Don't be held up by traffic when there's a fire

Traffic Update 13 19 40 provides information about the current road situation in the Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast areas. Phone 1300 130 595 RACQ for State wide 24 hour road reports.

Designs on Fire

• Avoid building on hilltops as fires travel faster uphill
• Minimise corners and vulnerable junctions such as verandas or pergolas where embers might lodge. Separate pergolas from dwellings.
• Simplify roof profiles, but keep them relatively steep to help shed leaf litter or burning debris. Clad them in metal or fibre-cement and ensure they have no crevices or valleys’; seal roof spaces and cavities.
• Use sarking – waterproof sheets – to cover gaps in roof coverings. Roof cladding and supporting structures should withstand gale-force winds.

Landscape Matters

• Use low-flammability plants that drop little litter.
• Clear fuel from under trees and shrubs and remove lower branches, loose bark, twigs and leaves.
• Surround buildings with open spaces – mown lawns, grazed paddocks and driveways or paths.
• Use hills or gullies, or construct earth mounds and cut-and-fill terraces or retaining walls to block heat radiation and deflect embers and wind-driven debris.
• Plant hedges and windbreaks using largish trees and shrubs of low flammability and with dense foliage to catch embers and debris and reduce wind.
• Keep trees at least 20 metres from dwellings.