We don’t have a bushfire problem we have an ignition problem: it is the ignition of combustible elements on homes and the immediate surrounds that is the problem.

Fire does not discriminate between bush and buildings, if it is combustible it will burn. It is very easy to build a house to withstand bushfire - just build it out of non-combustible materials and manage the immediate landscape.

The bushfire in the Perth hills is a tragic loss though foreseeable.  The warming and drying climate increase the probability of bushfire spread and difficulty of suppression.  Combined with the fact that most fire ignitions in southwestern Australia are human, the ability to respond before fires develop is difficult.  Emergency personnel work exceptionally hard to prevent tragedies like the Perth Hills bushfire but can only do so much with large blocks of land and dispersed housing; the risk of bushfire and home loss in this area is widely known and indeed presaged by the Toodyay bushfire in 2009.

The challenge of the pandemic has both brought the community together and created barriers to usual person-to-person, family-to-family and within community supports. The recent lockdown in WA represents the more extreme end of challenges to connectedness. Research tells us that social support and connectedness is an important part of better mental health outcomes following disaster and trauma. So that in a time of crisis like these bushfires in WA when there is a great need to reach out for those supports, those supports are not necessarily as available as they were prior to the lockdown and the pandemic. So it is important that those who are able to assist, do keep personal and community connectedness as a part of assisting response and recovery and promoting better mental health outcomes.

Sadly the WA fires are another data point in an increasingly certain pattern that bushfires are worsening globally.  

Very concerning to see the scale of destruction, and concerning that the old rules in bushfire behaviour and bushfire fighting seem no longer to apply.

The Perth Hills area is particularly vulnerable to bushfires because of its geography, vegetation and numerous large ‘lifestyle’ properties. There were serious bushfire events involving house losses in 2009, 2011, 2014 and now 2021. Fire severity in urban-bushland areas is mostly weather-driven: there are limits to how bushfire-resistant a house can be constructed and maintained. Initial reports suggest that most threatened residents were alert to the danger and evacuated safety, indicating a degree of success in local authorities’ community bushfire safety endeavours. Urban-bushland living will increasingly mean living with bushfire threat as climate change brings with it more frequent high bushfire danger conditions days. Agencies will have to plan accordingly.

People working and exercising in smoke affected areas around Perth should be extremely cautious about the levels of bushfire smoke they are exposed to. 

While Perth and the South West region are currently subject to mandatory mask rules relating to the COVID-19 lockdown, most consumer-grade masks are not adequate to protect people from the effects of bushfire smoke. 

Hard physical work or exercise in the heat combined with sweating can reduce the effectiveness of a mask while increasing respiration rate therefore increasing our exposure to smoke conditions. 

We do not know enough about the toxic chemical compounds contained in bushfire smoke, which can vary vastly depending on the vegetation being burned.

Australia has one of the most significant bushfire risks globally. The closer your home is to the bush, the more at risk you are. Risk Frontiers has estimated that nearly 1 million addresses in Australia are located less than 100 metres from bushland, putting them at the highest risk from bushfires — though not all those addresses have a house or structure on them. More than 20,000 addresses in Perth's metropolitan region are located less than 100 metres away from bushland.

The frequency of extreme bushfire weather has increased and is predicted to further increase over the coming decades under climate change. Recent inquiries such as the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements have provided a series of recommendations to enhance preparedness for disasters in Australia.

Last year, bushfires raged in the South East of Australia. Now it is our turn in Perth. 
 
The fires just remind people that we remain a global climate laggard and certainly not worthy of much sympathy. This will soon spread to our trade discussions and ability to raise finance for major projects. The return of the apocalyptic bushfires mean that we cannot continue to pander to climate denialists on the right in both parties. 
 
Our settlements will need to change. The most vulnerable parts of our cities are in peri-urban areas where there is substantial scattered development set in the bush. Such homes are going to be increasingly vulnerable and will find insurance harder to get. Consolidating the city will need to start removing such lifestyle zonings as they will not be safe. Rural areas and coastal settlements also will need a new model that is based on new green technology infrastructure, new building materials and new ways of living together rather than living in forest-hideaways.

Whilst the summer bushfires are impacting lives and infrastructure they are also taking a toll on our environment, not only through the loss of vegetation and fauna but also impacting our water supplies.  
 
The protection of water supplies need to be a vital part of emergency fire response. Wild and prescribed fires can significantly impact our rivers and wetlands. Post-fire soils offer risks as they are vulnerable to erosion, which may impact drinking water catchments.  
 
Significant rainfall events following fire can mobilise exposed surface soils and other associated contaminants which can severely impact water quality in streams and dams. Additionally, groundwater quality can be affected through the subterraneous burns of wetland sediments, which can burn for many months. 
 
Previous research by Dr David Blake and Prof. Pierre Horwitz from Edith Cowan University has shown that post-fire erosion poses a significant threat to drinking water supplies and wetland fires have the potential to contaminate groundwater.

Tragically, what has been foreseen for decades is beginning in our peri-urban communities; hotter, dryer weather leading to more intense and frequent fires burning for longer and with longer fire seasons due to our failure to act on humanities emissions.

Peri-urban landscapes are an increasing fire challenge for all our southern temperate cities. This challenge will continue to grow. We need to urgently adapt to the changing reality, while rapidly reducing emissions.

We also need to have in place the resources to support the increasing numbers affected by our failure to act. Oh how much simpler it would be to be able to blame it all on not enough prescribed burning.

The community affected by the Perth Bushfires over the last 24 hours will no doubt be very keen to know what the cause of this bushfire was and the result is the still unfolding disaster. Fire and Police agencies around Australia work collaboratively and follow internationally recognised processes to examine fire scenes and determine the causes of bushfires. The combined skills of investigators are often very successful in finding where a fire started and what caused it. This methodology is critical to accurately identify where and how a fire started, in a blackened landscape of hundreds of hectares of bushland.

The Western Australian bushfires are different from Black Summer for two main reasons. First, the climate drivers are completely different and, second, COVID lockdowns never coincided with evacuations during Black Summer. It's a rock and a hard place where people are caught between the competing priorities of lockdown versus evacuation.  Evacuation centres will need to put in place procedures balancing COVID as well as bushfire safety, a challenge I've no doubt the Western Australian government and emergency services have well in hand. 

As to climate, most of the Australian media expected easing bushfire conditions due to La Nina but this was appropriate for the East coast alone.  The three climate drivers that caused Black Summer on the East Coast are easing, reversed or irrelevant. This is why, despite floods in the East, we are still seeing 71 homes and more than 10,000 hectares going up in blazes east of Perth around Mundaring, Chittering and Northam, and the City of Swan. It was always expected that the West coast of Australia would remain vulnerable in early 2021 partly because the conditions that caused Black Summer on the East coast have been geospatially reversed and partly because the dominant climate drivers during summer in the West are different systems.  The effect of La Nina arises from the Pacific Ocean whereas Western Australian, especially in those areas now ablaze, is a long way from this driver and therefore more affected by the nearer Indian Ocean dipole, which is presently neutral.  

What's happened over the past year is just as important as what's happening now. The two hottest years on record were 2019 and 2020 for the whole of Western Australia, leaving fueloads crisp. Despite higher than average rainfall in the north and centre of the state the south-west had lower than average rainfall and some of the hottest temperatures on record.  For some of the areas on fire, 2020 was the driest year since 2012; temperatures have risen 1.54 degrees Celsius above average.  Of note is that the conditions right now are not quite as bad as they would normally be for the development of mega-fires, suggesting the current bushfires are harbingers of things to come, which brings us to climate change. 

On top of the three main drivers of Black Summer global climate attribution studies showed 30% of the devastation was due to climate change. Since 1910 the time between major bushfire events has fallen from 30 years to a mere eight years of relative relief.  Anyone who still thinks climate change is a hoax can check by simply accessing public data via BOM and tracking temperature anomalies - since 1950 alone, much less the start of industrialisation, we've increased by at least 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is the actual Paris Agreement's preferred limit before globally destructive tipping points kick in.  In other words, we're well and truly on course for more fires, thanks in large part to our own lack of leadership on carbon emissions and our right-leaning reliance on fossil fuels instead of creative and innovative education and investment in the young - we've squandered three decades of uninterrupted economic growth.

La Niña doesn’t have too much of an influence on SWWA, quite a different climate regime to the rest of Australia, and quite different to other Western Australian regions such as the Gascoyne/Murchison, Pilbara, Kimberley, etc.  So, expecting the La Niña seasonal climate pattern to intervene is probably not a wise idea.
 
SWWA is, however, undergoing a major rainfall/climate change shift and has been under this shift in rainfall pattern since about 1976. This is especially pronounced for winter/spring rainfall. This also means that this region is missing out on a lot of the much-needed winter rains to replenish soil moisture levels and so is, unfortunately, set up for very dry conditions for many of the summers. .
 
Global climate change (and its influence, such as on the sub-tropical ridge) appears to be a major problem for south-west Western Australia, for now and in the future.

Paula has provided a list of resources: 

"Critical issues to consider as the bushfire event continues from the perspective of emergency warnings and public information:

• DFES is following best practice in emergency warning design as per the Australian Institute of Disaster Resilience Handbook on Public Information and Warnings and Guidelines for Warning Design
• Agencies will need to monitor for conflicting cues, which may become an issue when trying to encourage the community to evacuate areas where the fire is not yet visible to the community (i.e. cannot see flames and/or smoke): https://www.bnhcrc.com.au/hazardnotes/59
• Strategies agencies could be using to manage conflicting cues, such as close relationships with media and monitoring channels for misinformation that may cause confusion in the community: https://www.bnhcrc.com.au/hazardnotes/72
• Anyone sharing visual media (i.e. agencies, media, businesses, community) should verify the authenticity of the visual media before circulating it, because a stock visual, visual from another event, a doctored visual, may portray the event inaccurately, causing confusion in the community on how to act. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/204672/ and https://www.bnhcrc.com.au/hazardnotes/72
• Visual media (e.g., photos, videos) currently being circulated need to be paired with clear instructions of what the community needs to do. The videos of going through fire zones and the impact of the fire is good to show the risk of the event. Instructions need to follow though, because messages with clear instructions are more likely to produce appropriate threat appraisal of the fire, as well as build a community member's ability to take protective action. https://www.bnhcrc.com.au/hazardnotes/80 
• Do not assume people have bushfire plans. Include instructions on what the community needs to do if they do not have a bushfire plan. https://www.bnhcrc.com.au/hazardnotes/80