A leading expert on bushfires has warned that Canberrans are more complacent than ever before about the threat of a serious bushfire happening in the capital.
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Bob Cechet, an adjunct professor on extreme weather at the University of New South Wales, said complacency levels had been growing over recent years, with young people being the most complacent.
"In my experience teaching university students, I find that when I show videos captured by news teams during major fires, they often are surprised that conditions like that could happen in Canberra and in their suburb," he said.
"I fear that complacency among our younger generation is prevalent and that they are not considering how they should prepare for an event that could occur again during an extreme fire weather day."
The warning comes as the temperature is set to reach the low 30s on Sunday following two days of 40 degrees. A total fire ban has been extended to include Sunday.
Professor Cechet, who also spent 35 years as an extreme weather researcher with the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, said complacency levels surrounding natural disasters move in cycles.
He said in the 14 years since the devastating Canberra bushfires, the preparedness in the community for another similar event was at some of its lowest levels.
"Following a major [weather] event in the region, there usually is a significant local action to improve resilience and reduce vulnerability," Professor Cechet said.
"However, by the time the next event occurs, we as a community have unfortunately become slack and are not as well prepared as if the event had occurred a few years following the previous incident."
ACT Rural Fire Service chief officer Joe Murphy confirmed views on Canberra's complacency.
He said it would take an extreme bushfire like the 2003 fires to make people more prepared.
"The fire needs to be personal to them and be part of their region in order for them to act," Mr Murphy said.
"The events of 2003 have faded into the background. Time has healed the wound and some of those lessons from then have been forgotten."
The chief officer said he had seen complacency among Canberrans steadily grow during the past few years.
Despite online tools such as bushfire survival plans being available for some time, Mr Murphy said few people had used them.
"The people of Canberra need to take responsibility for their safety. Most people haven't used [the online tools] because there hasn't been that big reminder," he said.
According to Professor Cechet, Canberra residents could take a similar approach to prepare for natural disasters such as communities in far-north Queensland had done following cyclones and floods.
"Education of the local community by the local volunteer fire service would be very beneficial," he said.
"That's been successful in reducing vulnerability [of natural disasters] by developing a common understanding of how to prepare and what to do during a crisis."
While this year's bushfire season has seen several blazes break out across Canberra, Professor Cechet said none had been serious enough to force residents to re-think bushfire safety plans.
"The recent Tarago and Latham fires will be forgotten quickly by most of the population because their impacts were minor in comparison to the 2003 Canberra fires," he said.
However, despite his warning of complacency, the bushfire expert said the chance of an extreme fire in Canberra this fire season was "not very likely".
"It's not likely particularly if the hazard-reduction burning near the boundary of the ACT suburbs with high-vegetated areas has been recently conducted," he said.
