FIRE MANAGEMENT PROGRAM The City of Hobart runs three programs to reduce the City’s bushfire risk: 1. Fuel breaks. 2. Fuel management. 3. Fire trails. In 2017 a Tasmanian Vegetation Fire Management Policy was developed by the State Fire Management Council to provide guidance in the use and control of fire to reduce bushfire risk. The City of Hobart has based its bushfire management plans on this policy, and encourages a shared approach to bushfire management, one that includes the local community. The policy reinforces the City’s strategy of using fire to reduce the build-up of bushfire fuels in fire-prone areas as a primary means of reducing bushfire risk. The policy also highlights the importance of treating bushfire fuel in zones close to assets such as houses, and the need to take a landscape approach to risk assessment. The City does this through an annual program of prescribed burns and an extensive fuel break program.
FUEL BREAKS Every year as part of efforts to protect Hobart from bushfire the City carries out fuel break maintenance across its bushland reserves. Fuel breaks are cleared or semi-cleared strips of land between bushland and homes, buildings or infrastructure. They are designed to lessen the impacts of fire coming out of bushland by substantially reducing fuels such as tall grasses, shrubs and smaller trees. Fuel breaks also create open, clear and defendable spaces for firefighters. The City does everything it can to manage the bushfire threat to homes, including maintaining fuel breaks between bushland reserves and residential properties, but we need individual residents to take action too. If you live next to a fuel break it is very important 12
that you keep your side of the fence free of bushfireprone vegetation to help the defence of your home in the event of a bushfire. The diagram on page 13 shows how fuel breaks extend into individual properties – most likely the space from your house to your property’s boundary with nearby bushland. Every year, well before the bushfire season starts, residents living adjacent to bushland reserves are advised to cut back fire-prone vegetation and to check for fire hazards. By maintaining the fuel break on your side of the fence with these simple steps you can reduce the risk of bushfire to your house: • Minimise bushfire fuel by keeping fire-prone vegetation to a minimum and flammable material such as wood piles away from the house and other buildings. • Cut back fire-prone vegetation between your property and reserve boundaries and check for fire hazards. • Do not dispose of garden cuttings in nearby bushland, this increases the bushfire risk. • Avoid planting trees or shrubs in or adjacent to a fuel break, they hinder the effectiveness of the fuel break. • Keep grass short, no more than 10cm high in summer. • Prune shrubs and keep them away from windows. • Keep gutters clean and your roof free of leaf litter. • Remove large shrubs from next to or under windows, away from wooden walls or under eaves or fascias. Fuel breaks are an effective fire prevention and firefighting tool, but they cannot stop all fires all of the time. During severe and catastrophic fires fuel breaks can help reduce the intensity of bushfire, but once a fire has escalated to an intensity where there is a significant ember attack, spotting well ahead of the fire front and/or crowning through the PREPARING FOR BUSHFIRE: ACTION PLAN FOR HOBART
