Where's the Fire? Co-Constructing Bushfire in the Everyday Landscape

This research studied factors that residents of a fire-prone Victorian community used when deciding whether to leave their homes on a day officially declared “Catastrophic,” the highest Fire Danger Rating. Taking a social constructivist perspective, we explore how the expert view of bushfire risk, represented by Fire Danger Ratings, is interpreted within the context of local understandings of the landscape and social memory of bushfire. Residents perceive a disconnection between the Fire Danger Rating and local reality. Their social construction of bushfire is related to social and ecological memory, which comprises physical experience of the landscape and local fire knowledge narratives. The exclusion of this social complexity from Fire Danger Ratings diminished their utility as a way of helping people make meaning of bushfire. We propose that fire management agencies work with communities to develop a co-constructed view of bushfire risk that incorporates local bushfire knowledge into Fire Danger Ratings.