Ten steps to increasing bushfire resilience
By March 2020, when Australians could finally exhale at the end of the Black Summer, the country’s unprecedented bushfire season had destroyed nearly six thousand buildings.
Thirty-three people would lose their lives in the bushfires, including nine firefighters, as a country desiccated by two years of drought began to combust. The average national Forest Fire Danger Index in 2019 was the highest on record; if these felt like the worst fires in memory, the evidence says they were. As much as 40 million hectares of Australia burned, and nearly three billion animals are now thought to have been killed or displaced.
The disaster was foreshadowed by early winter bushfires in Central Queensland, and more than 3,000 fires would blacken 7.7 million hectares in the south, north and far-north of the state by Christmas.
Before the south-eastern states burned through December and January, Queenslanders had endured a day, November 9, on which a State of Fire Emergency was declared across 42 local government areas. For a second severe Queensland summer in a row, news crews and onlookers had stood by the wreckage of homes and wondered why they had been destroyed and their neighbours spared.
The impact of fire on buildings
It is a question that occupies Justin Leonard. The CSIRO Bushfire Adaptation lead researcher has spent decades analysing the impact of fire on buildings through several lenses, including that of an engineer. Put another way, he views risk from a community’s perspective, rather than from the fire’s. On present trends, there is cause for concern.
“The gap between the small proportion of the community that have a deep knowledge of how to manage their surrounds in a bushfire and the rest is not narrowing over time,” Mr Leonard says.
“We need to design houses that can survive fire without defending them, and this can only happen if people have a deep understanding of how fire interacts with the house. So, understanding how bushfires behave and impact buildings is essential.”
The path of increased resilience is, increasingly, winning support in the sunshine state. The State Government has today introduced a 10-step Bushfire Resilient Building Guidance for Queensland Homes, outcomes of a project led by Mr Leonard.
A broad coalition of agencies and experts has contributed to the guideline, from the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services, to local government, and James Davidson architects.
CSIRO’s bushfire research pedigree is renowned. The national science agency published its first post-bushfire-related paper in 1944 and has performed post-fire surveillance and research for every major fire event in Australia since Ash Wednesday in South Australia and Victoria in 1983. And Mr Leonard says this latest science-driven, best-practice resource for homeowners works in concert with individual Bushfire Survival Plans and steps beyond the state’s official building regulations.
The 10 steps of the new bushfire guidelines begin with learning the “essentials” about bushfires and their behaviour and culminate with maintaining bushfire-resilient properties in ways intended to become as natural for Queenslanders as swimming between the flags.
The guideline’s 10 steps are:
Step 1: Bushfire essentials
This encourages Queenslanders in fire-prone areas to know the environments where bushfires occur, the different types of fires and how building are typically impacted, and how to assess hazards in and around a property.
Step 2: Bushfire survival plan
Already familiar to safety-minded Queenslanders, the guideline highlights the importance of developing a bushfire plan to protect occupants and to prepare home to survive a bushfire.
Step 3: Bushfire hazard assessment
This step unlocks tools to understand the bushfire hazard at people location, such as bushfire risk postcode checkers, bushfire prone area location, and tools to calculate potential radiation levels (including Bushfire Attack Level, BAL) , as well as busting myths around bushfire – for instance, that removing trees is the best way to slow the spread of fire.
Step 4: Building category
Categorises projects into building a new house or fixed structure; retrofitting an existing house or structure; and landscaping the area around a new or existing house or structure.
Step 5: Siting and site layout
Emphasises the importance of choosing the best locations for buildings on the available land, while making considerations for bushfire resilience, site access, and aesthetic values and preferences.
Step 6: Bushfire resilient design principles
Provides a toolbox of design solutions that are graded into four levels of protection, with Level Four designed to guard against ember attack, burning debris, fine fuel surface fire of any height, direct flame contact from a bushfire front, and “consequential fire” such as car or neighbourhood house burning down.
The guidelines provide a toolbox of design solutions. This image by Sam Thompson shows different elements of building vulnerability.
Step 7: Bushfire resilient construction
Informs homeowners about bushfire-resilient construction systems including those for walls, floors, roofs, windows, doors and verandas and decks and provide example of construction design.
Step 8: Bushfire resilient materials
Identifies the main material used in common building types, such as concrete, masonry, cladding, decking, supports describing the advantages and disadvantages of the material to reduce ignition from embers, radiant heat and flame,
Step 9: Bushfire resilient landscaping
Encapsulates fire-resistant landscaping advice from garden layout and the right plants, to landscaping that shield a home from embers, heat, flame and wind.
Step 10: Maintenance
Outlines useful habits to adopt at home including keeping twigs and leaves out of rooftops and gutters, checking gutters and rooftiles for damage, clearing vents of debris, preserving the seal between roof and wall junctions, and keeping roof cavities clear of combustible materials.
The new resilient building advice provides Queenslanders with the latest advice to protect their homes from fire, in line with the equivalent guides to storm tide, cyclones and floods.
Experts on risk, though, warn against any complacency in places like eastern Australia and California, where many communities are racing to adapt to bushfires on a scale they have never seen.
“Understand risk,” says Dr Robert Glasser, former head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
“The past is no longer a reliable indicator of what lies ahead; even assumptions about who you can rely on for support need to be questioned.”
For Mr Leonard, a truly adapted community means far more than a collection of buildings and homes built to tolerate fire. To be safe and useful in a fire, he says, an individual’s knowledge and understanding is the key. After all, it is they who can decide to prepare their house, not to be there, or if they stay, to shelter in the right place or work with others.
“It takes a whole lot of enlightened, active individuals who share their knowledge within the community, offer local context,” Mr Leonard says.
“Understanding spreads through the community; a community conversation about how to consider the bush beyond the back fence.”
You can read more about the Bushfire Resilience Building Guidance for Queensland Homes here.
This article was originally posted on December 11, 2020 and has been updated for the current edition.
December 12, 2020 at 9:41 am
I am wading through the book Notes Bushfire History Victoria.
Denis O’Bryan
Director, Red Eagle Bushfire Protection Services
September 2018
His book highlights deficiencies in given advice. And I agree with his work.
Your article is a duplicate of several that have replicated each other, and that is numbingly disappointing. It leads me to ask, of what is the open press such as ECOS afraid – not getting funded?
I don’t support O’Bryan’s book, which is a free pdf, but it has the ring of facts that is difficult to douse – pardon the pun.
December 18, 2020 at 9:04 am
Where can I find a pdf of this guide that you mention in your article above. There doesn’t seem to be a link in your article.
December 18, 2020 at 9:50 am
Hi Linda, thanks for pointing out that oversight. Here is the link. We will include a link in the blog above, as well. https://www.qra.qld.gov.au/bushfireguideline?fbclid=IwAR24wFmgYlchu7tmFedkt9zQrg154bv1mnbiUdEj18A9tnglArFC1dNirNA
December 18, 2020 at 10:59 am
Thanks for that.
December 18, 2020 at 12:38 pm
I’m particularly interested in part of Step 3: “… as well as busting myths around bushfire – for instance, that removing trees is the best way to slow the spread of fire…”. I’m interested in how some trees may insulate and protect from fire under certain circumstances. My hunches lean towards species like small-leaved bauhinias (Lysiphyllum), some tuckeroos (Cupaniopsis), some Flindersia spp. I’m wondering if you have more information regarding this? Do you know if there’s any published or grey literature on the subject?
February 17, 2021 at 1:37 pm
The statement relating to removal of trees is not clear. Is it a myth or not
February 17, 2021 at 2:46 pm
Tim, Thank you for your brief. My wife and I live on and acre in the Buderim Rain Forest, Sunshine Coast QLD. We live between two valleys that start from a creek to create two “flu draw style drafts” either side up a very steep incline where Northerly, North Easterly, Easterly and South Easterly winds are common. Last year we commenced a huge undergrowth fuel hazard reduction program which has resulted in two large stacks of fuel load that was to be part of a controlled burn in prevailing conditions (like now) by the local Fire and Emergency Services (RES) and Rural Bush Fire Brigade (RBF). We worked with the local RES and RBF Brigade and went through the process of advising 60 neighbours of the controlled burn. The whole process has ground to a holt as a result of one neighbour objection who unfortunately “don’t know that they don’t know and don’t want to know about Bushfire risk. I was raised on a farm and lived with bushfires and was asked to support a key player in the NSW South Coast Carbo and Quaama bushfires last year. I’m still working with the local RES & RBF trying to educate the objecting neighbour. What have you that might help us through this process. If we get the hazard reduction burn done shortly we will not only protect ourselves, our neighbours but also the whole community village of Buderim. Hope you can help. Best regards, Les & Gail Ross
February 17, 2021 at 4:32 pm
Just wondering, does the CSIRO consult indigenous people about bushfire control? It seems to me they have a huge amount of knowledge that we could acknowledge and share.
February 17, 2021 at 9:50 pm
Hi Patricia,
Great question. This article shares three ways we’re supporting effective cross-cultural partnerships to manage Australia’s landscape through fire. You can also find more here.
Thanks, CSIRO team.
February 17, 2021 at 8:36 pm
The probability of bushfires is affected by the sea surface temperature gradient across the Indian Ocean in combination with El Nino events in the Pacific. Temperatures can be adjusted by using marine cloud brightening to exploit the Twomey effect. The energy is enormous compared with our present consumption but very small compared with the solar input so a small chnage in cloud reflectivity will do. If you would like to see calculations about the effort needed please give me an email address.
October 21, 2021 at 2:25 pm
Hi Guys,
I live on an acre subtropical rainforest property on Buderim on the Sunshine Coast QLD. We have just had the local Rural Bushfire and Emergency Services team successfully conduct an Rainforest Fire Hazard Reduction Burn in Preparation for summer.
We have 40 to 50 metre tall hardwood trees close by our dwelling that continually drop large volumes of leaves, twigs and branches on the roof of our dwelling and garage that require regular blowing off or vacuuming depending on the quantity. The volume is determined by the different seasons we experience which is becoming more variable with our changing climate. We have 100% gutter guarded (steel mesh type) all the roofing on our home and garage.
Most of these trees are on our neighbours property and a council conservation area which we helped established.
I would like to take a sensitive but objective approach to determining the need for selectively pruning (by a professional environmental arborist) the crown of these trees to minimise the fire (and cyclone) risk that these trees represent.
We would also like to convert our energy system from grid supplied power to a solar/Tesla battery system. I have been informed by a solar panel expert that the subject trees prevent such a system accessing sufficient sunlight
to consider such an option before looking into the cost effective of such a proposal.
Does the CSIRO have a template assessment tool that I could complete that will objectively demonstrate the need for strategic crown pruning of these trees so I can present such to the local council and my neighbours to begin discussions to develop an action plan to address/minimise the risks their trees represent to us, them and the Buderim community.
I value my subscription allowing me to access to the knowledge, information and education that the CSIRO provide via the online platforms – thank you.
Best regard, Les
Leslie R Ross