John O’Donnell, June 2021
After the large bushfires impacting on towns and cities in recent years, it is opportune to review potential bushfire protection opportunities for towns and cities across Australia.
This is because:
• There is not a lot of information available focussed on town and city bushfire protection planning, organisation and opportunities, including guidelines, and there is some information scattered in bushfire inquiries and royal commissions;
• There have been large bushfire impacts on a large number of towns and cities;
• There have been a number of lessons from town and city bushfire disasters;
• There have been a number of lessons in regards to house and surrounds protection measures; and
• In some cases, town and city bushfire risk assessments have underestimated the potential risks, hazards and threats.
It is good to tease out this information into one focussed document, examining potential bushfire protection opportunities for towns and cities across Australia.
The focus of this document is on exploring all opportunities to best protect towns and cities from bushfires, optimising resident safety and optimising firefighter safety.
In reality, it is up to each town, city and local government area to develop strategies to best protect towns and cities from bushfires, explore opportunities and protect personnel involved in fighting bushfires within towns and cities and addressing applicable state requirements.
Hopefully, this document will be of assistance.
About John O’Donnell
John is a retired district forester and environmental manager for hydro-electric construction and road construction projects. His main interests are mild maintenance burning of forests, trying to change the culture of massive fuel loads in our forests setting up large bushfires, establishing healthy and safe landscapes, fire fighter safety, as well as town and city bushfire safety.
John wrote the opportunities paper in retirement as, in his words: “I had some time, I wanted to give back to the community and as I was concerned by the impacts of large bushfires on Australian towns and cities and the costs of this on communities, lives, stock, fauna and ecosystems. I was at the bushfires in southern News South Wales over two weeks in January 2020 doing what I could for an old fellow. I was also concerned about the extent and maintenance of bushfire protection measures in and adjacent to many towns and cities across Australia.”
