News features

Australia has about 250,000 volunteer firefighters but for the past 30 years memberships have been declining. Fire agencies fear that if the decline persists a shortage of volunteer firefighters may emerge that degrades the provision of fire services.

The Bushfire CRC is carrying out joint research with fire agencies from around Australia looking at the issues in both recruiting and retaining volunteers. More

How fit are our volunteer firefighters and how fit do they need to be to fight bushfires?

Bushfire CRC research is looking at the health and safety aspects of fire fighting.

It is hoped that this research will gain a greater insight into the physical demands experienced by volunteers during bushfire suppression.  More

A research review commissioned by the Bushfire CRC has identified some important differences in the performance of different types of residential smoke alarms. More.

An alpine paddock in the New South Wales Snowy Plains was the venue for the Bushfire CRC High Fire project open day in March 2006.

Around 80 people made the 4WD trek to the open-air venue to see and hear the ongoing progress of the research trial of fire and fuels in the high country with a particular emphasis on the combined effects of grazing and prescribed burning. More

On Tuesday 7 February 1967, 110 fires ravaged southern Tasmania. These devastating fires came within two kilometres of central Hobart, killing 62 people and destroying 1293 homes. In the midst of the summer bushfire season, the lessons learnt from these fires are as relevant today as they were in 1967.

The Bushfire CRC, with support from the Tasmania Fire Service, has produced a short film on the 1967 Hobart fires. More.

A university course developed by Bushfire CRC / CSIRO in conjunction with Charles Darwin University and Tropical Savannas CRC has won a major education prize for its innovative use of use of online technology.

The 2005 Ascilite (Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education) Award was awarded for the exemplary use of electronic technologies in tertiary education teaching and learning for the development of the Fire ecology & management in northern Australia unit.

The materials include interviews and videos of practitioners, and draw upon a range of authentic resources such as agency websites and mapping tools, as well as more traditional resources such as current published literature.

Congratulations to Kate Parr, Alan Anderson and the Bushfire CRC team at CSIRO in Darwin.

For more information visit the Charles Darwin University website

http://www.cdu.edu.au/newsroom/story.php?nID=638

A workshop for fire managers and researchers was held in Beechworth in June 2005. More .  

The Bushfire CRC and the CRC for Spatial Information have agreed to work together on new applications. More.

Columns of super-dry air that reach the earth’s surface from high altitudes could be responsible for extreme fire behaviour in some of the worst bushfires in Australia ’s history.  

In work undertaken through the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, Dr Graham Mills, from the Bureau of Meteorology, has found that under certain conditions columns of dry, fast moving, high-altitude air descend, causing a rapid loss of humidity at ground level and very strong gusty winds. If positioned over an ongoing bushfire, this phenomenon can cause the bushfire to erupt into an uncontrollable inferno. More