 What we have here is representative of what you'd find in a the floor of a native forest ignition But it's also not that much different from what you would find in a garden bed around somebody's house A lot of the work that we've done in the past has been on large scar fires in the open but we can't get detailed measurements of the heat fluxes and Physical processes that are involved in the propagation of a bushfire So we come to the pyrotron where we can control all those variables and Pull apart the important bits that are actually controlling the spread of fire through bushfire fuels All right So we've got flames that are now up the full length of the bark and a couple of embers coming off The flame temperature is going to be in the order of about 900 to 1100 Celsius And as we get a gust of wind come through we can see that there's more and more embers being shed off the slab of bark We've had an ember land. It's ignored a few leaves in front of a large bushfire You'll probably find that you don't just get one ember but lots of embers landing and depending on how close they are They're actually spreading faster than what you would get if there was just one spot fire by itself If any of those are starting spot fires then it'd be far too many for you to actually be able to control safely So if you've got spot fires landing you need to take cover There's no questioning the facts learn more at emergency.vic.gov.au Authorized by the Victorian government Melbourne