By Poppy Jonhston
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The 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires destroyed around 3000 homes and they’re likely to change forever some of the more at risk communities, with homes along inaccessible ridgelines likely to become prohibitively expensive to construct and insure [...]
Bell, who has been involved with property bushfire resilience for over 20 years, says that most buildings constructed to modern bushfire standards survived pretty well.
That’s not to say there aren’t issues. One thing that’s problematic, for instance, is the “remarkable dog’s dinner” of rules across states and territories.
Partly this comes down to variations in the National Construction Code in each jurisdiction.
The inconsistency results in a dangerous level of confusion. For example, the fire danger index, which underpins the BAL ratings that people are more familiar with, has been kept more up-to-date in some states and territories than others.
This index is designed to identify the level of forest fire risk based on climatic conditions such as rainfall patterns and average temperatures. But Bell says few jurisdictions have kept up with the effects of climate change, meaning that homes are often at greater risk than their assigned BAL might indicate.
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