You said: > Gas and fuel pipelines have big safety valves at either end > and big storage tanks too. The cut to civilian consumers is > easy, emergency services always have access to supply. From memory, experience in the Canberra bushfires was that Emergency services do not always have the ability to cut supply of gas services and that the gas suppliers themselves were reluctant to cut supply due to the work involved in re-establishing supply - apparently all lines have to be flushed and meters checked before supply can be re-started. There were numerous reports of household connections spewing ignited gas jets - contributing to the number of houses destroyed. ************************************************** To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field. To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. To search the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelist.org/archives/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************