Bushfire-proof houses may not save lives

There can be no guarantee a house built to withstand bushfires will save lives, the
Victorian bushfires royal commission has heard.
Ivan Donaldson, general manager of the Australian Building Codes Board, told the
Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission that regulations covering building in
bushfire-prone areas only reduced the risk faced by residents.
The building code was only part of the solution, and not sufficient to deal with the
risk to human life, he said.
"The ultimate intent or desire is that no one is injured or dies," Mr Donaldson told
the commission on Wednesday.
"It's an aspiration. It is what the community would hope and anticipate.
"The reality is that you're faced with needing to deal with reducing rather than
eliminating (risk)."
The commission earlier heard that people living in grasslands could be at risk
during fires because there were no standards for building in those areas.
Mark Chladil, a fire management planning officer with the Tasmania Fire Service,
said grass fires could be just as dangerous as forest fires, but no standards
currently applied for building in grasslands.
Mr Chladil said 41 people were killed by a grass fire in Tasmania in 1967.
About half the northern end of Victoria's Kilmore fire which killed 121 people on
February 7, Black Saturday, raged through grasslands, Mr Chladil told the commission
on Wednesday.
The commission, led by former Supreme Court justice Bernard Teague, heard on Tuesday
from a Country Fire Authority (CFA) member who lost his home in St Andrews on Black
Saturday, despite the fact there were barely any trees and only very short grass on
his property.
Mr Chladil, who is also a representative from the Australasian Fire and Emergency
Service Authorities Council, said he would be shortly submitting a proposal about
standards for building in grasslands to Standards Australia.
The commission also heard that houses did not spontaneously ignite due to exposure
to heat during a bushfire.
The commission has previously heard claims that some houses literally exploded
during the February 7 bushfires, which killed a total of 173 people and destroyed
more than 2,000 homes.
CSIRO research scientist Justin Leonard said that in its own surveys the CSIRO had
heard similar descriptions of houses "exploding".
But further investigations had often found those houses had caught on fire, and the
blaze was fed by combustible material such as fuel, gas or paint tins, which
ultimately caused the explosion.
Mr Leonard also told the commission a tool being developed to assess the
defendability of homes against fire could be ready to trial later this year.