Information sharing and community safety: Lessons from the Montrose March 2025 fire

Currently, there is limited data collected by fire agencies to understand the impact and effectiveness of communication and engagement with community members before, during, and after a specific bushfire incident. A lack of quality data creates challenges for evidence-based improvements to current public-facing communication, education, engagement and warnings. 

Post-event social research was conducted in Pomonal after the February 2024 fires. Valuable lessons were learnt from that research regarding community preparedness, response and recovery, as well as how well information was shared across different levels of governance and why.  

The Montrose March 2025 fire provides an opportunity to conduct a comparable study to better understand information provision and community comprehension and use of bushfire information before, during and after that fire specific bushfire incident.

Using social science research methods, the project will seek to understand:

• the information sharing roles of state, regional and local actors and how information was shared between them before, during and after the fire
• how this information influenced the decisions taken by members of the community, and, therefore, the consequences of the fire
• how the insights generated can lead to improvements to policy and practice.