Note is a summary of work undertaken as part of Bushfire CRC Program A: Safe Prevention, Preparation and Suppression. It evaluates the predictive capacity of five existing models against a dataset representing a range of fire behaviour characteristics of prescribed burning conditions.

Fire Note 75: This Fire Note describes the Know Your Patch to Grow Your Patch guide, produced by Dr Alison Cottrell of James Cook University as an end product of the Bushfire CRC Understanding Communities project.

Fire Note 74: Fighting bushfires is a physically demanding occupation and therefore firefighters need to be physically fit to work safely and productively.

Many firefighting agencies employ physical competency tests such as the Pack Hike Test to determine whether personnel are fit for duty.

The test involves a 4.83 km hike over level terrain carrying a 20.4 kg pack within 45 minutes. The test was devised to test the job readiness of USA wildfire firefighters and is currently used by some fire agencies in Australia.

Fire Note 73: Bushfire CRC research led by Dr Christine Owen of the University of Tasmania has scrutinised Incident Management  teamwork in Australia and New Zealand and found a number of areas of concern as well as areas that work well.

Both countries use a similar incident management structure, based on the United States model.

The need to improve incident management was highlighted in the reports of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission

Fire Note 72: The New Zealand seasonal wildfire assessment is out for summer 2010/2011.

In a first, the Bushfire CRC in association with New Zealand agencies organised a New Zealand Seasonal Wildfire Assessment Workshop, held in Christchurch on Thursday 7 December 2010. This was similar to the Australian seasonal workshops that have been held annually since 2006 and like the Australian workshops, led to the production of this Fire Note – New Zealand Seasonal Wildfire Assessment 2010-11.

Fire Note 71 - Research conducted after the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday bushfires identified several aspects of human behaviour and decision making which jeopardised community members' safety.

Issue 70: Research into the performance of a range of residential fences under simulated bushfire conditions. These tests were conducted in 2005 at the NSW Rural Fire Service Hot Fire Facility, at Mogo, on the south coast of New South Wales.