More than 2,400 lives will be lost to bushfires in Australia over a decade, experts predict

In the decade to 2030, more than 2,400 lives will be lost to bushfires in Australia, with healthcare costs from smoke-related deaths tipped to reach $110m, new modelling led by Monash University suggests.

The black summer bushfires in 2019-20 saw almost 20m hectares of land burnt and 34 lives lost directly. One analysis estimated 417 excess deaths resulted from longer-term consequences of the fires and smoke exposure.

Ademi said it was unclear what the health and economic burden of bushfires in the future may be. She and her team constructed a model that simulated follow-up of the entire Australian population yearly from 2021 to 2030, capturing bushfire deaths and years of life lived. The population in the model was updated each year by considering births, deaths and net inward migration.

The impact of bushfires on gross domestic product over this period totalled $17.2bn, the model predicted, while 2,418 lives would be lost to bushfires. The model made conservative predictions, as it assumed no changes to GDP over the time period given uncertainty regarding inflation in the current economic climate.

The model also did not estimate the health burden of bushfire smoke due to non-physical conditions, such as mental health, nor the burden borne by community-based healthcare services, and did not capture the impact on GP consultations nor the increased dispensation of medications for respiratory conditions. The costs of devoting healthcare resources away from other conditions was also not considered.

Dr Arnagretta Hunter, a cardiologist and Human Futures Fellow at the Australian National University, said there were many opportunities to change the trajectory of increasingly severe health and environmental impacts due to fires.