New research shows Black Summer’s megafires left lasting scars far beyond property damage

Beginning in the second half of 2019, what we now know as the Black Summer fires began devastating eastern Australia.

Thousands of homes were destroyed, hundreds of lives were lost (mainly from smoke-induced health impacts) and smoke blanketed cities for weeks. By summer’s end in 2020, an area estimated to be larger than the United Kingdom had burned.

These fires were not normal. They were megafires: vast, intense blazes that burn for weeks or months. Warming temperatures and prolonged droughts are making such disasters more frequent in Australia, the United States, Canada and southern Europe.

The scale of Black Summer was staggering. So, too, was its uneven impact on different communities, which went beyond damage to property.

Our new research examined the impact of these fires on Australians living through them, in terms of income, housing stress and unpaid work. By focusing on these aspects, and not just property damage, we found the fires made a range of preexisting inequalities worse. Poorer communities, renters and women carried the heaviest burdens after the fires were put out.

This month, Australia’s National Climate Risk Assessment found “susceptibility to fire across southern and eastern Australia is projected to increase, due to increases in heat and the frequency of heatwave conditions”.

So, what can we learn from our new research on Black Summer to make future bushfire recoveries fairer for everyone?

Before and after

Our research included thousands of small Australian communities, each with an average of about 400 people. For comparison, we matched burned areas with unburned areas that had similar characteristics prior to the fires.

This allowed us to statistically compare how similar communities in both burned and unburned areas had changed between 2016 and 2021: before and after the Black Summer fires.

By linking fire extent maps to Australian Bureau of Statistics census data, we traced shifts in income, housing and household work.

We found the impacts of the fires differed across location, gender, housing (homeowner or renter) and socio-economic status. All of this affected how quickly households recovered from the Black Summer fires.

Shorter work hours and job losses

Many households’ incomes were hit by the fires. But these losses were concentrated in the most severely burnt areas, especially in “peri-urban” areas, where suburbia meets the bush.

These places offer proximity to nature while also being within a relatively easy commute of jobs, shops and schools. In these locations, we found communities that experienced the highest burn severity had the largest falls in average, weekly personal income.

We looked at both “poor” areas (defined as being in the bottom half of Australia’s Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage Index), where people not only earn less money but also experience other forms of disadvantage, as well as “non-poor” areas (those in the top half).

In poorer burned areas in peri-urban locations, the share of households reporting no or negative income increased, by about 1.3 percentage points compared to unburned areas.

These impacts were likely due to disruptions to local businesses and tourism, meaning shorter work hours and job losses for some.

A housing nightmare

For renters, the fires triggered an even greater housing crisis. Across all burned areas, rents increased compared to those in communities in unburned areas.

Across all burned areas, rents increased by an average of about A$20 per week, or roughly 10%. But in poorer communities, the average rise was even greater: closer to A$26 a week or 13%.

Unsurprisingly, crowding in homes became more common in areas affected by fires. Those without shelter because of fire damage or destruction, or who were simply priced out of the rental market because of reduced supply, most likely moved in with friends or relatives.

Many families also faced long waits to rebuild their homes, or struggled to secure temporary housing. Widespread underinsurance, the slow pace of rebuilding, and surging construction costs all made it worse.

More unpaid labour

Another hidden impact of the fires was an increase in unpaid work. Such work is rarely counted in disaster statistics, but it erodes wellbeing and prolongs recovery.

After the fires, many faced tasks such as repairing damaged homes and making insurance claims. With lower incomes and housing costs rising, poorer households were even less able to hire tradespeople to help in their recovery efforts.

But we found additional unpaid household work pressures fell disproportionately on women, amplifying pre-existing inequalities.

For women in highly burned areas, the share of them spending at least 15 hours a week on unpaid tasks rose by around 1.7 percentage points compared to women in unaffected communities. For men, the increase was smaller, at around 1 percentage point.

What we can learn

Understanding these often overlooked impacts matters in how Australia plans for disasters and designs for recovery. If we prioritise property damage and insured losses, recovery funds flow disproportionately to wealthier households.

This risks leaving poorer communities – with fewer assets but heavier hidden losses – behind.

This is not just an Australian problem. The United Nations has produced the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, urging governments to consider how disasters affect different groups, including a gender action plan.

The Black Summer fires highlight disasters are not “great equalisers”. They widen existing inequalities. Unless disaster planning fully considers these hidden losses, uneven recovery will deepen social and economic divides.