Scorched land safe from fires for years, says CSIRO

Fire researchers say the scorched earth across eastern and southern Australia will be ‘virtually fireproof’ for at least four years.

A burnt hillside beside the Tambo river and the Great Alpine road in the Victorian high country. Picture: AAP

Fire researchers say the scorched earth that now scars vast tracts of eastern and southern Australia is so devoid of plant life that it will be “virtually fireproof” for at least four years.

Ten million hectares of land went up in flames — greater than the combined area burned in the 2009 Black Saturday and 1983 Ash Wednesday fires — in the 2019-20 season, according to the CSIRO.

“It won’t be an annual event,” said Grant Williamson, a landscape ecologist at the University of Tasmani­a.

“Because the area that burnt was so large, it won’t burn again for at least four or five years, there is simply nothing left to burn.”

The devastation wrought by the unprecedented bushfire crisis has wiped out kilometres of flammable vegetation in areas stretching from East Gippsland in Victoria to Peregian Beach on the Sunshine Coast, and as far south as Kangaroo ­Island.

“The remains of trees bone dry from consecutive winters with little to no rain ignited easily, allowing the deadly fires to spread quickly,’’ Mr William­son said.

“We came out of an extreme and long-lasting drought, which meant very, very dry fuel loads,”

“The fires were intense and they removed all of the fuel, so significant areas will be at a low risk for a few years while the areas that were burnt won’t be the target of any prescribe­d burning for at least three or four years.”

The need for fire mitigation measures, however, has become more pressing as a greater number of people move into higher-risk areas on the edge of cities and into regional towns.

In NSW alone, more than 2400 homes were destroyed in the 2019-20 season, while 11,264 bush and grass fires were fought by firefighters — a 15 per cent jump on the 2018-19 season.

The end of the bushfire season in NSW is fast approaching, with the Rural Fire Service last night confirming all blazes within the state had now been contained.

Some disaster management ­experts say the idea of moving people out of certain areas altogether in the future cannot be discounted.

“We need to start preparing for the risks now,” said John Bates, ­research director at the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Co-operative Research Centre.

“To be better able to protect houses and communities from fire it is likely to require changes to where we live and how we live.

“Assuming we do get regen­eration of the vegetation that has been burnt, the probability of fires recurring in those areas in coming years is real. If low moisture, ­higher-than-averag­e temperatures and dry fuel are present, then it is definitely possible we could have a season that was not unlike the one we just had.”