The CFA’s latest post-season bushfire community survey has revealed a troubling statistic about the lack of preparedness ahead of the upcoming fire season.
Of the 611 people who took this year’s survey, nearly 40 per cent living in bushfire-prone areas did not have a bushfire plan.
CFA District 13, which covers the Outer East, assistant chief fire officer David Renkin said locally we’ve seen new people moving in and certainly not having a very good understanding of the risk in certain areas.
“All these plans need to be in place early, they need to be practised with their families and the families need to know and understand what that means and what that looks like then make a decision early,” he said.
“If their area has been identified as a risk during a heightened fire danger day, then they need to make those decisions early for the safety of their own people and ensure that they are safe for anything that may occur in and around their area,”
“The weather outlook is certainly showing the potential for increased fire, now is the time to actually start to take the steps to ensure that your family is safe.”
The CFA survey has been carried out annually since 2009 and this year, 20 per cent of people didn’t believe leaving early was the safest option to protect themselves and their loved ones and 16 per cent of people planned to stay and attempt their property
CFA Chief Officer Jason Heffernan said he is concerned about the distressing statistics and warning Victorians that now is not the time to be complacent with an earlier and more active fire season predicted.
“It is never too early to prepare, don’t gamble with your safety this season, residents living in high fire-risk areas must take their preparation more seriously,” he said.
“Take a moment to sit down with your household and make a plan so everyone knows what they need to do and where they need to go if a fire threatens your local area,”
“It’s easy to panic and make poor decisions if you’re not prepared, and the last thing you want in an emergency is to become trapped, leaving early is your greatest form of protection.”
The last two years of the survey have seen a seismic shift in Victoria’s perceptions of bushfire risk from very large to small, with 50 per cent of people not showing concern and nearly 40 per cent are not alarmed enough to warrant direct interaction with CFA.
CFA are particularly worried by the survey data showing that those least concerned, and less likely to be prepared, were located just 500 metres to one kilometre from bushland.
The Montrose bushfire at the start of 2025 was a recent reminder of how important it is to have a plan, with many residents complaining at a community meeting about the adequacy of emergency warning systems.
Mr Renkin said as an organisation, they do have limitations in regards to the amount of resources they have and what they can actually provide in a major fire scenario.
“In regards to the Montrose fire, we certainly had enough resources to be able to manage the fire but it was a bit disconcerting to see some of the feedback from residents that certainly didn’t have an action plan in place or continued to monitor the fire activity at the time,” he said.
“I’m certainly seeing complacency at times come from the community…our crews are well and well and truly prepared, ready to go, and have been undertaking training for quite a number of months to get ready for this fire season,”
“But the thing I’d probably say is that we as an organisation, we can’t do it all on our own, we rely heavily on the community to do the right thing by their families and maintain their properties and ensure that there’s opportunities to defend their property if the occasion arises.”
A further 31 per cent of survey respondents would delay leaving until threatened by a bushfire, waiting for the danger to increase or for instructions from emergency services.
Mr Renkin said people without a bushfire plan need to visit the CFA website and utilise the tools that are there, as well as be engaged with their local brigades who can provide assistance to these residents with their plans.
“A lot of people are not aware of the impact of spotting from these fires has and that could be some distance from a main fire, which will then cause smaller spot fires to then grow into larger fires, which is something that we saw, certainly in the 09’ fires, where spotting distances were in excess of 15 kilometres,” he said.
“I think there’s a lack of understanding there from the community in regards to what fire behaviour really looks like and it’s interesting in some of the surveys where people have articulated that they would stay to protect property, as without actually being exposed to fires and seeing the behaviour of fire and being fully prepared, there is a very great risk of these people potentially being caught,”
“It’s all good and fine to say they might stay to protect but if they haven’t actually been exposed to fires, there is a risk of panic and the like setting in and that’s the unfortunate time that we possibly see people perish through making the decision to leave too late.”
