Anyone have any further info on the Yarloop Shops - was anything able to be saved?

What is the Yarloop Shops?

Found this via web search
http://yourmodelrailway.net/view_topic. ... rum_id=180
The heritage-listed Workshops had been the most intact example of a historical railway workshop in Australia.

"... 95 homes destroyed. As well as the homes, the hotel, the 110-year-old Yarloop Workshops and Steam Museum, the heritage doctor's residence and most of the school were all destroyed by the out-of-control blaze which has burnt out more than 58,000 hectares since being sparked by lightning on Wednesday... "

www.yarloopworkshops.com.au
An old timber mill complete with a magnificent collection of machinery and a small railway.
Look at "slideshow" on the homepage and weep.
Bloody bushfires!
Bob

Confirmed by two more recent TV reports:

The Yarloop Shops/Heritage Project, as with 95 percent of the town, is little more than a pile of ash and twisted metal.

Video at https://twitter.com/7NewsPerth/status/6 ... 5318891520

How can historical collections and museums be protected from wild fire?

There's not much you can do when a fire of that size, fed by very strong winds, comes down on you.
There was an article on TV last night, in which residents of Yarloop felt they were let down by the authorities. The town's water supply was cut off, apparently because the pumps from a nearby dam which supply the town water were unable to do anything because their power supply was disabled by the fires.
Most of the town's houses were about 100 years old and of wooden construction. They apparently went up like bombs.
While I'm on the other side of the country, I have experienced the fury of bushfires myself, with the Canberra fires of 2003. We lost 18 houses in our street alone. (Thankfully, our place wasn't one of them). Water pressure was low, due to demand, but in the end, it becomes a bit of a lottery.
In the case of Yarloop, wisdom seems to be that all the tap water in the world wouldn't have saved anything and the best strategy was to get the hell out of there and try and save your life.

Same problem in California. But there are things you can do, which require money, both public and private, and some evil central planning.

Controls on the plant life, land management. Changes to building construction materials.

Just standing there and demanding that the government "do something" doesn't work. Property owners have to accept that they also must "do something".

I recall Orange Empire had a close call with at least one brush fire in the last 20 years? Perhaps Brian Norden or someone else from Perris can reply?

Wesley

In states in the Western U.S. that have professional wildfire fighters (the "hot shot" crews), they spend much of their time off-season addressing the very issue of additional fire prevention. They go through fire danger territory and clear brush from around buildings, cut fire breaks through the vegetation, enforce regulations about keeping vegetation away from dwellings, and even do controlled burns with local property owners to burn back dead/dying overgrowth.

(Aside: part of the controversy out in Oregon over re-imprisoned ranchers has to do with two controlled burns done by the ranchers in 2001 and 2006, where they insisted they contacted proper authorities in advance both times and the authorities are claiming they were not contacted--it seemed the messages were not passed through the proper chain of contact. The alleged "covering up illegal poaching" claim is being made only by one relative with a grudge against the rest of the family.)

The problem with the Australian fires is that they were of a magnitude where it was "raining fire" in the form of embers. The videos I saw showed smoke clouds of massive thunderhead, almost volcanic, proportions, and satellite photos showed plumes dwarfing what we often see shown briefly on the TV news to impress us about California wildfires. The first town to which Yarloop residents evacuated then itself had to be evacuated even further away. This is kind of like "This is California--you're gonna get earthquakes and wildfires, but that's the price you pay for fresh orange juice and sunshine!"

Further, in Yarloop, water supply/pressure had to be cut from some areas deemed "hopeless" to keep up supply to areas where firefighters still had some hope. In places where wildfires are a danger, water supply is typically quite limited as well, so just installing sprinklers would not have helped.

One might have been able to help the shops survive had they clear-cut ALL vegetation for a hundred metres or more around the property, installed metal roofs, and saturated the buildings with fireproofing at great expense. But then you're "robbing the historic character" of the place. Maybe a big, glass dome.........

The obvious comparisons in the States are to the Cass, WV sawmill (lost to two fires in 1978 and 1982) and the EBT buildings, and I'm sure we can find other museums, enginehouses, stations, and preserved locations in similar vulnerable situations.

When we get major fires like this in Australia, there is no fire 'front' that can be attacked or slowed down. The fire is a series of spot fires that break out on the winds. In some cases you can have a fire front that is over 10km deep. It's certainly not a situation that you send people in to attack the main fire, as done with some USA forest fires. Fuel reduction burns are done when possible but there is just so much highly flammable fuel around australia to keep it all under control.

Fire breaks can work with smaller cooler fires that happen when there is more moisture in the forest fuel loads, but these are useless with the big fires. The joke with some of the fire fighters overhere is that there is only 1 certain fire break around here, the southern ocean! (most fires travel south being pushed by the strong northerly winds we get on really hot days like yesterday when it was 42'C here)

Since the Black Saturday fires of 2009 when the railway I volunteer at lost some bridges and a yard/compound, the new guidelines for anyone in fire prone areas is to leave on extreme fire danger days or when a fire starts nearby. Just get out. Before 2009 it was thought that a well prepared house/home was defendable, however with 173 people loosing their lives on Black Saturday (mostly in/around their houses) it was realised that your home/contents don't mean much compared with your life.

Cheers, Al.