Sheltering practices during bushfire

This research highlights that safe sheltering during bushfire in Australia requires considerable planning and preparation by residents. The findings of this work indicate that a shelter not only needs to be appropriately designed for the circumstances but also supported by well informed and capable shelterers.

Overall, other conclusions of this report include:

• In many cases, wind was identified as a mechanism that compromised the structure of a building and made it more vulnerable to fire. This raised the question of whether current building design standards adequately address wind-related damage.
• The question on whether building and planning regulations should more specifically target the circumstances leading to loss in these events, was raised. This can be specifically addressed by:
  • egress provisions in house and urban design
  • fragility of houses in extreme fire weather events with particular attention to wind effects
  • robustness principles on building design codes
  • role of heavy fuels in landscaping design to improve egress provisions
  • building regulations and design to provide confidence in the reliability of the building as a temporary shelter.