News features

Creating a realistic computer representation of a bushfire moving across the landscape is the goal of a project being implemented this fire season in Victoria.

Phoenix RapidFire – a new Bushfire CRC software that maps bushfire potential – is being trialled in Victoria as it endures what is expected to be a dry, hot summer. The longer term view is to help agencies across Australia prioritise how they deploy resources to suppress bushfires. More

A new tool developed by a Bushfire CRC researcher from CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems sets aside the operational support roles of planes and helicopters, and focusses squarely on the attacking role of bombing aircraft, and how they might best be used to deliver fire suppressants including water, foam, gel and retardant. The Fire Containment Calculator is a computerised guide to the probability of fire containment with ground and aerial firefighting resources, and is specifically designed to assist decision-makers throughout Australia to evaluate the chance of containing a single fire with and without aircraft. More

For Justin Leonard, studying water tanks, fences, windows and timber decks is not an indiscriminate or arbitrary choice. It is all part of one methodical scientific investigation – one compelling narrative.

“It’s about identifying gaps in our understanding,” Leonard said, “and working to have that complete story.”

Mr Leonard, a Bushfire CRC Project Leader and Research Scientist with CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, has spent the past seven years on a body of work that ultimately helps people end up with homes that can better stand up to bushfires. More 

In its Interim Report, the Bushfires Royal Commission has made it clear that the provision of warnings to communities was inadequate and this meant many civilians received little or no warning of the impending fire impact, and many of them subsequently perished in the fires. Damien Killalea, Director of Community Fire Safety for the Tasmania Fire Service, asks if we are we doing all we can to protect people and the communities they live in? Or have we let our propensity to jump in boots and all to fight the fire cloud our judgement on what the actual priority is? Can a change in strategy from attack to prioritised defence limit the losses of our worst fires? More

For vegetation fires, what activities does a volunteer tanker-based firefighter do in an average day’s work? How far do they walk? What kind of load or stress does the work place on the firefighter’s body? How fit do they need to be to do these tasks?

These are some of the questions that are the focus of the study being undertaken by Bushfire CRC researchers Dr Brad Aisbett and PhD student Matthew Phillips from Deakin University, assisted by the Tasmania Fire Service (TFS), Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service and Forestry Tasmania. More

Comparing the 1939 and 2009 fires in Victorian suggests we do not learn from history. Tom Griffiths argues that greatest challenge in fire research is cultural.

This essay won the Alfred Deakin Award for a Short Essay that Advances Public Debate as part of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

WE SHOULD have seen this coming. We did see this coming. Yet we failed to save lives. We have still not lived long enough. More

There are more than 30 postgraduate students working on fire-related research projects all around Australia. This is the second article (read the first article here) on how the Bushfire CRC is developing an ongoing resource for the future.

All Bushfire CRC students were asked to step in front of a video camera and succinctly and briefly describe their research and say what it meant for the fire industry. They were also asked where they saw themselves in five years time. More

The Victorian bushfires of 7 February 2009 resulted in major loss of life, property, and other assets. The questions and issues that quickly emerged will be the subject of debate, in Australia and internationally, for years to come.

In developing directions for the future, the Victorian fire and land management agencies believed it was vital that decisions were based on solid evidence of what happened and why. To do this thoroughly, a major research effort was required to establish an authoritative and independent set of data for the Australian and international fire community. More

Before the tragic February 2009 bushfires in Victoria, Bushfire CRC researchers had looked at Australian bushfire fatalities over the past 100 years. Lead researcher Katharine Haynes was summoned to provide detailed evidence on the study to the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission in May. More

Many wildland firefighter deaths and injuries in Australia and overseas have resulted from firefighters being surprised and overtaken by a fast-moving fire— both on foot and in vehicles, in both grass and forest environments.

If the problem is defined as one of failure to accurately predict the time taken for a fire to travel from location A to location B, then there are two aspects of the problem. First, the fire may have travelled faster than anticipated (underestimation of its speed). Second, the fire may have been closer than expected and had less distance to travel (overestimation of distance). And finally, it may have travelled faster than anticipated and had less distance to travel. More

Wind change matters to fire managers. It can change bushfire activity in a moment, shifting the flank of the fire to the fire front, suddenly putting fire fighters and communities at risk. A change in wind can also change the rate of fire spread, increase the quantity, distance and direction of downstream spotting, and change the safety status of residents and townships in a flash. More

We all knew it could be a bad weekend. With temperatures in the high 40s and strong northerly winds, any fire that began on the weekend of the 7-8 February had the potential to grow very rapidly, travel fast and quickly threaten communities. It is too early to fully gauge the impact and casues of these events but we can be sure that the date will be etched in our history as firmly as Black Friday in 1939 and Ash Wednesday in 1983. More

In the summer of 1909/10, my Great Grandparents faced the risk of losing everything to a bushfire.  Emily and Charles Handmer lived on a farm 6 kms north of Knowsley near Bendigo, by the state forest on a road now known as Handmer Track.  All the men were interstate.  The five women and girls used buckets of water to put out ember attacks on the bark roofs of the farm buildings while Grandfather lay ill inside.  Neighbours came, and with their help – and a wind change - the buildings and farm equipment were saved. They stayed and battled the fire, and never considered leaving. More

The areas immediately to the east and north-east of Melbourne, are often known collectively as the Upper Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges.  Our analysis of the fire history for this region shows it is one of the most fire-prone and thus dangerous places in the world.  European records of major fires date back as far as 1851 (Black Thursday) and 1898 (Red Tuesday).  There were many other fires but 1939 and then 1983 - the two worst fires before our current tragedy - were the two that helped people understand the risks. More

A group of researchers from various state fire agencies and research organisations has been assembled by the Bushfire CRC to look at key issues arising out of the February 2009 Victorian bushfires.  More

The year is 2020. Australia is hotter, drier and far more fire prone than ever before. What effect is this having on our water supplies, agriculture, changing rural populations, health systems, and the elusive carbon balance? This 2020 scenario is presented by the Bushfire CRC as it considers the issues that the fire industry may confront in the near future. It was developed as a counterfactual for the economic analysis of the proposed CRC Fire – Environment and Society. It is what the world may look like without the research proposed for the new CRC. More

The 2008 AFAC Bushfire CRC Conference held in Adelaide saw approximately 1100 delegates and 100 trade exhibitors attending the four day workshop and seminar program. The conference, Fire: Environment and Society, featured the Bushfire CRC’s International Research Conference and included a wide range of international, Australasian and local speakers who presented on issues that stimulated, informed and entertained.

The conference caters to researchers, practitioners, professionals and senior managers, intent on understanding the scientific research and best practice in areas of, wildfire management, urban fire and rescue and rural urban interfaces issues. More

School-based bushfire education is one way of increasing bushfire awareness and preparedness in vulnerable communities. New research by Briony Towers aims to develop a child focussed model of bushfire risk perception that fire agencies and educators can use to develop more effective education programs.

For the project 250 children aged between five and 17 were interviewed in same-age focus groups at schools across Victoria and Tasmania. To investigate the influence of the family on children’s perceptions and vice versa, approximately 70 parents were interviewed. More

ABC Local Radio took a high profile at the Bushfire CRC/AFAC annual conference 2008 in Adelaide in September with a broadcast booth and running online coverage. This is an edited extract of an address to the conference by Ian Mannix, the Manager of Emergency Broadcasting and Community Development at ABC Local Radio.

Earlier this year ABC Local Radio Victoria was presented by the Victorian Government with A Victorian Unit Meritorious Service Award as recognition of its outstanding contribution over an extended period to public safety. More

With more than 30 postgraduate students working on research projects across Australia, the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre is developing an ongoing resource for the future.

Some of these students recently took part in a video project. They were asked to succinctly and briefly say what there research was about and what it meant for the fire industry. Their answers were filmed and shown at the recent Bushfire CRC/AFAC Annual Conference in Adelaide and will be provided to all Bushfire CRC agency partners on a DVD. Edited extracts can now also be viewed on the Bushfire CRC You Tube channel and at the CRC website.

Click here to learn what the students said.

In September 2004, some fourteen months after the establishment of Australia’s Bushfire CRC, the then Prime Minister announced the allocation of an additional three million dollars for fire-related research in the high country regions of south-eastern NSW and north-eastern Victoria. The funding was provided to address some of the key issues identified by the House of Representatives Inquiry into the 2003 Bushfires (Nairn, G. et al. 2003, A Nation Charred: Inquiry into the Recent Australian Bushfires. Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia).

The first research task was to identify the critical scientific issues that needed improved understanding if fires in these areas were to be better managed. A multidisciplinary project was designed to address a range of issues within the fields of ecology, risk management and social science. More

The use of fire as a management tool in California was the subject of a seminar by a visiting United State wildfire researcher recently.

The talk at the occasional Bushfire CRC International Seminar Series was given by Scott Stephens, Associate Professor of Fire Science at Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also co-director of the University of California Centre for Fire Research and Outreach. 

Stephens was visting Australia as guest of the Bushfire CRC and spent time with researchers across Australia, including an extended time at the Australian National University. His talk at the Bushfire CRC office in Melbourne was titled “Fire at stand and landscape scales in California forests: Management and conservation implications.”

A series of seasonal bushfire assessment workshops have taken place this year following the success of earlier meetings that have addressed the potential for bushfires to occur. More

Bushfire fatalities have long been a major concern for fire agencies and it has been the death of people in vehicles that has come under particular attention in recent years.

Research conducted by the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) with CSIRO scientists and initiated by NSW Rural Fire Service sought to determine the maximum heat load that a vehicle could face while remaining a safe haven for its occupants, both in terms of the air temperature and the air quality inside the vehicle. More

Investigations into accidents or near miss events on the fireground mostly focus on finding out the details of what happened, with relatively little consideration given to the thoughts and mental processes driving the firefighters’ decisions. Rather than seeing this as a failing of the fire agencies, we suggest that this has been due to a lack of appropriate methodologies and expertise being available to agencies. More

Since the early 1990s large areas of previously cleared agricultural land in higher rainfall regions of southern Australia have been afforested with plantations of Tasmanian bluegum (Eucalyptus globulus). Bluegum plantations have been primarily established for short rotation pulpwood production, although opportunities for growing sawlog plantations on longer rotations are also being explored. To date, unplanned fires have inflicted only limited losses on the bluegum plantation estate with individual fires mostly less than 50 hectares. This can be attributed in part to implementation of effective fire planning guidelines and provision of fire suppression resources by the plantation industry. More

Wildfire management experts from North America, Australia and New Zealand have recognized for decades that they share many commonalities.

This recognition provided the motive, for numerous informal visits and formal study tours, on both sides, of the Pacific over the years. More

Research has taught us a lot about bushfire management in recent decades. The challenge now is to continue to learn.

The Ash Wednesday bushfires of 1983 are etched in the national story as deep as Cyclone Tracy and the Newcastle earthquake. With much of southern Australia aflame in 40 degree heat and driving northerly winds most of us in that part of the world have our own personal stories about the day that left 75 people dead and almost 2500 houses destroyed.

The threat of bushfire is still as real as it was 25 years ago, but our ability as a community to prepare and respond to that threat has changed remarkably. More

The findings of Australia’s most extensive study to date of the behaviour of high-intensity bushfires in eucalypt forests – Project Vesta – provide valuable new tools and information for fire managers across Australia.

The Bushfire CRC backed multi-million dollar study was conducted by the Department of Environment and Conservation, Western Australia and Ensis – CSIRO’s forestry joint venture with New Zealand’s Scion. It was released in Perth by the Western Australian Environment and Climate Change Minister, David Templeman, in November.

Bushfire CRC program leader and Ensis Bushfire Research leader Jim Gould said the 10 year study provided data to develop a better system for predicting the spread and intensity of wildfires. More

Following on from the AFAC/Bushfire CRC Hobart Conference, the Bushfire CRC’s Fire Knowledge Network hosted a national workshop on the establishment of a national lessons learnt centre. The keynote addresses were delivered by Paula Nasiatka, Centre Manager, US Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center and Paul Chamberlin, Interagency Fire Operations Safety Specialist, Aerial Fire Depot, Montana, Missoula.

This was complemented by presentations from the Victorian Country Fire Authority, the South Australian Country Fire Service, and the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service on the current status of their work in this area. A decision was made to develop a community of practice with the US Lessons Learned Centre to further discuss issues of translating lessons into action and the possible ways forward for Australasia in developing a lessons learnt centre.

The workshop was attended by more than 40 people from around Australia. It has also been agreed to write a special US/Australasia edition of the Scratchline Newsletter for publication this year. Copies of workshop presentations and papers can be found here.

Emergency service volunteers and their partners or spouses are being asked to comment on how their volunteer community role fits in with their family life.

“We know that volunteering as a firefighter or emergency worker puts a unique blend of pressures on volunteers and their families,” said Sean Cowlishaw, a Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre PhD student at La Trobe University in Melbourne. “We have already interviewed volunteer managers and found evidence of many possible conflicts between emergency volunteering and family life. But now we need to hear from the volunteers, and most of all from their spouses and partners.” More

Fire has operated over geological time-scales to profoundly influence the richness, composition and distribution of most of Australia’s ecosystems.

Much of Australia’s biota has evolved in this fire-prone environment and is adapted to, and largely dependent on fire and the attendant variety of fire regimes for its continued existence and development. Importantly however, there are some species and community types which are very sensitive to fire. More

Many rural communities have a wealth of knowledge, tradition and experience of their district.  This understanding of country, fire and weather history is being harnessed by Bushfire CRC research for use within future fire management. More

Fire managers around Australia are increasingly arming themselves with a new research product as they provide advice to government and policy makers on the severity of upcoming bushfire seasons.

The National Seasonal Bushfire Outlook Report, a new product of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, has become an essential resource in the preparation for bushfire seasons. More

Bushfires are only one focus of a new book out of the Centre for Disaster Studies at James Cook University in Townsville.

Floods, cyclones and even terrorist attacks are analysed alongside fire in Communities Living with Hazards, which looks at how people and communities deal with natural and human induced disasters.

Several Bushfire CRC researchers at the Centre contributed to the book, including Dr Alison Cottrell, who co-edited the publication with colleague David King. More

The need to develop the next generation of fire researchers was one of the key reasons for the establishment of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre in 2003.

Now, four years on, there are 31 student researchers working on Bushfire CRC projects around Australia and in New Zealand, including 27 PhDs and four masters students. Here is a snapshot of the new generation of fire researchers. More

A unique mobile laboratory that is measuring greenhouse gases in Australia’s high country was launched last month.

The fully-self contained laboratory is housed within a 4WD vehicle and trailer and includes sophisticated scientific equipment that takes continuous measurements of CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O emissions 24 hours a day, seven days a week. More

A unique survey following firefighting volunteers six months after recruitment has begun to provide the basis of better volunteer recruitment strategies. More

A perennial challenge in the management of fire is to strike a balance between the relative costs of bushfire mitigation, and the related losses incurred by the community.

Since the formation of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre in late 2003 work has been underway on the development of a bushfire risk management model that will enable fire and land managers to better understand how the various elements of ‘bushfire risk’ interact. More

More than 150 people gathered at Parliament House in Canberra at the end of February (2007) for the first National Bushfire Forum – Are Big Fires Inevitable?

Hosted by the Bushfire CRC, the one-day forum attracted politicians and policy makers, the fire and land management agencies and other industries including forestry and water. More

Bushfire Summer, a four part series on bushfires in Australia, screened on ABC TV in January (2007).

Bushfire CRC researchers contributed much of their expertise to the television program and to the accompanying website. CSIRO based researcher Justin Leonard helped the ABC construct the online section on safe houses – Is your home prepared or bushfire? - and featured in the television series.

Other featured researchers included Professor John Handmer, from RMIT University, who spoke about the Prepare, Stay and Defend or Leave Early policy; Dr Jim McLennan, from La Trobe University, who spoke about recruiting volunteers for the fire agencies; and Dr Brad Aisbett, of Melbourne University, who spoke about the joint project with the Country Fire Authority of Victoria that is measuring the health of fire fighters on the fire ground.

The website for Bushfire Summer can be found at: http://abc.net.au/nature/bushfire/default.htm

A DVD Bushfire Summer is now available for purchase at ABC Shops.

The mysteries of climate change are being explored across the high plains and mountain forests of Australia through a study trying to unravel the complex interaction among water yield, fire, drought and long term changes in climate.

In recent months measuring equipment has been set up on sites in Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory to continuously measure – 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year – the smallest changes in water and carbon in a host of ecosystems. More

Call it peri-urban, the rural-urban interface or the i-Zone, the spread of urban populations into the bushland fringe is creating new challenges for fire services.

Reducing the risk and impact of bushfire is a problematic and complex challenge. The aim of the Bushfire CRC Understanding Communities project is to increase community resilience to bushfires. In most communities only a small proportion of people have the capacity to prepare for and react adequately to a fire threat. Most people rely on fire services for protection but the services capacity to respond will always be finite and, at times, inadequate. The key to successful policies and management strategies lies with the communities in which they are to apply. More

Australia has about 250,000 volunteer firefighters but for the past 30 years memberships have been declining. Fire agencies fear that if the decline persists a shortage of volunteer firefighters may emerge that degrades the provision of fire services.

The Bushfire CRC is carrying out joint research with fire agencies from around Australia looking at the issues in both recruiting and retaining volunteers. More

How fit are our volunteer firefighters and how fit do they need to be to fight bushfires?

Bushfire CRC research is looking at the health and safety aspects of fire fighting.

It is hoped that this research will gain a greater insight into the physical demands experienced by volunteers during bushfire suppression.  More

A research review commissioned by the Bushfire CRC has identified some important differences in the performance of different types of residential smoke alarms. More

An alpine paddock in the New South Wales Snowy Plains was the venue for the Bushfire CRC High Fire project open day in March 2006.

Around 80 people made the 4WD trek to the open-air venue to see and hear about the ongoing progress of the research trial of fire and fuels in the high country with a particular emphasis on the combined effects of grazing and prescribed burning, amidst a setting of snowgum woodlands. More

On Tuesday 7 February 1967, 110 fires ravaged southern Tasmania. These devastating fires came within two kilometres of central Hobart, killing 62 people and destroying 1293 homes.

In the midst of the summer bushfire season, the lessons learnt from these fires are as relevant today as they were in 1967. The Bushfire CRC, with support from the Tasmania Fire Service, has produced a short film on the 1967 Hobart fires. More

A university course developed by Bushfire CRC / CSIRO in conjunction with Charles Darwin University and Tropical Savannas CRC has won a major education prize for its innovative use of use of online technology.

The 2005 Ascilite (Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education) Award was awarded for the exemplary use of electronic technologies in tertiary education teaching and learning for the development of the Fire ecology & management in northern Australia unit. The materials include interviews and videos of practitioners, and draw upon a range of authentic resources such as agency websites and mapping tools, as well as more traditional resources such as current published literature.

Congratulations to Kate Parr, Alan Anderson and the Bushfire CRC team at CSIRO in Darwin.

For more information visit the Charles Darwin University website:

http://www.cdu.edu.au/newsroom/story.php?nID=638

A workshop for fire managers and researchers was held in Beechworth in June 2005. More

The Bushfire CRC and the CRC for Spatial Information have agreed to work together on new applications. More

Columns of super-dry air that reach the earth’s surface from high altitudes could be responsible for extreme fire behaviour in some of the worst bushfires in Australia ’s history.  

In work undertaken through the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, Dr Graham Mills, from the Bureau of Meteorology, has found that under certain conditions columns of dry, fast moving, high-altitude air descend, causing a rapid loss of humidity at ground level and very strong gusty winds. If positioned over an ongoing bushfire, this phenomenon can cause the bushfire to erupt into an uncontrollable inferno. More