According to the national government’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), Australia’s severe droughts in recent decades have all been associated with El Nino conditions. The latest modelling from BOM says there is a 70% chance of an El Nino event in 2023. El Nino brings a much higher risk of a significant fire season in south-east Australia.
Experts believe that the bushfire risk is mounting in 2023 because Australia has just experienced three years of La Nina events, which brought cooler, wetter weather that helped forests to regrow following the Black Summer fires.
A group of former senior Australian fire and emergency service leaders has warned that the federal government has failed to adopt the main recommendations from the Royal Commission.
Emergency Leaders for Climate Action (ELCA) – a coalition of former senior Australian fire and emergency service leaders – says the government has not acquired adequate aerial firefighting capabilities, developed real-time air quality information, nor done enough to inform the public about the risk of disaster and the need to properly prepare.
Mr Greg Mullins, a former commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW, and one of the founders of ELCA, said more needs to be done to ensure that state firefighting agencies cooperate, especially as fires in the climate change era are likely to “burn at the same time in different states, rather than sequentially”.
Given that states and territories normally assist each other by sharing resources and crews, having longer seasons happening simultaneously across multiple states will really hamper our ability to effectively tackle large fires.
Mr Mullins also said the federal government should also provide grants for residents in bushfire-prone areas to adopt safety measures such as closing gaps in roofs and putting grills on windows that keep sparks out.
Australian Firefighters Climate Alliance 