Essential Bushfire Safety Tips

By the author of the acclaimed The Complete Bushfire Safety Book, the latest edition of Joan Webster OAM’s Essential Bushfire Safety Tips has been revised and updated. The book deals with people's fears and concerns following Victoria's 2009 Black Saturday bushfires and a maze of new official safety policies. Its concise and straightforward style clears a path of understanding through the tangle of conflicting opinions and misconceptions. It identifies the shortcomings and likely adverse repercussions of some of these policies, defines the actions necessary for people to stay safe during a bushfire – and their homes to remain intact – and sets out safe procedures. This updating of Essential Bushfire Safety Tips reveals the scientific post-Black Saturday research into why people who stayed with their homes died during the fires, and shows that, despite the almost universal media reports that 'nothing could be done to save homes on such a day', many householders did, in fact, save their homes. Included are new chapters on township protection; shelters, refuges and bunkers; as well as new information on choices of safe home bushfire strategies; protective house design, furnishings and gardens; protection of animals; and first aid. This book fills the gap between bushfire authority brochures and long, in-depth books. Backed by scientific facts, it brings a message of hope and empowerment: that with appropriate knowledge, preparation and awareness, towns, homes and people can survive bushfires. Set out in easy-to-access dot-point one-liners, it demystifies bushfire behaviour, explains how to prevent a bushfire from destroying houses, details the safe way to act at each stage of threat, describes weather factors and safe burning-off, details the benefits and hazards of staying, non-defensive sheltering, and evacuating, and how to make the decision on which course is best for you.