Australia is lucky a catastrophic fire like those in Los Angeles last year has not hit any of its cities, according to the Climate Council.

“What Australia has not yet experienced – but is increasingly at risk of – is what Los Angeles endured: a major fire hitting a major city,” the council says in a report.

“Could this happen here? The chilling answer, in short, is: it is not a matter of if, but when.”

Australia shares many of the traits that fuelled the Californian blazes, according to the report, called When Cities Burn: Could the Los Angeles Fires Happen Here?

“The most dangerous elements of the LA catastrophe – extreme dryness, strong and gusty winds, abundant fuel and fires that outrun firefighting – are already happening in Australia,” the council says.

“Australia has already seen LA-style conditions, but we have so far been lucky to avoid an LA-level impact on a major city.”

LA’s urban sprawl is mirrored in many Australian cities: more than 6.9 million people here live where suburbs meet the bush.

And Australia “has suffered through fires with the same characteristics as LA: extremely strong winds, drought conditions, high fuel loads and unstoppable fire behaviour”.

The report says the outskirts of Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart share characteristics that made the LA fires so destructive.

The impact of past bushfires on home insurance premiums is also laid bare in the report.

Since 2020, premiums have increased by 78% to 138% for homes in bushfire-prone local government areas in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, according to the paper.

“The cost of the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires to our economy was estimated at $10 billion,” the report adds.

Increased government spending on disaster preparation and reducing emissions are among measures recommended in the report, a joint publication with Emergency Leaders for Climate Action.