| Association of bell clarence & dargan inc. |
USEFUL RESOURCES
PROPERTY RISK ASSESSMENT
The Bushfire Resilience Rating Home Assessment app at https://resiliencerating.org/ allows you to assess your own home and measure how well it would perform in a bushfire event. It provides a customised action plan, specific to your individual property and local risk. As you complete the actions from your recommendations report, you can update your home's Resilience Rating - allowing you to immediately see the positive impact on your Rating.
Construction standards
After the 2001 Christmas fires in Sydney, which destroyed 109 homes and burnt more than 750,000 hectares, a Joint Parliamentary Inquiry was established. The resulting report endorsed the release of a document which contained specifications for building on land identified as bush fire prone. This document is titled Planning for Bush Fire Protection (PBP) and the current legislated version that is adopted is PBP 2019. The following link will take you to the report along with an Addendum released in 2023.
TRACKING The location of Bushfires
NSW bushfires can be tracked at Fires Near Me. This is the information to monitor and act on.
The Digital Earth Australia Hotspots is a national bushfire monitoring system that uses satellite sensors to detect areas producing high levels of infrared radiation. NB. The satellites only pass over a given area between 2 and 4 times a day.
For a more detailed map that shows the hot spots and combines it with the Fires Near Me information see this ArcGIS webpage. Zooming in shows the detail.
Use Flight Radar 24 to find aerial fire fighting activity.
EVACUATION
The closest Neighbourhood Safer Places for our community are at the Bell Rural Fire Brigade Shed at 12 Sandham Rd in Bell, or in Lithgow at https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/plan-and-prepare/neighbourhood-safer-places/lists/lithgow-lga.
Here's a list of other Neighbourhood Safer Places in the Blue Mountains provided by the Rural Fire Service.
Be sure to leave early and to check for information about road closures on the NSW Livetraffic website.
WILDLIFE PROTECTION
Useful information about wildlife protection in relation to bushfires is available on the BMCC website.
More information on wildlife protection is available on an app called; Help Wildlife Near Me, developed by Science for Wildlife.
Information on the 2019-20 bushfires and the affect of bushfires on the natural environment can be found on the Blue Mountains Conservation Society webpage Bushfires webpage.