Australia 2009 - Black Saturday Aftermath:

Modifying the "Stay and Defend" or "Leave Early" policy to account for the most severe wildfires includes ‘Leaving early is still the safest option’.   Australians have long been proud of their fierce self-reliance, which is illustrated by the country’s wildfire policy. Prior to 2009, residents in remote rural areas were urged to evacuate their property if fire threatened, but those who felt they could adequately defend their property were permitted, even encouraged, to do so.

This official policy, called “Stay and Defend or Leave Early,” or SDLE, came under intense scrutiny following the worst wildfires in Australian history, which occurred in the southern state of Victoria on February 7, 2009 — “Black Saturday.” Those fires killed 173 people, 113 of them in or near buildings, and called into question the wisdom of the stay-and-defend model. A royal commission was called to examine the circumstances surrounding those fires, and in July 2010 the commission issued a five-volume report of its findings.

The report did not recommend the total elimination of SDLE, but asserted that the policy should not apply in severe fire conditions. “The stay or go policy failed to allow for the variations in fire severity that can result from differing topography, fuel loads, and weather conditions,” the report stated. “Leaving early is still the safest option. Staying to defend a well-prepared defendable home is also a sound choice in less severe fires, but there needs to be greater emphasis on important qualifications.”

Other report recommendations include:

• Strengthening fire warnings and improving their timeliness and dissemination;
• Providing more practical and realistic options such as community refuges and wildfire shelter, with more assisted evacuation for vulnerable people;
• Providing improved public education about fire behavior and house defendability;
• Improving the deployment and use of roadblocks;
• Ensuring that fire agencies have thorough processes for identifying and approving particularly dangerous activities such as back-burns;