Experts are warning that there is an increased risk of fires outside the traditional fire danger periods.
The warning comes after the fires that impacted nearly 300 landholders in Victoria’s South West and fires that destroyed around 70 houses at Tathra on the NSW south coast. Both fires started on March 17.
Bushfire and Natural Hazards Co-operative Research Centre chief executive, Richard Thornton, said March was not traditionally seen as a time when bushfire danger escalated. Tathra and Victorian fires showed bushfires “do not respect summer boundaries”, Dr Thornton said.
“When conditions are right, with high temperatures, low humidity, and strong winds, bushfires will occur,” he said.
“We will see more fires outside traditional summer danger periods as our climate changes.”
Dr Thornton said it was a challenge in the future with climate change and changes in demographics.
“The risks that we see today are not the same as we saw 30-40 years ago when most of the fires that occurred during just the summer months,” he said.
“We are starting to see fires beginning unusually early. and that has implications for fire management.
“Combine that with projected population growth, means more people living in environments that were bushfire prone.
As the climate warmed up, the windows for making prescribed burning and hazard reduction dramatically dropped, he said.
There were fewer days in spring and autumn because it was still too dangerous.
Dr Thornton said the community needed to understand the environment they lived.
He said that as a community or sector “we need to think about preparing in August or September in Victoria and remain vigilant right through to the end of March”.
Dr Thornton said Victoria had learned the lessons about the need and formulation of better warnings.
Bushfire Safety Researcher and Adjunct Professor at the School of Psychology and Public Health at La Trobe University, Jim McLennan, said fires could strike earlier or later than the traditional January-February period.
“They have in the past, and with climate change upsetting our accustomed weather patterns, they are more likely to do so in the future,” he said.
He said it was strong winds that made bushfires particularly destructive, not only high temperatures.
“In the future residents in rural areas and on the urban-bushland fringes of Melbourne and regional centres will need to be vigilant and bushfire-ready as a matter of routine for longer.”
