Black Saturday Bushfires - Responses

Responses

Main article: Responses to the Black Saturday bushfire crisis See also: International reaction to the 2009 Victorian bushfires

Responses to the Black Saturday bushfires included immediate community response, donations, and international aid efforts. Later responses included Government inquiries including a Royal Commission, and recommendations and discussions from a wide variety of bodies, organisations, authorities and communities.

In September 2009 it was announced that Australia's most prominent fire ecologist, Kevin Tolhurst, was developing a new course for the University of Melbourne on fire behaviour. Later that month the City of Manningham announced it was developing the state's first integrated fire management plan in conjunction with the interim findings of the Royal Commission. It is expected that eventually all Victorian councils responsible for both urban and rural land will need to develop such plans, which define fire risks in open space areas, along major roads, and in parkland.

In September/October 2009, it was announced that a new fire hazard system would replace the previous one. The new system involves a six-tier scale to indicating such things as the level of risk and activity of the fire. This standardised Fire Danger Rating (FDR) was subsequently adopted by all Australian states in late 2009. Every day during the fire season the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) forecasts an outlook of the Fire Danger Index (FDI) by considering the predicted weather including temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and dryness of vegetation. On the highest risk days, residents are advised to leave the potentially affected areas.

The RSPCA estimated that over a million animals perished in the bushfires. Additionally, many of the surviving wildlife suffered from severe burns. For example, large numbers of kangaroos were afflicted with burned feet due to territorial instincts that drew them back to their recently burned and smouldering home ranges. The affected area, particularly around Marysville, contains the only known habitat of Leadbeater's Possum, Victoria's faunal emblem, putting this species under further threat.

Forested catchment areas supplying five of Melbourne's nine major dams were affected by the fires, with the worst affected being the Maroondah Reservoir and O'Shannassy Reservoir. As of 17 February 2009, over ten billion litres of water had been shifted out of affected dams into others. A Melbourne Water spokesperson said that affected dams may need to be decommissioned if the contamination from ash and other material were serious enough, and also said that forest regrowth in the burnt-out catchment areas could reduce runoff yields by up to 30% over the next three decades.

In early March 2009, smoke from the fires was discovered in the atmosphere over Antarctica at record altitudes.

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