Criteria:
Individuals can do a few things to prevent fires from spreading onto their houses easily. These include:
All of these things reduce the damage caused by bushfires, which satisfies the second criterion, some are more feasible than others.
- Reduce/eliminate the number of deliberately/accidentally caused bushfires
- If reducing/eliminating bushfires is not feasible, then reduce the damage caused by bushfires
- Reduce the amount of fatalities as a result of bushfires
Individuals can do a few things to prevent fires from spreading onto their houses easily. These include:
- Removing dry leaves from roof gutters or installing gutter guards. Gutter guards, shown in Figure 10, prevent leaf build up in the valleys and gutters of your roof. Leaf build up can easily cause a fire once an ember ignites them.
- Installing ember guards. Unlike gutter guards, ember guards, shown in Figure 11, are used to prevent embers from entering the roof space and other areas where embers may ignite certain objects. In Figure 11, the ember guard is used to protect the pads on an evaporative air conditioner from embers.
- Building a Fire Bunker. This offers good protection in a bushfire but is expensive to build and the process to get approval to build it is long.
- Installing Bushfire Sprinklers. Bushfire sprinklers have saved a number of houses during the Black Saturday bushfires.
All of these things reduce the damage caused by bushfires, which satisfies the second criterion, some are more feasible than others.