‘Next fire season is already upon us’: NSW to adopt all recommendations of bushfire inquiry report

By Lisa Cox

Climate change ‘clearly played a role’ in conditions that led up to Australia’s 2019-2020 fires, which were so extreme, traditional firefighting methods often failed.

Last summer’s bushfire disaster was so unusual that traditional firefighting methods, such as hazard reduction burning, failed in some instances, an inquiry into the crisis heard.

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The NSW government said on Tuesday it would be adopting all of the report’s 76 recommendations, which include the establishment of a major new centre for bushfire research and technology, new training to increase the capacity of fire authorities to deal with disasters of the scale seen in 2019-20, and examination of existing preparedness strategies to determine the best approach to increasingly frequent, extreme fire seasons.

The inquiry found climate change and rising greenhouse gas emissions “clearly played a role in the conditions that led up to the fires and in the unrelenting conditions that supported the fires to spread” but climate change alone “does not explain everything that happened”.

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In the face of such megafires, governments, authorities and communities needed to know more about fire suppression methods and how effective they were, the report added.

The authors also recommended immediate improvements to communications in fire-prone communities, safety equipment and systems for firefighters, increased aerial firefighting at night and a reexamination of traditional firefighting techniques, including backburning.

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