It’s around this time of year that Jill Tacon’s nose begins to twitch. Having lived in the Mount Eliza neighborhood south of Melbourne for over 50 years, the retiree is all too familiar with the early signs of approaching wildfires, known as “bushfires” locally. “My nose is super alert in summer,” she tells TIME. “I really look for the smell of burning. I also look at the sky to see if there is any smoke in the vicinity.”
That diligence paid dividends just three weeks ago when Tacon, 77, was out walking her Australian Kelpie and stumbled upon a fire by a nearby creek. She backed up, warned her neighbors, and Victoria state’s Country Fire Authority (CFA), which was fortunately holding a training session nearby, sent two trucks to put out the blaze before it could spread.
“They think perhaps it was a spark from a power line,” Tacon says of the fire’s cause. “We don’t really know. But it just reminded us that we are now in a very dry period of summer and we should rehearse in our minds what we need to do if there is a fire.”
It’s something plenty of Americans are also mulling following the firestorm that swept through Los Angeles County’s Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods last month, razing more than 16,000 buildings, generating 4.5 million tons of debris, and causing some $275 billion of damage. As the complex cleanup and recovery process gets underway, the debate about how to instill resilience and preparedness to fend off future catastrophes is heating up.
Australia’s experience battling bushfires offers invaluable context for the Golden State—and the wider U.S.—as rising global temperatures render increased fire risk the new normal. Even against the background of the L.A. carnage, Australia’s experience is undeniably more acute. Back in 2019, wildfires torched 83 million acres of Australia, an area twice the size of Florida.
Before the recent L.A. blazes started, the Grampians National Park just west of Melbourne—a vast expanse of sandstone mountains teeming with echidnas and wallabies—was already ablaze, and it continues to burn today, with at least 271,000 acres lost to the flames. (By comparison, wildfires across the U.S., including in L.A. County, have burned 77,224 acres so far in 2025.)
Moreover, the Grampians blaze is just one of 10 bushfires currently raging in the state of Victoria, out of more than 40 across the antipodean nation of 27 million. The threat is severe and constant; on Jan. 27, a dry lightning strike sparked a bushfire in Victoria that, fueled by strong winds, devoured 170,000 acres in just six hours.
“It’s a pretty busy fire season,” CFA Victoria Deputy Chief Officer Alen Slijepcevic says with a shrug in his new Melbourne offices.
Why the L.A. wildfires were so destructive has also become a political football in the U.S. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said a warming planet was a contributing factor, while President Donald Trump—who has previously called climate change “an expensive hoax”—has blamed “gross incompetence” regarding state water and forestry mismanagement.
When it comes to the climate change debate, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is in no doubt, pointing to how parts of Australia’s eastern state of New South Wales that were “essentially rainforest” burned this year for the first time in centuries. “You can’t say that every event is because of climate change,” Albanese tells TIME. “But what the science told us was that there would be more events, more frequent, and more intense. And that’s what’s playing out.”
Still, there is plenty that people can do. Wildfires need four elements to spread: sufficient plant biomass to act as fuel; dry enough conditions to allow that fuel to ignite; wind or a slope to spread the fire; and lastly some form of ignition, whether a spark, discarded glass bottle focusing sunlight, lightning strike, or myriad other causes.
What’s changed over the last few decades as the planet heats up is the availability of dry fuel, with parched winters meaning that burning season in Victoria now begins roughly a month earlier than the mid-1990s, and it also stretches farther into the autumn. “Ignitions aren’t necessarily linked to climate change, but fuel availability definitely is,” says CFA senior researcher Nick McCarthy. “If we’ve got 25-50% more time when that fuel is available, then we are going to have more fires.”
A longer burning season also curtails the time available for prevention work. In the winter, the CFA conducts prescribed burning to clear high-risk areas before they have the chance to ignite naturally and threaten communities. It’s a technique also used in northern Californian forests, though, critically, not often in the state’s south due to a prevalence of protected chaparral scrub—low trees and bushes that thrive in hot, dry conditions—as well as dense residential areas. In addition, vegetation dries first in California’s inland valleys, which may already suffer from wildfires—occupying limited firefighting resources—by the time wetter coastal areas are even ready for prescribed burning.
However, less time to prepare terrain means efforts must instead focus on mitigation and adaptation. “The world’s left it too late not to worry about adaptation,” Australian Climate Minister Chris Bowen tells TIME in his parliamentary office in Canberra. “It is now the case that every type of natural disaster is more frequent and severe because of climate change, and these natural disasters are increasingly unnatural because they’re being caused by human activity.”
Much like in the U.S., if someone does spot a bushfire, the usual response is to dial 000, Australia’s equivalent to 911. The CFA then dispatches resources depending on the reported size, location, nature, and assets around—human habitations, livestock, as well as protected flora and fauna. Typically, a computer simulation is run to predict the spread over six hours if minimal suppression occurs. Problems arise if there are multiple contingencies that all require attention at once. “Then it becomes a numbers game,” says Slijepcevic.
When a big blaze occurs, multiple assets are dispatched, including trucks, bulldozers, and aircraft to douse the flames. In extremely inaccessible areas, helicopters may drop firefighters with dry tools like rakes to impede the fire’s spread. Of course, tackling blazes early and efficiently is key and relies on the diligence of the local community—a trait baked into Australian life and that will now likely become more prevalent in the U.S.
The availability of firefighting equipment also became politically charged in the wake of the L.A. fires. But Slijepcevic insists that no number of aircraft could have helped given the ferocity of California’s Santa Ana winds. “When you have 140 kph [87 mph] winds, nothing will fly,” he says. “Even if they can fly, they will never hit the targets, because the [water] will go sideways.”
Still, there are ways to be better prepared. Whereas across the U.S. there are 29,452 individual fire departments which recruit, train, and dispatch firefighters, the CFA has an army of 30,000 volunteers across Victoria who all undergo standardized training and can be assigned centrally to enhance coordination and reduce deployment times. “That means our ability to scale is really significant,” says McCarthy.
Education and awareness are also key. Every year, the CFA holds regular outreach events with schools and the community to familiarize regular folk with the telltale signs of impending fires, how to get relevant information from official sources, and the appropriate risk mitigation tactics. (California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has for decades provided regularly updated and enhanced wildfire reporting and information resources via fire.ca.gov, whose traffic according to Similarweb soared by over 3,500% from December to January.)
For homeowners, advice includes ensuring lawns are cut short, overhanging branches are trimmed back, and gutters are cleared of leaves. Something as innocent as spreading woodchips on flowerbeds or piling firewood by a back wall can be calamitous when burning leaves and bark are floating overhead. (Tacon says she also swapped out her old thin windows for thicker glass which can withstand higher temperatures.) Ultimately, any structure just needs one weak link for fire to spread. “It could just be a doormat that catches an ember,” says Slijepcevic.
Still, apart from adaptation, Slijepcevic says that urban planning “is the only proactive lever that we have.” The impetus for Los Angeles County now is to ensure that fire-proof materials are used in construction, meaning no wood shingle roofs, installing sprinkler systems linked to independent water sources, and only planting fire-resistant trees. (In Australia, oil-rich native eucalyptus are fantastic for wildlife including Koalas but disastrous for fires.) Adequate setbacks must be enforced both between buildings and vegetation as well as between buildings themselves. The fact that the L.A. County fires predominantly spread house-to-house is evidence that building codes were sorely inadequate.
“Most of the risks that we’re dealing with now are land use planning decisions over the last 200 years,” says Slijepcevic. “So there are obviously things that can be done now to rebuild California to different standards.”
It’s also notable that Australia has changed its advice for at-risk residents. Following the apocalyptic Ash Wednesday bushfires that swept southern and western Australia in 1983, investigators realized that most of the 75 fatalities perished in late-stage evacuations. Thereafter, they developed a “prepare, stay and defend, or leave early” protocol. But then came the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, which remain the nation’s deadliest. Many of the 173 fatalities died trying to protect their homes. Ever since, the advice has changed to simply “leave early.” (In California, current advice similarly focuses on instilling resilience into homes before wildfire season but escaping early if a blaze does approach.)
The reason is clear. “Nobody knows how they will react when the fire arrives,” says Slijepcevic. “It’s really frightening, it sounds like a jet flying next to your ear, there’s confusion, no visibility. Even experienced firefighters have different reactions when it comes to something like that.”
Similarly, most of the L.A. wildfire victims died either at home or attempting to flee too late. (Albeit some were physically impaired and sadly unable to leave.) Of course, the instinct to stay and defend one’s home and life’s possessions is very natural, though Slijepcevic—who like McCarthy spent last summer seconded to fire departments across North America—notes that in his experience people in the U.S. “actually leave earlier and quicker than they necessarily do in Australia.”
Still, the question both in Australia and the U.S. is whether the rising cost of insurance and growing band with uninsured or uninsurable homes will shift value judgements. After all, losing your home to rebuild again is a vastly different proposition to losing everything period. “The events of California will definitely ripple across the insurance industry around the world,” says Slijepcevic. “The cost of insurance will go up here and then potentially the actions that people undertake [in the event of a fire].”
Tacon, for one, has already seen her insurance premium jump by around $600 last year to almost $2,000 annually. Still, she is under no illusions about the correct course of action should the worst occur.
Whereas before 2009 she and her husband would fill buckets and bathtubs with water upon reports of a nearby bushfire, today they have a box packed ready with all important family papers and a few mementos. She regularly checks the state emergency app for any fires within a 25 km (15 mi) radius and has mapped out the best route to a designated safe assembly ground at a nearby football field.
Of course, L.A. has advised residents to pack “go bags” and make escape plans in the event of fires for many years. Climate change means that Californians may have to follow Australia’s lead and take such steps much more seriously.
“You just accept that if a fire comes through that you’re going to lose a lot of memories,” Tacon says. “But you don’t want to lose your life.”
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