Bushfire preparedness assessment for 2025 and 2026 across SE Australia in early November 2025

There are annual Australian bushfire preparedness summits, conferences, workshops and webinars and many other fire activities, but nowhere does the author see broad annual assessment of bushfire preparedness across Australia, states, regions, local government areas nor for towns and cities, especially across all the applicable factors and available to the public.

In the public interest, community interest, national interest and in the interests of fire fighter and community safety, the author has prepared this bushfire preparedness assessment across SE Australia, examining a series of bushfire preparedness assessment factors. Such assessments are not provided to the public, communities or fire fighters and the author sees this as a major risk and concern area, hence the effort made to prepare this assessment.

This process of bushfire preparedness assessment is critical considering the massive impacts of many bushfires on safety, economic and social impacts and environmental impacts, including Australia, Palisades, Maui, Greece and elsewhere and many other recent bushfires. It is also an important step in capturing lessons from Australia and overseas.

The 2019/ 20 bushfires provided a major warning to Australia, unfortunately we didn't capture key issues.

Bushfire preparedness assessment across SE Australia

The author has undertaken this preparedness assessment in as briefly as possible assessment, but taking a broad look at bushfire preparedness across SE Australia. Detail is provided below under 11 preparedness assessment factors below.

The full review is included here.

A key issue relates to the extent of preparedness mitigation treatments across forest and woodland landscapes, including prescribed burning, mechanical treatment, grazing and other treatment in each state and region. Annual rates of prescribing burning of forest areas are less than 1 to 2 % of forest areas per year across SE Australian states, these rates of prescribed burning are not going to be effective in reducing bushfire extent, intensity, severity and long duration bushfires. The author considers that there is inadequate bushfire preparedness for communities, firefighters, infrastructure and ecosystems in relation to inadequate forest mitigation.

Another issue relates to the extent of bushfire preparedness of nominated wilderness areas. Large areas of wilderness areas don't receive any or limited prescribed burning or very limited areas of low intensity bushfires. Intense bushfires in wilderness areas are a major risk issue with heavy fuel build ups, and in some cases repeat intense bushfires. This risk worsens with miniscule fuel mitigation in the areas surrounding wilderness areas.

In relation to the extent of bushfire fuels from large scale bushfires in previous years with dense understories and standing and dead trees, the author notes there is inadequate bushfire preparedness with increasing understory and dead tree fuels (standing and on the ground) across forested landscapes where intense/ severe bushfires have occurred. Taking this into account, future bushfires in these areas are going to be intense.

Effectiveness of fire interval and community and firefighter fire safety policies is an important bushfire preparedness issue. There is inadequate bushfire preparedness in relation to fire interval policies. Current fire interval and community/ firefighter fire safety policies do not appear to be effectively linked, putting communities, fire fighters and indeed whole ecosystems at risk. Prescribed burning fire intervals are too long and fire return timeframes are increasing. There is inadequate fire mitigation close to towns and cities, within towns and cities and also across landscapes with very high fuel loads, often contiguous high fuel load areas. It is also essential to understand the difficulty of fire fighting in such situations on bad fire days, the 2019/ 20 bushfires highlighted this. Other factors that need to be considered include days with numerous lightning strikes and firebrand generation and travel.

Initial and ongoing bushfire suppression attack effectiveness, including use of backburning is also an important bushfire preparedness issue. The author considers that there is reasonable bushfire preparedness, however with a number of refinement opportunities in relation to issues such as speed of attack, improved approaches and use of backburning, improved evacuation and other issues.

In relation to equipment extent, type, location and availability, volunteer strength and other fire activities, there is mostly reasonable firefighting fleets, efforts and a number of positives, however there are concerns in relation to SE Australian bushfire preparedness in relation to equipment (including recently with loss of Victorian tankers), loss of experienced volunteers and inadequate amount of fire mitigation and consequently high fuel loads, making firefighting very dangerous in many locations.

Considering fire access track installation and maintenance and water supply and availability preparedness, there are concerns in relation to bushfire preparedness, including access track installation, maintenance and closure of access tracks and water supply and availability.

Bushfire disaster preparedness of towns and cities and individual houses is a critical issue. The author considers that there is inadequate bushfire preparedness in relation to the protection of many towns, cities and households. Due to the importance of this issue, the author believes an annual state status report listing all towns and mitigation treatments and ongoing needs could be included with state bushfire annual reports, if not, a separate annual report.

Evacuation options and safety arrangementsare also critical bushfire preparedness issues. The author believes that there is inadequate bushfire preparedness in relation to evacuation options and safety arrangements in many locations in SE Australia.

Bushfire disaster risks to firefighters, for forests and grasslands is a hugely important bushfire preparedness factor and there is inadequate bushfire preparedness in relation to fire fighter safety, a major issue that the author believes needs considerable action.

In relation to seasonal bushfire outlooks and bushfire risk management planning, there is inadequate bushfire preparedness across parts of SE Australia for this season, considering the current outlook for the 25/ 26 season in parts of SE Australia, including western Victoria and Eastern S Australia, especially in relation to low levels of bushfire mitigation across SE Australian forested landscapes.

Conclusions

In the public interest, community interest, national interest and in the interests of fire fighter and community safety, the author has prepared this bushfire preparedness assessment across SE Australia, examining a series of bushfire preparedness assessment factors.

The author is of the opinion that there is inadequate bushfire preparedness across SE Australia for many of the bushfire preparedness factors outlined above for the 2025/ 26 bushfire season, an accountability issue that needs to be seriously addressed and tackled.

There are large opportunities for governments at all levels, government agencies and communities to address the bushfire preparedness issues identified above in the public interest, community interest, national interest and in the interests of fire fighter and community safety.

If opportunities aren't taken, Australia could very well end up similar or worse than the 2019/ 20 bushfire outcomes.