Fire Management Plan

Today I was glad that I had spent some time over the last couple of months working out a fire management plan for the property.   The power went out around 3pm so I had taken advantage of the cool weather to plant out some seedlings and pot up some others in the greenhouse.  While I was outside, I heard a loud, deep, throbbing noise and saw 2 large helicopters flying up the creek line.  With high ground on both sides, the sound reverberated through the valley and it reminded me of the Chopper scene in the movie Apocalypse Now.  I went back to the house around 4 and realised that the choppers were actually the fire fighting helitacks -supported by a fixed wing plane – and they were filling up from the neighbour’s dam!  I thought I had better get organised.    I put the dog in the house and drove to the south boundary to see if I could see where the fire was.  With the choppers returning within 1 minute to refill, I decided it was close enough to be prepared.  With the power already out, a few of the steps were taken out, so I just refilled and tested the fire fighter unit and checked the fuel in the generator.   As I was doing this, the helicopters flew back towards the airport, so I put the plan on hold and carried on with the evening feed round.   It was a little smokey, so I moved the round yard barriers to enclose the horses in the top paddock and sand yards, just in case….. The Western Power site said the power would be out till 10pm, so I plugged the generator in to the house so the eggs in the incubator didn’t cool too much, I could recharge the batteries in the torches and I had internet access.  I loved seeing the Canadian  Helitack, what a great plan to swap resources from Northern to Southern hemispheres during the fire season.

• Leave dog in house
• If power is still on, manually start sprinklers in arena to wet grass
• Test run generator and load into ute with unleaded fuel
• Drive to south boundary and open Rachel’s gate,
• Drive to west boundary and open main gate (remove split pin on arm)
• Drive to north boundary and open paddock gate
• Drive to dam, unload genny, fill with fuel and put pump cover over genny.
• Close gate between oat paddock and horses
• Open gate from drive into oat paddock
• Open gate to arena
• Remove fly-veils from horses
• Move round yard barriers to restrict horses to stables/white sand/arena area.
• Put ladder, wire cutters, bolt cutters, stilson and socket set in ute
• Attach fire fighter to ute
• Test run fire fighter unit, drive to front of house and turn round so facing back down drive
• Return to house and set up ladder to get on roof
• Connect House tank to shed tank to increase water supply at house tank for fire brigade.
• Make sure chickens are out of coop and close the door.
• Once sprinklers finish, adjust sprinkler spray pattern on station 4 popups 1 and 3 to spray on house.
• Swap middle pop up (2) for angle and hose connector (on blue wobbler)
• Connect hose and take on to roof of house.
• Move goats to garden compound
• Put chickens in bathroom.
• Drop fence into horse paddock beside house and from oat paddock to horse paddock.
• When power stops – connect dam pump to generator to run station 4
• Manually start station 4 from pit under barrel beside compost heap
• (n.b. House water will not work when power goes out.)