Rural Fires
Grass Fires, Bush Fires, Farm Land Fires

Rural fires are often referred to as "Wildfires" (Bush fires, Grassfires or Forest Fires). These fires are often very large, very mobile fires with the size and magnitude dependant on terrain, fuel load and prevailing weather conditions. Unlike almost every other type of incident attended by the Fire Services, Rural fires are moving fires, and the firefighting effort has to be equally as mobile. Different types of rural fires have different characteristics. For example, a fire in the Adelaide Hills with its highly undulating terrain, will travel differently from a rural fire on the flat mallee plains, whilst a grass fire on the Adelaide plains, will have a vastly different ferocity than a fire in a Pine Forest.

Rural fires are either knocked down by an attacking fire appliance, stopped by back burns, and / or with the assistance of aerial bombers.

Back-burning stops a moving fire, by creating a burnt-zone, where the vegetation was burnt in a controlled manner. As vegetation can not burn twice, the fire can not burn through control burn lines. The difficulty of back-burning, is that the control lines need to be wide enough to prevent the fire from "jumping" over them, and must be burnt in a manner safe enough so that the controlled burn does not become out of control.

Direct attack of a rural fire involved CFS volunteers on appliances confronting and / or chasing the fire. Working from the burnt side of the fire, the crews "knock down" the fire with water from high-pressure hose-lines and then once extinguished, mop-up the fire to prevent re-ignition. If it's white - it's alight.

Any major rural fire requires a significant amount of water. Each fire appliance carries a minium of 1,000 L of water, with most now carry 2,000 L or 3,000L. Appliances are supported by Tankers, which carry more than 4,000L of water from a water source to re-fill appliances at the fire-front. This allows the appliances to keep fighting the fire longer, without having to leave the fire ground to re-fill.

Where the water source is a long way from the fire front, a staging point is often used. Water is collected by the tanker at the source and carried to the staging point not far from the front-line firefighting effort. A portable tank is established for the tanker to dump it's water into. A protable pump is often left with the tank to pump the water into the appliances or the appliance can suction water themselves. Fire appliances travel the relatively short distance from the fire front to the staging point and collect their water before returning to the fire. The "porta-tanks" also allow the use of non-CFS tankers to carry water. Cement trucks and tankers for other products usually can not connect to fire appliances, but can carry water to the staging point and dump water into the porta-tank for the fire appliances to collect.

Knapsack sprays are often used to help mop-up fires, but generally not as a front-line weapon. Canvas stick beaters and hessian sacks have not been carried or used by CFS crews since the early 1970's.
This Information was provided by the
SACFS Promotions Unit
http://www.fire-brigade.asn.au