Bush Fire Assignment

University of New South Wales

POWER LINE FAULT & BUSH FIRE AT TENTERDEN, WESTERN AUSTRALIA ON
27 DECEMBER 2003

Assignment report

Name: Yuan Ren
Student No: z3324987
Content
1. Introduction 3
1.1 Time and Date of Occurrence 3
1.2 Incident Location 3
1.3 Notification of Incident 4
1.4 Investigating Inspector 4
2. Summary 5
3. Investigation Analysis 6
4. Investigation Analysis 8
5. Who Is Responsible For the Incident? 8
6. Recommendation For BlaBla 8
7. Conclusion 8
Reference 9
Appendices 10

1. Introduction
According to the electrical incident report by Department of Consumer and Employment Protection of Government of Western Australia, a ground fire occurred on 27 December 2003 near Tenterden. This situation was reported by the Fire

Summary
This bush fire occurred at approximately 1308 hours on 27 December 2003. According to the information collected by the inspectors and the weather conditions at that moment, the cause of the bush fire is due to the short circuit fault of conductor clashing where is located on a Western Power 22kV overhead line north of Mt Barker at a point approximately midway between poles 721 and 722 which can been shown in the appendices figure 1.

The environment of where the Power overhead line at the moment was very special. According to the weather condition provided by FESA, strong gusting wind and high ambient air temperatures appeared around the fire incident location. This resulted the erratic movement of the live red phase conductor and the under slung earth wire. Consequently, the two wires contacted with each other directly and the discharging of electricity leaded to an extremely high temperature which could melt the metal into globules. The high temperature metal globules then dropped on the ground and became a vital condition to light the fire. The worse thing was some of the dry stubble located near the power line. As a result, it provided the medium for the

Origin of The Ground Fire
There are some witnesses of the ground bush fire. Mr and Mrs Maddison have reported to Albany Police from Tenterden Store. They mentioned that they saw the ground fire when they were driving south along the Albany Highway between 1315 hours and 1320 hours. According to their report, a bush fire was occurring in paddock on the east side of the Highway. The fire location was between two power poles, the poles 721 and 722 of Western Power, carrying an overhead 3 phase 22kV line with an underslung earth wire as we mentioned before in the introduction.

Another witness, Mr Keith Parson, a local resident, reported that when he was driving north on Albany Highway at about 1330 hours, he saw a small grass fire burning in the paddock on the east side of the Highway near Ballochmyle Road. Due to the severe risk weather and geographical conditions for fire at that moment, he wanted to report this situation as soon as possible. However, the fire brigade was already in the