A season in hell

Until the fires stop burning, we won’t know the full extent of the environmental damage. But these fires have significantly increased the extinction risk for many threatened species.

Ring of fire

The bushlands around Sydney in the final months of 2019 were primed for conflagration, but it was series of other conditions all happening at once which triggered the disaster.

How to help people dealing with traumatic events

Thousands of people are processing the emotional impact of being caught up in the Australian bushfires. Here are some tips on how you can support a friend or family member who may be struggling.

When our love of place gets swallowed by bushfires

All of us have our ‘happy place’ where we have developed our ‘topophilia’ or love of place. So, when these places are damaged or destroyed by bushfire, the loss felt is profound.

Responsibility shared?

The recent bushfires have wreaked financial as well as environmental devastation and must be addressed with a firm strategy.  The government should dictate the terms here, not the banks and vested interests.

Soldiers shouldn’t fight fires

As bushfires become the norm, rather than the exception, new strategies must be found to fight them, but using soldiers to augment volunteers is not a tenable way forward.

Better building planning can help combat bushfires

As fires ravage the east coast of Australia, a QUT expert has called for an urgent review of planning regulations which make the situation worse.

The burning season

The early-season bushfires in Queensland and NSW and ‘catastrophic’ conditions around Sydney are a worrying sign of more to come over the summer.

Urban sprawl and climate change are increasing fire dangers

Action has been taken to improve people’s safety in the event of bushfires, but two key risk factors – urban sprawl and climate change – aren’t being addressed.

Learning the lessons from bushfires – again and again and again

There have been more than 50 formal inquiries into bushfire management in south-eastern Australia since 1939, but what lessons have we learned?

Victoria’s wet spring won’t damp down summer bushfires

While spells of wet weather make a small impact on the risk of bushfires in the summer, long-term climate trends are much more important in shaping the extent of the threat.