Australia will never completely escape periodic fire storms such as those experienced on Black Saturday. However, good fire management can have an enormous impact on their extent and intensity. Property losses are perhaps inevitable but the loss of human lives can easily be reduced to a tiny fraction of that recently experienced.

The keys will be systematic fuel reduction burns and the "stay and fight" strategy to be generally adopted but only permitted where a purpose-built fire shelter is within easy reach. There are no realistic alternatives.
In particular the potential for a cataclysmic disaster during a mass evacuation under fire storm conditions is too great to even contemplate.