David Crosling/AAP
In one finding, fire authorities chose to save a few farm sheds over 5,000 hectares of national park. Clearly, our fire management needs a reset.
Shutterstock
Our research is deeply concerning because it signals there are no quick fixes to the ongoing fire crisis afflicting Australia, which is being driven by relentless climate change.
Shutterstock
First the fires, then the pandemic. It’s not just the damage to infrastructure, houses, environment and farmland that makes recovery difficult; the emotional and physical toll is often gruelling too.
Jamie Pittock
Many scientific concepts, including bushfires and climate change, happen at scales outside human perception. So how can we ever understand them?
Darwinia nubigena also known as the Success Bell or Red Mountain Bell.
A.T Morphet
Three quarters of WA’s Stirling Ranges national park now experience fire cycles twice as frequent as species recovery rates.
Daniel Marius/AAP
How fast can an animal run? How intense was the fire? Picking which species to help after a bushfire tragedy is no easy task.
ANDREW BROWNBILL/AAP
We’ve set up a single point of contact for foreign disasters, we could do if for Australian disasters as well.
The teddybear bee is a native Australian species.
James Dorey
In NSW, honeybees are listed as a key threatening process to biodiversity.
It is possible to calculate the impact impact of fires, but not using GDP.
Shutterstock/Andrew Brownbilll/AAP
GDP is well suited to many things, but not to measuring the impact of disasters.
Canberra streets, January 5, 2020. Employers can’t ask employees to turn up for work as normal without first asking some questions.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Employers obligations are set out clearly. What’s important is what they “know or reasonably ought to know”.
On many days Canberra has the worst air quality of any major international city. Even in the best buildings it’s not good.
NARENDRA SHRESTHA/EPA
Plugging ventilation holes in walls helps, but there are dangers.
A volunteer sorts through donated clothing as part of a bushfire appeal. Generally, it’s best to give money - unless the organisation to which you are donating has requested specific goods.
AAP/DEAN LEWINS
It’s worth thinking carefully about how to give, to ensure you’re not wasting your contribution or inadvertently making things worse.
Australia needs a nationally mobile, fully-funded emergency management workforce.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
As this horrific summer of disaster continues to unfold in coming weeks, we need to overhaul our emergency management plan.
When the immediate threat of this bushfire crisis passes, many questions will remain.
Dean Lewins/AAP
We escaped through blackened landscapes where sheep wandered paddocks with the wool burnt off their backs. My three-year-old son, sensing the mood, asked why his dad and I were so quiet.
An evacuation centre at the Hanging Rock Sports Club Function Centre at Batemans Bay, Friday, January 3, 2020. Maybe it’s time to rearrange Australian calendar and reschedule the peak holiday period to March or April, instead of December and January.
AAP Image/DEAN LEWINS
Sending holidaymakers directly into forests and national parks right in the middle of peak bushfire season is madness.