Taming the Fiery Horse – Bushfires

We’ve all seen the images of bushfires, especially over the past few years.  In the Spring and Summer of 2019-20 fires devastated almost 19 million hectares of bushland, destroyed 3,500 homes and directly resulted in the deaths of 34 people.  Fires affected every State and Territory including areas that rarely burn.  While this was the worst we have ever experienced, and clearly exacerbated by climate change, bushfires in themselves are not a new phenomenon. 

I vividly remember the Ash Wednesday fires that tore through the Adelaide Hills in February 1983, just six weeks after my wife and I got married in Adelaide. Her uncle’s orchard, where we had spent Christmas, was threatened with a huge conflagration.  Fortunately he escaped without catastrophic damage but many were not so lucky. That summer, fires destroyed 1.5 million hectares of bushland in South Australia and Victoria and killed at least 75 people. 

A  decade later fires along most of the NSW coast burned through 900,000 ha of bushland, shrouded Sydney in smoke and destroyed over 200 homes.  In 2003, fires burned through much of the ACT, reaching right into the suburbs of Canberra.  In February 2009, Victoria’s Black Saturday fires destroyed over 2,000 homes and resulted in 175 deaths and over 7,000 displaced persons.  Even more recently, the summer of 2023-24 saw major fires in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

These are just some of the worst fires – there are bushfires somewhere in Australia every summer, and they are increasing in range, intensity and frequency with climate change.  As pointed out in my introduction, they have two types of impact – the direct impact from being in the path of the fire, and the indirect impact from smoke inhalation.  Here’s some thoughts on how to deal with these.  It’s a big subject, and my main purpose here is to point you to some resources put together by people who know much more than I do. 

Adapting to fire risk

Adapting to increased fire risk is largely a public and community issue, rather than one for individual households and property owners, and it primarily focuses on bushland management and firefighting capability. How to do this is a matter of controversy. This is partly because bushfires have become a key battleground for climate denial, and certain right wing media organisations and politicians are keen to deflect attention from climate policy onto issues like arson or environmental groups preventing hazard reduction, neither of which is a major factor.

However, there are also a lot of good faith debates:

• To what extent do you reduce fuel load through controlled burning, how much of this can be feasibly managed during shortening 'safe' periods, and how do we balance fire prevention with wildlife and habitat protection?

• What role should Indigenous fire management practices play in the 21st century? First Australians have made extensive use of fire to manage landscapes over thousands of years - what can fire authorities learn from these practices?

• What sort of planning and building controls need to operate in fire-risk areas in response to climate-intensified fire risk?

• What is the appropriate level of resourcing, training and equipment for firefighters as fire risk increases?

• How can communities be better prepared and informed to reduce their fire risk and be ready when fires come?

All of these are matters which housing organisations operating in these locations need to be aware of, but not necessarily to lead.

Smoke

Starting with smoke, this is in a sense the most straightforward issue to respond to, as well as the most widespread.  Any home can be affected – in the Black Summer, major cities along the East Coast were blanketed in smoke even when they were far from the fires themselves.  For most people it is simply irritating, but for older people or people with pre-existing respiratory conditions it can lead to a risk of serious illness or death.  A couple of things will help.

• First of all, know your tenants.  You may well have more vulnerable people than average in your housing and it can be timely to do a quick welfare check if there’s a lot of smoke around.

• Secondly, the more air-tight a home is, the more possibility your tenants have of keeping smoke out of the house.  And as mentioned previously, it also helps deal with heatwaves!

Building for fire

The National Construction Code has a set of guidelines around bushfire risk based on an assessment of what are known as Bushfire Attack Levels (BALs).  Different locations and properties are classified depending on their level of bushfire risk and different construction standards apply.  Key elements of adapting housing for bushfire are using fire-resistant materials, and having the capacity to exclude embers through things like protecting vents and gutters and installing window shutters. Managing vegetation surrounding your property is also important - a 20m buffer can help protect the home by providing a fire break. This is a technically complex area and if you are building in a bushfire risk zone you will need expert advice.  I've included some links in the Resources section at the bottom for those interested in exploring this further. In general, if you discover that your property is at high risk of bushfire, you may like to rethink whether you want to build there as it will involve expense to you and risk to your tenants, but if you are operating in a small community you may not have a choice. 

Bushfire preparedness

Social housing organisations are unlikely to own housing in the middle of bushland.  However, as the Black Summer showed us, whole communities can be threatened in a major fire.  We all saw the images of the residents of Mallacoota being evacuated from the beach as their town was threatened by flames.  In 2003 residents of some of the outer suburbs of Canberra lost their homes to bushfire. This suggests that if you have homes in small communities, or on the fringes of larger towns and cities, you will need a plan for responding.  Don’t wait until the fire arrives to work out what to do!

There are a lot of good resources for individuals - I’ve listed a couple below.  In a community that is prone to bushfire local groups will often run programs helping people to get ready which you can link your tenants in to.  Otherwise, if you have the capacity it wouldn’t hurt to organise something yourself in partnership with local emergency management organisations like the SES or Rural Fire Brigade. 

For your organisation one of the most straightforward processes I’ve come across is the ‘Six Steps to Resilience’ published by ACOSS which takes you through a step-by-step disaster resilience planning process.  If you want to dig deeper, Collaborating4Inclusion has a big range of resources focused on how communities can better support vulnerable people in disaster situations.

When the fire comes

When a bushfire comes, this is when you fall back on the systems you have set up by preparing – the preparation is important because fire situations can develop quickly.  How you respond will depend on whether you are based in the location threatened by fire, or whether you manage housing in a threatened community remote from your base. Here’s some things that are key to managing the situation – these should all be documented in your plan.

• Keep up to date – your State or Territory fire service will be posting up-to-date information on the situation and issuing warnings – make sure you tune into these and follow their advice.  Local ABC radio is also a good source of up-to-date information.

• Check in with your tenants – make sure they are aware of the situation, are getting information and have a plan in place.  If they need help, you could provide it yourself, or link them up with a local organisation that is helping with responses. 

• Take a ‘safety-first’ approach – when a fire is coming, the best place to be is somewhere else, so if you are advised to evacuate your office or your tenants are advised to evacuate their homes, don’t hesitate. 

Recovery

A fire, or any major disaster, may only last a few days, but if property has been destroyed or damaged the recovery can take years.  You will have work you need to do with your tenants, and may also be able to make a contribution to the recovery beyond this.

Whether or not their homes have been badly damaged, your tenants may choose either to stay or to leave.  For some, the trauma of a natural disaster can make it too hard to return to that home or community, and they may seek somewhere they feel safer.  For others, the community will be ‘home’ and they will want to stay and remain part of that network of relationships.  For those who want to leave you may be able to support them through negotiating transfers, those who want to stay may need temporary accommodation or else new permanent accommodation.  All this is likely to play out over an extended period.

Beyond your existing tenants, any disaster that destroys homes creates ongoing pressure on the housing market and increased homelessness.  Initially, those who are homeless are those whose homes were destroyed, whether they are renters or owner-occupiers.  However, since it can take several years to fully rebuild, over time the pressure in the affected communities and those nearby can create risks for lower income people in general as there is more competition for a reduced stock of rental housing.  As a housing organisation, you can play a significant role in helping to minimize this problem – for instance, through the use of modular construction to rapidly replace housing that has been lost, or through leading community efforts to convert vacant or holiday housing into permanent lets for the duration of the recovery.  After a disaster, governments are likely to be quick to mobilise resources for the recovery and you can be at the forefront of ensuring renters are not left out of the reconstruction. 

Resources

Check out Wikipedia’s summary of the Black Summer here, more detail at Natural Hazards Australia, or else the report of the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements here. 

A brief history of Australian bushfires can be read here.

The Bureau of Meteorology has a handy explainer on bushfire weather here.

The Australian Disaster Resistance Knowledge Hub has a helpful resource on bushfires which includes links to bushfire information from each State.

In an earlier post I discussed recent AHURI research into adaptation which included a case study of bushfire adaptation from Spain.

The Building Code has a whole section on bushfire risk – you can read it here but personally I’d leave it to the experts.  CSIRO’s Bushfire Best Practice Guidelines are more accessible and there’s a handy tutorial about assessing bushfire risk. The Resilient Building Council also has a handy self-assessment app to measure how well a home would fare in a bushfire. Here's a very brief introduction from The Conversation into retrofitting existing homes.

There are lots of great resources for individuals to prepare for disaster.  Here’s one from the Red Cross, while the National Emergency Management Agency has published a set of links to each State and Territory planning resources.

For organisations, ACOSS has a good disaster resilience framework you can apply to help you prepare.  For community level planning for vulnerable people, Collaborating4Inclusion has a great set of resources focused on homelessness and other vulnerable community members, which you can use across the community.