Wildfires; USA compared to Australia.

[pipelineaudio]

What seems to be required in Australia would be illegal in many places in the USA. People "fight city hall" often by creating fire breaks near their property in defiance of local and federal law

 

[Travis]

The speed was also something new. I don't know how you can evacuate areas when you have no real idea where a fire can go.

We had a similar problem in 1987 when another huge fire almost encircled the town making an evacuation notice moot. Thankfully the fire burned up to the firebreaks during the night when things were not so fierce and some plucky work by thousands of firefighters prevented what might have been a horrible disaster.