Identifying key town and city bushfire disaster lessons and insights for Australia. An opinion piece John O’Donnell 27 February 2025

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Introduction

The author considers that large numbers of Australian towns and cities are inadequately prepared for bushfires.

This matter was initially assessed in a review on potential opportunities for improved town and city bushfire protection across Australia by O’Donnell (2021) and in another detailed review on town-and-city bushfire disaster review case studies and lessons across Australia by O’Donnell (2024). A considerable town and city disasters were considered in these reviews, including the capture of opportunities and lessons.

This latest review on identifying key town and city bushfire disaster lessons and insights for Australia, considering four more recent wildfire disasters in the USA and Canada, including at Palisades.

The author is aware that bushfire mitigation, fuel management, active and adaptive management, community and fire fighter safety have been at inadequate levels over the last 30 years, except for parts of Northern Australia and SW Western Australia.  Thus, no apologies are made for the strong focus in this review in relation to all these areas in relation to the lessons and insights outlined below.

There have been too many failures, too many bushfire disasters and ongoing failures, it is essential that these lessons are captured and implemented.  Key town and city bushfire disaster lessons and insights are outlined in the full review attached here.

FULL DOCUMENT LINK HERE

Conclusions

There have been too many bushfires wakeup calls across Australia, the US, Canada and in other countries that have been ignored and in many cases, lessons and insights not captured, experienced operators not listened to and in many cases there is ongoing complacency, acceptance of current failed approaches and ongoing barriers to regular low intensity burning across landscapes.  In many cases there is inadequate political and organisation will to address all these issues and issues in relation to inadequate accountability.

 

An issue that greatly concerns the author is that Australia has not really fully nor effectively captured and locked in many of the key lessons in relation to avoiding and reducing town and city bushfire disasters across communities on an ongoing basis, except for isolated cases.  This also applies to fire fighter safety.

 

It’s time to capture the town and city bushfire disaster lessons and insights that have been available, but not effectively captured, adopted nor shared over the last 20 plus years.  It’s time to wake up and action the lessons and insights.

 

There is inadequate funding of bushfire mitigation in Australia, including prescribed burning and other fuel management measures. There are large government savings to be made through increasing expenditure on mitigation, and so reducing the costs of responding to natural disasters, including bushfires.  Savings in bushfire suppression expenditure, recovery expenditure, bureaucracy expenditure and efficiencies can be extracted, while at the same time increasing employment in mitigation and forest resilience programs.  There are opportunities for economic reform within fire management across Australia and this is essential considering the huge ongoing impacts of disastrous bushfires, especially in SE Australia.

 

It would be beneficial if governments across Australia, fire services, brigades, communities, home owners, business owners and landholders considered and acted on these lessons and insights in order to reduce bushfire disasters and improve town, city and firefighter safety, as well as town and city bushfire protection, bushfire preparedness and hopefully reduce increasing business and home insurance costs.  The key lessons and insights provide a base for consideration, it is up to governments, communities, to adopt key lessons and insights into their own administration areas, including policies and practices.

 

If Australia doesn’t improve actioning in regards to capturing and implementing town and city bushfire lessons and insights, there will continue to be large scale impacts on communities, community members, fire fighters, the environment and massive economic and insurance impacts.