Bushfires will cost Australia $6 billion annually for the next 30 years, according to modelling commissioned by a group of former fire and emergency service leaders.

The Emergency Leaders for Climate Action study finds the cost will include lost homes (17%), damaged businesses and public buildings (20%), harm to health and wellbeing (32%), lost trade (25%) and lost work (6%).

The research report says the actual cost will be higher, because the model excludes anything that cannot be accurately quantified, such as wildlife loss, damage to ecosystems and loss of cultural heritage.

The study finds fire seasons are 21% longer than in 1979, shrinking the window for hazard reduction burning and limiting states and territories’ ability to assist each other during major events.

The report cites insurance data showing “bushfire years and events costing more than $500 million in insured losses are already more frequent than 25 years ago”.

The ELCA says climate change is making bushfires more ferocious, frequent and costly. Southeast Australia now experiences 14 more days a year of extreme fire weather than before 1998. Three of Victoria’s worst fire seasons have been in the past 18 years. And almost half of the 14,000 homes lost to bushfires in Australia since 1901 were destroyed after 2001.

The report says the next two summers pose a significant risk to communities, noting that in some high-risk areas insurance premiums have risen as much as 400% after major fires.

The ELCA says Australia had 10,336 fewer firefighting volunteers in 2023-24 than four years earlier, while paid positions grew by only 433.

Australia’s fire seasons increasingly overlap with North America’s, and during the 2019-20 Black Summer, 11 of the 12 large air tankers Australia used came from overseas.

The group calls for governments to fund a National Adaptation Plan, including measures to retrofit the highest-risk homes to the national bushfire standard – at an estimated average cost of $39,466 per home. 

It also calls on the federal government to cut coal, oil and gas emissions further and faster by stopping approvals of new coal and gas projects and capping the Fuel Tax Credit Scheme. 

See the report here.