TRANSCRIPT
Back in October, New South Wales Premier Chris Minns had this grim warning.
“Be prepared for a horror summer. We are one week into October and we're experiencing mid-summer conditions, multiple days above 30 degrees, high winds. Bushfires love this environment and it's devastating for regional communities in particular.”
Dr Lynette Bettio from the Bureau of Meteorology says their long range forecast bears this out, with warmer days and nights very likely across Australia this summer.
“Almost all areas have an increased chance of unusually warm days, especially in Western Australia and the far north. Large areas have a high chance of unusually warm summer nights. Combined with warm days, this can increase the risk of heatwaves.... The summer bushfire outlook from Australian fire agencies shows an increased fire risk for most of Queensland, large areas of New South Wales and the Northern Territory, with pockets in every other state.”
The New South Wales Premier has said that being prepared is key - especially for those who were not locals to an area.
“I want to say that if you are on holidays on the New South Wales South Coast, or you're heading to the beach for the second week of the New South Wales school holidays, and it's not your residential environment, it is not your natural environment, it's extremely important that you understand where evacuation centres are and that you listen to official broadcasts from the RFS in the community in which you're having your holiday. We want people to have fun, get into regional communities, spend money, have fun with their children. But it's important, particularly if there's a threat of a bushfire, that you understand what those risks are.”
The federal government has already been on the front foot.
It held a bushfire preparedness summit in Canberra in September, with Emergency Services Minister Murray Watt saying he was determined to ensure state and territory governments were on the same page with their preparations.
“We know as we look around the country that we're already in bushfire season in a number of parts of the country. Fiona (Phillips) was talking to you about the hundreds of homes that were lost in her electorate during the Black Summer fires, and we understand already this year there've been around 20 homes and properties destroyed just in New South Wales alone because of the fires, and the season is really just getting going. And that's why it's been so important that governments are working together to make sure that we're as well prepared as possible. We're certainly stepping up at the federal level to support states and territories to be as well prepared as they possibly can be.”
Now, with summer upon us, those warnings are as prescient as ever.
Since the 2019 bushfires Australian insurers have paid out more than $13 billion in relation to fire and flood.
Andrew Hall from the Insurance Council says the cost of natural disasters is going to become a greater burden if we don't improve our bushfire resilience.
“Australia must tell a better story when it comes to resilience. For too long, we've built too many homes in areas that are subject to this because insurance process the risks and insurance premiums have been going up and up. In the last few years alone, Australia's reinsurance internationally has jumped around 20 to 30 percent, and international reinsurance telling Australia we've got a short window of five years to improve our resilience narrative so that we can bring downward pressure on insurance premiums.”
The Federal Government says it's happy to help.
It's contributed $3 million to support an app built by the Resilient Building Council, which enables Australians to assess their site-specific risk and take action to improve their bushfire resilience.
Households can receive a customised action plan to make practical, evidence-based bushfire safety improvements to their homes.
Kate Cotter from the RBC says your home's Resilience Rating is updated through the app as you make those safety improvements.
“What's really exciting I guess about this app - and what makes it a world first - is applying 80 years of Australians being better prepared for natural disasters. The app is really easy to use, it takes about 20 minutes to come to risks, what their rating is, what it could be, and what actions that they could take that are specific to their home, the safety of communities, and individual families and homes. So we're really excited to put this work - it's been a decade of work - out into the community.”
Local communities have also been preparing in other ways.
Some locals have stepped forward to volunteer with their local firefighting units, like Josateki Vunimasi, in the regional Victorian town of Swan Hill.
He spoke to SBS News in October.
“It was boring for me to come back from work, stay at home with nothing to do. So I'd rather put myself out there, coming to help the community like we did back home in Fiji. We always helped each other.”
