The most obvious of the reasons why identifying hazards in the workplace is important. It’s impossible to remove or mitigate something you are unaware of; once the hazards have been identified they can be handled properly, reducing or eliminating the risk of injury or death.

Understanding the risks and hazards of the fire is very important for the following reasons: To work in a safe environment: For any organisation, the emergency fire exhausting system is mandatory by the government as it ensures the safety of the employees of that organisation.

As identification of hazards is the first step in Risk Management, it implies that hazards which are not identified would not go through the rigour of the Risk Management process, leading to the non-identification of preventive measures for implementation and communication to prevent harm in the workplace.

– The damage from a fire can cause the structure of a building to collapse. It is so important to know what simple measures you can take such as keeping fire exits clear, keeping the workplace tidy, effective management of waste and understanding how to reduce the risk of electrical fires occurring.

Fire provided a source of warmth and lighting, protection from predators (especially at night), a way to create more advanced hunting tools, and a method for cooking food. These cultural advances allowed human geographic dispersal, cultural innovations, and changes to diet and behavior.

Low intensity fires do not cause enough soil heating to produce significant changes to soil physical properties. Intense burns may have detrimental effects on soil physical properties by consuming soil organic matter. Soil porosity can also be reduced by the loss of soil invertebrates that channel in the soil.

Exposure to smoke from fires can worsen asthma and other respiratory conditions, cause coughing and shortness of breath and irritate the eyes, nose and throat. Large particles in bushfire smoke irritate the eyes, nose, throat and lungs. The finer particles can penetrate deep into the lungs and are more harmful.

These gases can be toxic to the environment and human health. While there’s no safe level of air pollution, bushfire smoke is particularly hazardous because of the presence of tiny particles, or particulate matter (PM).

The full health and related impacts of the 2019–20 bushfires will not be known for some time; however, psychological health can be affected for many years and, while more research is needed into the effects of long-term exposure to bushfire smoke specifically, long-term exposure to air pollution is potentially related …

Immediate Impact on GDP and Wealth More than 10 million hectares have burned during the bushfire crisis, about half of that in NSW, Australia’s biggest economy. Westpac has estimated that the bushfire crisis will cost Australia $5 billion in direct losses and reduce economic growth by 0.2 to 0.5 per cent.

A large bushfire can cause multiple direct impacts: on life and property, on the survival of fauna populations, on water resources, and indirectly on government budgets and insurance costs. A large bushfire will also generate huge amounts of smoke.

Some people have been left with life health problems and others traumatized. The bushfires has indirectly affected citizens through the loss of communication between the towns and cities. Prices of fruit and vegetables have increased due to the damage of farmland.

By valuing a wide range of economic, social and environmental impacts and benefits through an economic loss assessment, the net cost of the Black Saturday Fires was estimated to be $942 million. This value was reached by deducting the total benefits ($1.998 billion) from the total losses ($2.939 billion).

Consequences. The Black Saturday bushfires killed 173 people, 120 in the Kinglake area alone. Another 414 people were injured. More than 450,000 hectares had burned and 3500 buildings including more than 2000 houses destroyed.

The Federal Government announced a $10 million package of emergency assistance, available from 9 February, providing $1,000 per adult and $400 per child for those who had been hospitalised with injuries or who had lost their homes. The bushfire appeal raised more than $372 million in total.

26 days

A total of 173 people died – Australia’s deadliest ever bushfire event. It left several hundreds more injured, more than 2,000 homes destroyed, and more than 7,500 people displaced. The RSPCA estimated that up to one million animals died. It was unprecedented – even for a country long used to bushfires.

Deloitte put the tangible costs of the Black Saturday fires at A$3.1 billion in 2015 dollars and the intangible costs at more than that again: A$3.9 billion, producing a total of A$7 billion, which would be A$7.6 billion in today’s dollars.

two firefighters

Brendan Sokaluk

The fire started at about 11.47am, on top of a rocky hill between two gullies near Saunders Road. The fire ignited at about 12.20pm; it was a grass fire and in the first hour spread rapidly, covering just over 10 kilometres.

The so-called “Black Saturday” bushfires of 2009 have been, by death toll, the worst in Australia’s history. Primarily located in Victoria and South Australia, somewhere in the region of 173 people lost their lives, and 2029 homes were gutted by flames.

Largest fires of the 21st-century

Here’s a list of othernatural disasters. The bushfires in Victoria have so far claimed 131 lives, making it Australia’s worst-ever bushfire disaster. It’s also Australia’s worst-ever natural disaster in 110 years.

13 Worst Wildfires in US History

• The 1988 Yellowstone Fires.
• The 1918 Cloquet Fire.
• The Great Fire of 1910, Connecticut.
• The 1902 Yacolt Burn.
• The 1871 Great Michigan Fire.
• The 1871 Peshtigo Fire, Wisconsin.
• The 1884 Great Hinckley Fire.
• The 1881 Thumb Fire, Michigan.

Brazil

Top 10 Most Famous Fires in History

• San Francisco 1906.
• Chicago 1871.
• Rome 64 A.D.
• London 1666.
• London 1212.
• Boston 1872. While not as large a fire as the one in Chicago the year before or the fire that was to ravage San Francisco just over three decades later, Boston’s fire was arguably the most expensive in terms of property damage of any American fire.

The largest wildfire in modern history was the Black Friday Bushfire in Australia’s Victoria State in January 1939, burning some 4.9 million acres and claiming 71 lives. Giant fires are also common across Siberia’s Taiga forests.

Texas

–(BUSINESS WIRE)– The Hartford released its 2020 Home Fire Index, ranking the top 150 U.S. cities with the highest home fire risk. The top five cities are: Detroit, Mich.; Macon, Ga.; Augusta, Ga.; Memphis, Tenn. and Birmingham, Ala.