page_title: Black Saturday bushfires
section_title: Investigations
hierarchical_section_title: Black Saturday bushfires / Investigations
caption_attribution_description: English: CSIRO is a participating agency in the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre which has been looking at the key issues in the February 2009 bushfires. The CRC's Bushfire Research Task Force includes researchers from various state fire agencies and research organisations with expertise in building analysis, human behaviour, community education, bushfire behaviour, fire weather, and fire investigation. The purpose of the research is to provide fire and land management agencies with independent analyses of the factors surrounding the Victorian fires. CSIRO researchers from the Bushfire Dynamics and Applications Group, the Bushfire Urban Design project and the Remote Sensing team, will be involved with two areas of research: strategic fire behaviour - how the fires moved across different landscapes and different vegetation and under variable weather conditionsbuilding (infrastructure) and planning issues - patterns of loss and patterns of survival of build
context_page_description: The Black Saturday bushfires were a series of bushfires that either ignited or were already burning across the Australian state of Victoria on and around Saturday, 7 February 2009, and were among Australia's all-time worst bushfire disasters. The fires occurred during extreme bushfire weather conditions and resulted in Australia's highest-ever loss of human life from a bushfire, with 173 fatalities. Many people were left homeless as a result.
  As many as 400 individual fires were recorded on Saturday 7 February; the day has become widely referred to in Australia as Black Saturday.
  A Royal Commission, headed by Justice Bernard Teague, was held.
context_section_description: Investigations began almost immediately following the fires to determine a wide variety of things including identification of victims, cause of ignition sources, and assessments of authority responses. A Royal Commission into the Black Saturday bushfires was conducted, a process that was intended to determine the true nature of the background causes, preparation of responsible agencies, circumstances on the day, chronology, and impacts of the events in question.
caption: Remains of a destroyed property at Kinglake after the Black Saturday bushfires
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