Reply To: Unit blocks in bushfires – we are not immune

Hi Jimmy, thanks for the checklist for apartment blocks preparing for a bushfire. Living in a coastal small tourist town we have just come through a couple of crisis weeks. Your list is terrific and I have a couple of things that we found to be very important to add .
1.At least one but more if available of good strong torches. Keep the batteries charged or have new batteries for them. We found these invaluable as it was pitch black in the middle of the day as the fire got closer.
2 A small camp stove that uses gas cartridges. We had several days with no power and as there is no natural gas on our coast we are all electric. Luckily we had a coffee plunger tucked away with some ground coffee and each morning we boiled up some water on the gas and filled our thermos so we had coffee and tea all day. ( Thankfully).
3. Keep your car filled with fuel at all times if possible. We were lucky enough to have filled our tank the day before the warnings went out. People were in a queue for at least 800 metres for petrol or diesel and only one of the three service stations in town has been open in the last two weeks even though tankers have pulled in and filled their tanks. The owners have obviously evacuated from this town .
4. Lastly, don’t forget to have an emergency food stash that you replace items as soon as you use them as the supermarkets could not get replenished as highways were closed. Luckily we had a good pantry so we did not starve.
It’s great that you have published this checklist Jimmy. We are going to circulate it to the other owners in our apartment block