AT LEAST 14 towns or suburbs in Victoria are as vulnerable to bushfire as Marysville and Kinglake, and could face catastrophic fires in the next bad bushfire season.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
The Sunday Age asked bushfire experts to nominate towns they believed were ''potential disaster areas'' - places where existing populations were at serious risk from killer bushfires, and that had inadequate escape routes.
The Bushfires Royal Commission heard last week from a panel of planning experts that towns such as Marysville should not necessarily be resettled, and that Victoria's current approach of allowing small subdivisions in high fire risk areas amounted to ''death trap planning''.
But the state still has no reliable maps to scientifically identify bushfire prone areas and no planning restrictions on rebuilding in the areas.
Planning consultant Professor Roslynne Hansen told The Sunday Age ''the real challenge is existing developments and how to make those places safer''.
Melbourne University bushfire researcher Professor Kevin Tolhurst said 14 towns not burned out on Black Saturday - from Lorne and Aireys Inlet to the west of Melbourne, through Macedon, Warrandyte and Hepburn Springs, to the Dandenongs and Arthurs Seat in the east - could be disasters waiting to happen.
While emphasising that the list was not comprehensive, he said these were examples of how dangerous some places in Victoria could be.
More than 38,000 permanent residents live in these towns, according to the last census, but tens or hundreds of thousands more visit or holiday there in the summer months.
Dr Tolhurst said those on top of ridges were in danger of ''blowtorch''-style fires which moved quickly up forested hillsides. Kinglake was devastated by a ''blowtorch'' fire.
Other towns at risk were in hollows or open valleys and in danger of firestorms caused by a blizzard of embers falling from surrounding hills, such as happened in Marysville, he said.
''The nature of the fuels and terrain in many of these places is what makes them so attractive [to live in] but also potentially disastrous as well,'' Dr Tolhurst said.
Other dangers were lack of access roads, transient populations and houses built to capture tree-top views rather than to withstand bushfire.
Of particular concern are the towns of Lorne, Aireys Inlet, Fairhaven and Anglesea - an area devastated on Ash Wednesday in 1983.
Since then the surrounding state forest has regrown and the population, both permanent residents and summer visitors, has exploded. The overcrowded Great Ocean Road remains the only exit route.
Professor Hansen, who gave evidence at the royal commission last week, said that on a bad weather day in that area, ''you've got, in my opinion, a recipe for disaster''.
Surf Coast Shire acting mayor Dean Webster responded that the Great Ocean Road towns had existed in the face of bushfire for more than 150 years, and remained ''hugely attractive, both as places to live and for visitors''.
Visitors were ''a particular challenge'', but the shire was committed to managing vegetation, educating and enforcing laws so people could understand the risk and prepare for it.
The ridge-top towns of the Dandenong ranges, including Kalorama, Mount Dandenong, Ferny Creek, Selby and Belgrave, with a permanent population of 12,000, are also in serious danger, according to Dr Tolhurst, as is the bush-like suburb of Warrandyte.
Nillumbik council spokeswoman Alison Watt said it was difficult to uproot communities, or undo past planning decisions, and that, ''local government would welcome clarity about what constitutes an unacceptable risk level''.
The shire also wanted better planning tools to ''manage or restrict future development in these areas'', she said.
Professor Hansen said the state needed to give high priority to mapping bushfire-prone areas because ''once we understand the nature of the risk, and it will vary, then we will have a better way of understanding what the land-use planning response will be''.
The Department of Sustainability and Environment is working on a bushfire zone map, but the results of that work are three months away or more. The department did not respond to requests for information.
In the lead-up to this fire season, the Country Fire Authority nominated 52 high-risk townships. It has not narrowed it down further to identify the most dangerous.
