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Welcome to the website for the Bushfire Front Inc (BFF) of Western Australia.
The aim of the BFF is to promote better management of fire in WA, especially on forested lands, and so reduce the impact and severity of bushfire damage.
This sort of conflagration is what we are trying to avoid!
This was Victoria in February 2009, which resulted in the loss of over 170 lives, but the same thing could so easily happen here in several parts of the South West of the State.
For example, this was a fire at Busselton in February 2010, very close to a built up area.
Fortunately this fire was controlled quickly, but if it had not been……
Our focus is mainly on the South West part of the State, although there are extensive areas of land outside that zone that also have severe fire management problems and from time to time we will also draw attention to those.
The standard of fire management in WA has declined to a dangerous level. Unless urgent action is taken to improve it, WA is headed for a major fire disaster, and one much worse than the 2010 Toodyay fire that destroyed 38 homes.
This was Dwellingup in 1961 – we don’t want to see this repeated here.
We came perilously close to a Canberra-style disaster in the Perth Hills in 2005. We learnt nothing from that event, so we had the 2011 Roleystone disaster, and then, soon after, the Margaret River fire.
The costs of fire damage can be enormous. The cost to insurers alone of the Canberra fire was $257 million, but the real cost to the community was much greater than this.
Aftermath of wildfire in jarrah forest
All it needs in WA is the right combination of severe fire weather and the high fuel loads now common in the South West and we could have a disaster of Victorian magnitude on our hands. We can’t control the weather but we can control the fuel loads – but it is not happening.
This website provides:
- A glossary of fire management terms. Click on the button at top right on this page.
- A set of brief Fact Sheets on fire management issues.
- Information on the severity and impact of recent bushfires in WA. See WA Bushfires Are Getting Worse, Impacts of Bushfires.
- A source of scientific information on bushfire management in forested land in Western Australia. See Facts on Fire.
- Useful background information on fire management, including BFF submissions to various inquiries. See Background Material.
- Up to date news on important fire management issues facing the State on both private and publicly owned land, including identification of dangerous “hot spots”. See Issues in Bushfire Management in WA.
- Descriptions of important regional fire management problems. See Opinion.
- An account of activities of the Bush Fire Front aimed at improving the standard of fire management in WA. See About.
- A commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the disastrous 1961 fire season, including details of our book Tempered by Fire. See 1961 Fifty Years On.
- Comments on the 2011 Roleystone fire disaster. See Bushfires in WA 2011.
Note: We use acronyms such as CALM (Department of Conservation and Land Management), DEC (Department of Environment and Conservation), and FESA (Fire and Emergency Services Agency). Some text refers to CALM instead of DEC as the matter being discussed occurred when the agency had that title. The same comments apply to FESA, which changed to the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) in 2012.
Please browse through our website and realise the need for action, then support us by putting pressure on the State Government to address the situation.
enjoy ….. – and be informed 