Australia bushfire damage less that for previous significant fire seasons - Aon

Although there has been an extremely large total area burnt throughout the 2019-20 Australian bushfire season to date, the impact on the built environment has been significantly less than what might have been expected compared to previous Australian fire events. This is according to a new report, Analysis on the impact of Australia’s bushfires on reinsurance, from global professional services firm Aon.

“There has been significant attention paid to the size of the burnt area with many commentators comparing it to the land mass of various countries around the world, and in some cases, other historic fires,” said Aon.

“From an insurance loss perspective, to do this in isolation from other key criteria, particularly property exposure, often renders the statistic misleading. For instance, the Californian fire seasons of 2017 and 2018 burned through a combined area of less than 1.5m hectares (15,000km²) but had a total insured loss of A$47 billion [$32.4 billion] given the significant density of the built environment located in bushfire prone areas.

“In the main areas of burnt extent in California, there were approximately 30 to 40 destroyed buildings per km². Comparatively, the current events across Australia have seen less than 0.1 destroyed buildings per km² to date. As a point of reference, the 2009 Black Saturday bushfire season saw approximately 1 destroyed building per km². When we examine the total number of structures inside the current burnt extent from this fire season (therefore defined as being ‘exposed’), we find there is approximately 4.5 km² of burnt area for every single exposed property.”

Aon said that for other significant fire seasons in Australia (Victoria in 2009, Australian Capital Territory in 2003, New South Wales in 2013), there is more than one exposed property every 1km².

“This analysis highlights that although there has been an extremely large total area burnt throughout the 2019-20 bushfire season to date, the impact on the built environment has been significantly less than what might have been expected compared to previous Australian fire events,” said Aon. “This is due to fires burning through large remote areas of each state, mostly NSW and VIC, with the majority of impacted towns having populations less than 10,000.”

Estimates suggest the ongoing bushfires have burned through more than 10 million hectares (100,000km²), or around 8 percent of Australia’s total vegetation, as at January 8, 2020. This national burnt extent is extreme but not unprecedented. A total of over 100m hectares (1 million km²), 15 percent of Australia’s land mass, burnt across largely remote grassland areas of central Australia during the 1974-75 season, but due to the remoteness of the area, experienced limited property loss.

Aon said that one of the main driving factors assisting the spread of these fires is the abundance of burnable bushfire fuel thanks to the ongoing record drought conditions across Australia. Australia experienced its driest spring ever in 2019 according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Wednesday, December 18 2019, was the hottest day in the country's history, with average temperatures hitting 40.9 degrees Celsius (105.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

In the past 15 years, Australia has experienced eight of its 10 warmest years on record; yhere has been a definite warming trend since 1990. Winter rains, which can help reduce the intensity of summer fires, have declined significantly in recent years. The record positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole is partially to blame for the severity of drought conditions, Aon added.

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