The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is undertaking investigations into aerial firefighting safety across the country, prompted by the escalating risk environment: aerial firefighting activity has increased, and so has the number of safety occurrences.
Tag Archives: aerial firefighting
Why Fly? again
Recently Natural Hazards Research Australia released the first product of its Why Fly? research project – a review of the literature on aerial suppression effectiveness.
Why fly?
Why Fly? Assessing the effectiveness of aerial firefighting is a research project of the Australian Government funded Natural Hazards Research Australia, in partnership with the National Aerial Firefighting Centre.
Revelations from the NSW Bushfires Coronial
The coroner’s report contains much useful information. Of particular interest is an ‘executive statement’ submitted to the coroner from the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), which is reproduced in full in the coroner’s report. The NPWS statement raises three concerns: Prioritisation of aircraft, particularly for rapid response to new ignitions, command and control of fires, investigation of fires.
How effective is aerial firefighting?
In January 2023 the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre (BNHCRC) released a tranche of reports related to the Black Summer fires (2019-2020). One of these was: Investigating the suitability of aviation tracking data for use in bushfire suppression effectiveness research.
Independent Bushfire Group 