Outer Melbourne forest fire danger: Fuel loads higher than 2009

Residents in Victoria’s most dangerous bushfire zone are at a greater risk of catastrophic loss than in the lead up to the 2009 Black Saturday fires.

Strathewen residents are now at a greater risk of losing their lives and homes, with forest fuel loads pushing residual risk levels above pre-2009 Black Saturday levels.

Forest fuel loads in Victoria’s most dangerous and populous Port Phillip bushfire zone have pushed the residual risk level to 89 per cent, higher than in the lead-up to the Black Saturday 2009 fires that claimed 173 lives.

The Victorian Bushfire Risk Management Report for 2022-23, which the Allan government quietly released over Christmas, shows forest fuels loads in the Port Phillip zone’s outer Melbourne Metropolitan District have reached 96 per cent, while the Yarra District sits at 88 per cent.

A 100 per cent residual risk assumes the most extreme loss of property from a fire, where the build-up of fuel loads has reached its maximum due to no planned burning or major fires.

It means fire-scarred towns that survived the horrors of 2009 are now at greater risk of losing homes and lives than when they last saw massive pyro-convective fires roar through their communities.

The Port Phillip Zone is home to more than five million people, and includes forests that extend from Warrandyte to Whittlesea and Steels Creek, out to Toolangi, Healesville and up the Yarra Valley, plus the Dandenong Ranges, Bunyip State Park and Mornington Peninsula.

The 2022-23 Risk Management shows the government and Forest Fire Management Victoria have struggled to conduct fuel reduction burns.

“This challenge was exacerbated by a third consecutive La Nina year resulting in challenging conditions for planned burning. During spring, fuels were consistently wet with flooding in large parts of the region,” the report states.

But FFM Victoria’s records show the rise in the Port Phillip zone’s residual risk has been building for 15 years, from 39 per cent in the wake of 2009 Black Saturday fires, which consumed much of the fuel, to 85 per cent by mid-2021.

In 2009, a Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission recommended the state set an annual fuel reduction target of 390,000ha, which the then Brumby Labor and then Liberal-Nationals Coalition governments accepted.

However the Andrews-Allan government abandoned hectare-based targets in 2015, opting for a computer modelled measure of residual risk, which compared the damage a fire would inflict with no fuel load management versus what past wildfires and controlled burns had achieved.

The government then set a residual risk target for the Port Phillip zone of 80 per cent, but consequently redrew the boundary and lifted the target to 85 per cent in 2019, as it struggled to manage rising fuel loads.

The residual risk model was developed by the late University of Melbourne bushfire researcher Kevin Tolhurst, who prior to his death warned setting the 85 per cent target “had more to do with what FFM Vic thought was achievable, rather than what was desirable or acceptable”.

FFM Vic has responded to the rising risk in the Port Phillip zone by committing to:

PLANNING and preparing additional burns to take advantage of conditions when they are favourable.

PRIORITISING areas for fuel management treatments based on what will bring about the greatest reduction in regional risk (close to housing).

REVIEWING existing fuel management nominations to take account for recent shifts in fuel hazard and the resultant risk after the (past) La Nina conditions.

NOMINATING fuel management treatments that will complement fuel management treatments being delivered in neighbouring regions.