Estimating the net cost of the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday Fires to the affected regions

The 2009 Victorian Black Saturday bushfires cost a net $942 million, calculate Catherine Stephenson, Research Officer, Centre for Risk and Community Safety, RMIT University and Bushfire CRC, John Handmer, Director, Centre for Risk and Community Safety, and Aimee Haywood, Department of Sustainability and Environment, Victoria.

In this article, they describe how they valued the impacts of the fires, with the costs extending beyond the clearly visible suppression activities and building losses to include less obvious economic, social and environmental costs.

This is the full version (with citations) of the article published in the Summer 2011/12 edition of Fire Australia magazine.