Report warns 6.9 million Australians live on the urban firefront as heatwave grips south-east

On the western edge of Sydney, the heat pressed down like a lid. By midafternoon on Tuesday, the thermometer in Penrith hovered near 40°C, parched grass crackled along the back fences of new housing estates, and a total fire ban stretched across much of New South Wales.

As south-eastern Australia endured what forecasters called the most significant heatwave in six years—and the worst since the 2019–20 Black Summer for some regions—a new report from the Climate Council and a group of former fire chiefs delivered a blunt warning: millions of Australians now live on the front line of the next urban fire disaster.

Released Tuesday, the report—When Cities Burn: Could the Los Angeles fires happen here?—concludes that more than 6.9 million people live on the fast-growing fringes where suburbs meet bush or grassland, leaving every mainland capital city exposed to the kind of urban firestorm that swept across Los Angeles in January 2025.

“The uncomfortable truth is that many of the factors that led to the LA disaster are already present in Australia—and getting worse,” the report states.

A suburban firefront

The joint study by the independent Climate Council and Emergency Leaders for Climate Action—a coalition of former chiefs from fire, emergency and land-management agencies in every state and territory—finds that outer-suburban populations have surged over the past 25 years as cities have sprawled into surrounding forests and farmland.

Since 2001, the population of outer-ring local government areas around Melbourne has more than doubled to about 2 million people. Perth’s outer suburbs have grown by a similar proportion, now home to roughly 928,000 residents. Brisbane’s fringes have expanded by 76%, Sydney’s by 24%, and Canberra’s outer suburbs by 46%.

The report argues that many homes in these areas are not built for the fire conditions that now prevail. It estimates that up to 90% of houses in high-risk bushfire areas were constructed before modern bushfire-resilient standards were introduced into the national building code.

An analysis of the 2019–20 Black Summer fires cited in the report found that 99% of buildings destroyed were within 500 meters of bushland, and nearly three-quarters were built before the bushfire construction standard AS 3959 was adopted nationally.

Los Angeles as a warning

The document uses the 2025 Los Angeles fires as a case study of what can happen when extreme weather collides with sprawling suburbs at the wildland–urban interface.

In January last year, a series of wind-driven fires in Southern California—including the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire—killed 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures across greater Los Angeles, much of it in suburban neighborhoods rather than remote forests.

The report says the disaster was shaped by compounding drivers: several wet years that allowed vegetation to build up, followed by severe drought, extreme winds and dense development on the metropolitan edge.

It argues similar conditions are increasingly present in Australia. Fire seasons across Australia, the report notes, lengthened by about 27 days (roughly 20%) between 1979 and 2019, as southern Australia has warmed and cool-season rainfall has declined.

High-risk belts around every capital

The report identifies belts of concern around major capitals:

• Sydney: the Blue Mountains, Penrith, Hawkesbury, the Northern Beaches and Sutherland Shire, plus the Illawarra fringe.
• Melbourne: the Dandenong Ranges, Warburton Valley and Warrandyte, as well as the city’s northwest and western grassland edges.
• Canberra: suburbs backing onto Namadgi National Park, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve and the Lower Cotter catchment; the 2003 fires are cited as an early example of a major fire pushing deep into a metropolitan area.
• Adelaide: the Adelaide Hills and Mount Lofty Ranges, exposed due to steep slopes, heavy vegetation and hot, dry winds.
• Perth: the Perth Hills, in what scientists describe as a global drying hotspot.
• Hobart: historic vulnerability underscored by the deadly 1967 fires.

Limits of firefighting

The former fire chiefs behind the report argue that even well-funded emergency services have hard limits when fires reach certain intensities.

The number of pyroconvective events—fire-generated thunderstorms that create their own lightning and destructive winds—has surged in recent years. Around 60 such events were documented in Australia in the 40 years to 2018; at least 45 were recorded in the single 2019–20 Black Summer season.

“There is no way to safely or effectively fight pyroconvective events,” the report says. “Aircraft must be grounded, and efforts to protect properties temporarily abandoned.”

The authors say lengthening fire seasons and growing populations on the urban fringe are increasing the workload and psychological toll on Australia’s mostly volunteer firefighting workforce, just as fires become harder to control.

Planning, insurance and climate policy

Beyond emergency response, the report points to long-running gaps in land-use planning, building codes and climate policy.

It argues that decades of urban growth have pushed housing deep into known fire-prone landscapes, despite repeated warnings from inquiries after major disasters including the 2003 Canberra fires, the 2009 Black Saturday fires, the 2011 Perth Hills fires and the Black Summer Royal Commission.

The report urges:

• tighter, nationally consistent planning rules to limit new subdivisions in the highest-risk zones;
• large-scale retrofit programs to upgrade existing homes with ember-resistant materials, non-combustible cladding and defensible space.

It also highlights a shifting economic reality. Since 2020, home insurance premiums in bushfire-prone local government areas on the outskirts of Sydney, Melbourne and Perth have risen between 78% and 138%, according to figures cited in the report.

The authors warn of an emerging divide between households that can afford to upgrade or relocate and those left in increasingly risky suburbs with rising costs and potential loss of insurability.

The report also criticizes the federal government’s 2035 climate target—cutting emissions 62% to 70% below 2005 levels—arguing it is broadly consistent with warming above 2°C. At that level of change, it says modelling suggests a sharp rise in the land exposed to catastrophic fire danger.

A warning in real time

The release of the report during a severe heatwave underscored its message.

The Bureau of Meteorology warned this week that parts of South Australia, Victoria and southern New South Wales faced the most dangerous run of heat since the 2019–20 fire season, with temperatures in inland areas forecast to climb into the mid- to high-40s and strong winds expected later in the week.

Fire authorities imposed total fire bans across large areas and expressed particular concern about grasslands and cropping paddocks abutting new residential estates on the fringes of Melbourne, Adelaide and other cities.

The Climate Council and former fire chiefs behind the new study say those are the places where Australia’s next major disaster is most likely to unfold unless planning, building and climate policies change course.

“We still have a choice on just how dangerous future fire conditions become,” the report concludes. “Now is the time to reduce climate pollution further and faster, and to redesign our cities so that when fires do come, they do not turn into urban catastrophes.”