Home Under Fire

08-02-09

 

Is there a bushfire resistant house ? Or is it how we choose to live ?

 

7^th February ’09, Black Saturday, became a hideous day in Australia for all Victorians.

 

Our “Community” was torn asunder.

 

Inner fear, terror, rose with unprecedented heat – 46.2 c. in Melbourne and hotter inland.

Roaring, searing winds increased with the temperature.

The evening became a terrifying unfathomable nightmare. An unrelenting horrible nightmare that ended dreams, ended lives in the cruellest way, and destroyed the idylls where families had lovingly made their homes.

 

It was nature’s most sadistic imaginable response.

 

Many had considered themselves prepared for a bushfire.

 

Tragically, nobody could be prepared for the might and magnitude of such firestorms.

 

And, why does it take a disaster to forge a Community ?

 

Because, what has emerged, grown out of this disaster is the strongest of Communities – a Community of overwhelming strength that knows that it will regenerate – just as Nature will regenerate.

 

The energy of this Community is unparalleled, and there is no doubt that carefully harnessed, this energy can work exponentially to rebuild a new, even stronger, and a safe Community.

 

Already, there is the will to re-build.

 

But, and this is important, it can’t be the same.

 

As in 1939, the 1960s, Ash Wednesday and Canberra in 2003 Nature is telling us – we are not in Europe. Not in a safe place. This is Australia.

 

Australia’s topography varies from arid desert, to coastal fringes which are bordered by ancient eroded mountains.   The tropical northern is increasingly ‘wet’ and subjected to more cyclones than before.  While in the south, suffering a decade of drought, temperatures are rising.  The southern landscape is scruffy and untidy where most trees are full of inflammable, exploding oils, where bone dry forest under-croft can ignite in an instant, where once saturated forests are now tinder dry. These changes, the wet and the dry,  are due to Climate Change.

 

 

Australia is a dangerous place. The idyll is a place of memory.

 

Devastation remains. In-hospitable? Unsustainable? Unhabitable?

 

Are there answers?

 

 

Well, maybe not answers, not easy answers. But there are clues. Clues in old places. Places where Communities have survived, often thrived, and occasionally struggled.

 

Places with generations of history. Centuries old and older.

 

Places that would seem to offer the surety that people need.

 

Places where overlooking means looking after. Places with dwellings of all sizes, for all kinds of people. All shapes and sizes. Young and old. Places providing the most humble of shelter clustered with modest family dwellings, that rise toward a meeting place, a square, a market place, a church, a mosque with the mysterious grand houses behind the garden wall.

 

Italian hill towns. The once Afghani. walled towns. The medinas of Morrocco. The Irish village. Clusters, here and there abutting forest or farmland.

 

There are, innumerable such places.

 

In Australia, some of us have thought ourselves sufficiently fortunate to be permitted to make our own places, a distance apart, close to nature, idyllic.

 

Paradoxically for our love of the “Bush” we have paid a horrible price.

 

It is not possible even with the best assistance available to live safely apart in our own acres of paradise amongst the very trees that we love surrounded by the stuff of nature.

 

It is however, perhaps possible to live more safely close to, but not amongst nature.

 

We need to ask ourselves if we can live this way. In a village in the country rather than on our own small acreage that renders us so prone to the danger of fire.

 

The ‘infra-structure’, and better infrastructure at that, would cost less. The pub, shops and meeting places close by. Larger, productive farms might abut the “Village” as might carefully managed “Nature” or even wilderness. There might be several roads in and several roads out. The next village, township, or a city might be not far away reached by safe road or rail, a picturesque distance through managed farmland or alongside forest. Across bridges and by sea-shore.

 

This needs to be planned – carefully.

 

It may seem sad that we need to plan so well. That we need to manage and be managed.

 

 

Most of us Australians can be a pig-headed lot. We pride ourselves in our self-sufficiency. We don’t like to be told.

 

However, I think that ‘Nature’ is telling us. Sorry, but it’s not so simple….

 

But I’m sure there is the sustainable way that we can live in Australia. In fact many, many ways for many, many places.

 

And our houses can be better planned, less grand, workable functional places that do not take us all our time and money to look after – to do basic maintenance. Places that bask in winter sunshine that can repel summer heat. Hospitable places.

 

Where we can live healthier lives with fewer expenses in a diverse and real community where all is not rosy all of the time, where we can keep an eye on each other. Where we can assist the vulnerable and where trusted neighbours will keep an eye on the kids.

 

A cherished place where we can with confidence say that we are safe, secure, happy.

 

Where we belong.

 

Architecture is only a small part of it. Put our minds to it, and “We”, can do damn near anything.

 

“Community”, can be made with human resolve. In the last week, You’ve proved it.

 

A bit of food for a lot of thought.

 

Dennis Carter            16-02-09

    

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