Ten years on from Black Saturday: what have we discovered?

It has been ten years since Australia’s most deadly bushfire, in which 173 people lost their lives and thousands of houses were lost. Like Black Friday, Ash Wednesday and other catastrophic bushfires in Australia’s history, the lessons from Black Saturday are still resonating today.

By Costa Haritos and Nathan Maddock. This article first appeared in Issue One 2019 of Fire Australia.

On the back of a week-long heatwave, the mercury once again soared past 40 degrees Celsius on 7 February 2009, fanned by a furious north-westerly wind. Coupled with the low humidity, the fire danger for the day was off the charts, and emergency services had been warning about the conditions for several days in advance. Unfortunately, many fires did occur across southern Australia with the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, as they soon became known, ravaging over 75 communities between 7 February and 14 March 2009.

In the aftermath, the Bushfire CRC was put in charge of coordinating a group of researchers and fire agencies to look at the key issues involved in these bushfires.

With the fires still being battled away from the areas that had been devastated, and with tributes flowing in from around the world, researchers from across Australia, New Zealand and the US were hard at work. More than 21,000 photographs were taken and 1,300 homes examined as part of a taskforce that collected data and analysed the fires.

A report prepared by the Bushfire CRC covered the main issues raised by the fires, including lessons learned.

Fire behaviour

Ember spotting—the distance that an ember can travel in the wind—was an influential factor in the progression of the fire. Some spotting was recorded as reaching more than 30 kilometres in front of the main fire, exacerbated by wind gusts that reached up to 100 km/h.

The fire behaviour models in place under-predicted the speed that the fires spread, with a key recommendation suggesting that further work was required to understand the detailed progression of the fire across the landscape. Since 2009, much research has gone into fire-spread simulators, with researchers working alongside fire operations personnel to improve modelling accuracy. In turn, this leads to better emergency warnings and helps keep firefighters safe.

The research team also measured and compared the intensity of the Black Saturday bushfires with other similar fires, such as Black Friday in 1939 and Ash Wednesday in 1983, to determine the difference in vegetation, humidity and conditions.

Human behaviour

Key human behaviour topics discussed in the report were: planning and preparedness; information and warnings; intentions, actions and the emerging issues or themes. Many people were not prepared for the severity of the fires, as most only took last-minute measures on the day to try and combat the fire threat.

Several weak links resulted in a lack of planning and preparation and affected people’s ability to implement their fire plan. Many residents waited to assess the severity of the bushfires before deciding whether to stay or go. Over the last ten years, fire agencies have adapted their community engagement approaches. They now advise that the safest place to be is away from the fire—and that under severe weather conditions, defending a house from a bushfire will be impossible.

Residents identified public buildings, ovals and facilities with emergency services as relatively safe places of refuge during the bushfires. Many residents who stayed back to defend their homes reported medical conditions, dehydration, exhaustion and breathing difficulties as influential factors for why they did not take any action.

Building and planning

The level of detail in house design, building quality and the age of the property were all considered to be crucial factors that contributed to the likelihood of house loss during the fires.

In all, an estimated 2,029 houses were destroyed during the Black Saturday fires. This even included houses further than 380 metres away from continuous bush. Brick houses performed significantly better than mud brick and light-weight construction clad with timber or cellulose cement sheet.

People should not rely on mains water pressure and electricity during a bushfire. As water is a vital resource for fighting fires and for mitigation and hydration, the design, location and degree of protection of water pumps and pipework were important factors in maintaining an effective water supply throughout a bushfire.

More than half of the surveyed properties were not in regions classified by a Bushfire Management Overlay, which identifies land that is at risk of a bushfire in Victoria.

What have we learned?

The Bushfire CRC, and now the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, plays an active role in bushfire research—particularly in preparedness, warnings and mitigation strategies for bushfire-prone communities. These post-event studies are highly valued by CRC partners, and are an effective way to gather important data after a major hazard.

The themes covered in the final Black Saturday research report are still points of interest and concern for fire agencies today. Since Black Saturday, several other studies have been undertaken, each building on previous research. This includes after major bushfires in WA in 2011 and 2014 (Department of Fire and Emergency Services), NSW in 2013, 2017 and 2018 (NSW Rural Fire Service), SA in 2014 and 2015 (Country Fire Service), and Tasmania in 2013 (Tasmania Fire Service).

Fire and Rescue NSW also received additional insights into the effectiveness of equipment and training provided to their community fire units during the Blue Mountains bushfires in 2013. Research after 2015’s severe tropical cyclone Marcia investigated how the cyclone would impact vegetation for the following fire season and beyond, with the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services benefitting.

Looking to the future, we know that climate change is causing more severe weather and that demographic changes are having an equal impact. Much can be done to reduce the impacts of natural hazards by better allocating resources and working out how to do things differently—doing things the same way is not the right way for the future.

Houses can be built better to withstand bushfire and cyclones, as can bridges and roads to cope with floods and storms. The complexities of communities can be better understood to improve preparation, response and recovery from the impacts of natural hazards. Warnings continue to be improved, with more targeted messages delivered over a range of channels, including online, phones and face-to-face. Emergency services are getting more tools and data to help them make better decisions under stressful conditions, considering the balance of social, environmental, legal and economic consequences. Governments can be supported to make better decisions on where people can live and under what circumstances, to mitigate the impacts of inevitable floods, fires, storms or other hazards.

We have learned much through science—but there is still more to do. We must continue to ask the difficult questions and be prepared for complex answers. We must continue to identify what we do not know. That is the role of research. 

For the full Black Saturday bushfires research report, visit: www.bushfirecrc.com/research/vicfires-taskforce/research-reports