With Bushfires in Australia getting worse each passing year, it’s time to gear up for a fight. If you want to learn how to defend your home and community during a wildfire, you’ve come to the right place. Here are four tips that can help you protect your home and community during bushfire season. 

1. Prepare Your House

If you live close to the bushland or a high fire-risk zone, you will need to prepare your home specially. Start with no combustible material around your house, tree boughs trimmed down, and no dried leaves and twigs outside. 

Then, wet the woodlands near your house, soak the soil, and even wet the outside of your house. To add a layer of additional protection, cover or line windows and doors with wet blankets. Fireproof paint is a good idea, too. This should all slow down or prevent fire from spreading to your home. 

With your home amply prepared to survive the fire, you can turn your attention to fighting the fires and helping the animals and community. It’s prudent to prepare your home even if you decide to leave the area early to mitigate fire damage caused when you return home after the fire. 

2. Join or Start a CFU 

CFUs, or Community Fire Units, are local groups of volunteers living closer to bushland supported by Fire & Rescue New South Wales (FR NSW). These units do not engage in direct fire fighting, but they help and support a lot during the bushfire season. 

As a member of a CFU, you will be taught how to prepare and defend your homes for bushfires and when you should definitely leave the area. Community awareness and collaboration over the problem help everyone be better prepared when disaster strikes.

CFUs live close to high-risk fire areas and remain in contact with FR NSW. FR NSW gets appraised of the movements of the wildfire with prompt firsthand accounts, making the process of tracking and managing the fire easier. Since CFUs are educated about what to do during the fire, the whole community is safer. 

3. Buy a Fire Fighting Unit For Your Truck

If you are ready to take your property defense to the next level and fight fires yourself, you can! Buy a slide-on or skid-on fire fighting unit that you can mount on the back of your truck, trailer, or ute. High-performance fire fighting units can help you defend against fire in all kinds of situations. 

You can find units that can hold anywhere from 20L to 2400L of water. Options that suit every type of vehicle or need are available. You can become a powerful force against the flames in your community. After your home is accounted for, you can help your neighborhood and friends as well. 

Truck-mounted fire fighting units are part of the new norm of living near bushland after the unprecedented fires of black summer or the bushfires of 2019-20. Australia is gravely affected by climate change, and that is, in turn, affecting the economy at a rapid pace, so every effort to fight fires counts. 

4. Volunteer for the NSW Rural Fire Service

New South Wales is home to the world’s largest firefighting unit, which is exclusively made up of volunteers, with about 70,000 people and counting. The NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) is ready to help twenty-four hours a day with bushfires and all other types of fires. 

Training in the NSW RFS will empower you with the skills and knowledge to keep your home and community safe from fires. It will also teach you life skills that you can use to further your education or career. Finally, it’s a great place to meet people and make friends while making a difference.