Bushfires: Inside The Inferno

Storyline

To live in Australia is to experience bushfire. We live in the most fire-prone natural environment on earth. Nowhere else in the world is so regularly ravaged by infernos of the intensity, scale and destructive force of the Australian bushfire. As our population grows and spreads and as the effects of climate change are felt, the danger to loss of life and property escalates. What do we know about bushfires and how can we prevent their devastating consequences? Not surprisingly, Australia is a world leader in fire research and the complex and technologically sophisticated job of fire fighting and prevention. Inside The Inferno takes us into the terrifying heart of major fire events, unfolding the research that explains how fires start, grow and change; and how we predict them, prevent them, fight them and hopefully survive these violent natural disasters. Inside The Inferno uses the most recent bushfire season - from the vast fires in the Blue Mountains last October through to the end of April 2014 - as the spine to unfold our current scientific understanding of bushfires. The audience learn some of the history of fire in Australia and what recent conflagrations tell us about the how fires ignite, evolve and die, and the crucial role that weather plays during a fire event. Inside The Inferno explores not only the devastating mega fires such as Black Saturday in Victoria 2009 and the Canberra fires of 2003, but also major fire-fronts that received little attention. The series does not purely retell the narrative of the fires themselves, but explores how they have provoked the evolution of the science of bushfires and how we can devise strategies to combat them.