In WA alone over 139 homes have been lost to bushfires at three incidents.

One of the things I love about social media is the fact I can favourite articles of interest to me and then come back at a later date to review them and take my time to ingest the contents. Recently I saved an article from the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Centre.

Hazard Note provides a summary of seven post-bushfire interview studies conducted in Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales from 2009-2014.

The studies were conducted at the request of fire agencies in those states, and their purpose was to inform agencies about how residents understood bushfire risk, planned and prepared for a possible bushfire, and responded to a serious bushfire event.

Key findings show that a significant percentage of residents interviewed did not believe that they were at-risk and neither planned nor prepared for a possible bushfire, and that only 5% of the 1760 people interviewed had a written bushfire survival plan.

With a background in PR and communications, I do agree that a new approach to promoting bushfire safety does need to be developed and evaluated over the coming years. 'How' is another issue.