Hi All,
The past few days have brought a flurry of queries regarding the Fire Districts. There are two districts relevant to bushfire which have different boundaries.
Total Fire Ban District – for legislation governing lighting of fires & use of equipment to prevent ignitions of fire.
Yarra Area / Region 13 is in CENTRAL
2. Fire Danger Ratings District – for prediction of likely bushfire behaviour, impact potential & advice on action.
The FDR district is based on the weather districts of the Bureau of Meteorology. The advantage of this is being smaller districts they are more localised, however there still may be a large variance in the conditions across the district. People on the borders of districts should consider both districts.
Yarra Area / Region 13 is in CENTRAL
The maps provide information about 2 different things although of course the declaration of a Total Fire Ban is dependant on weather conditions.
Your planning for bushfire should be considering the Fire Danger Rating as well as if it is a TFB day. The triggers people use will vary – some use all TFB days as their trigger, others have different plans for different levels of FDR.
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The Bureau of Meteorology also has the specific Fire Danger Index in chart format which lists the individual weather stations. – this has caused some confusion.
The design of the chart lists the individual weather stations first then the district as a footer underneath. ( If you read it incorrectly with the district as a header it will read as though Coldstream & Dunns Hill ( Ferny Creek ) is in Nth Central.- wrong )
The most relevant weather stations in Central District to Yarra Area / Region 13. are
Dunns Hill ( Ferny Creek )
Coldstream
These 2 weather stations are recording the weather conditions at these 2 sites so it is very localised information.
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Hope this helps in your planning & in understanding predictions & negotiating the new ratings.
Regards Helen
Helen Wositzky
Community Fireguard Coordinator.
CFA Yarra Area
18-22 Lakeview Drive
Lilydale, Vic. 3140
From Ron:
Thanks Mick – oddly, my wife and I were talking about this just the other day, when we realised that the “FDR” districts were not subsets of the Fire Ban districts. We then started wondering if North Warrandyte was in Central or North Central for Fire Danger Ratings. Pretty important, given that at one stage North Central was being considered for a Code Red.
It’s good to know now that we are Central for both, but it would be good to know where the boundaries are for FDRs (i.e. how close we are to North Central).
Cheers,
Ron