As bushfire season approaches, it’s important to make sure you’re prepared in case of an emergency. A Bushfire Emergency Kit should be one of the first things on your mind. Fires spread rapidly. Especially in warmer drier weather. It is essential to ensure you have everything you need, in one place. In this 5-minute read, you’re going to lean what to put in a Bushfire Emergency Kit to help deal with bushfire risks. The Bushfire Emergency Kit list down below will help you prepare either to evacuate a bushfire, or to shelter in place if the worst case unfolds and you become stuck at home.

What to put in a Bushfire Emergency Kit – TL;DR

After reading this post, I want you to know exactly what supplies and equipment you should have ready to escape a bushfire, or to try to survive if you’re stuck in a bushfire’s path.

So, what do you put in a Bushfire emergency kit? The answer is:

1. Everything in an Emergency Go Bag evacuation kit, supplemented with
2. These supplies from our tailored list of Bushfire Emergency Kit Items (below).

Let’s go through each of these below so that you have all the items you need, in just a 5-minute read.

Why prepare a Bushfire Emergency Kit?

Bushfire seasons are getting longer with more catastrophic risk days

After the catastrophic fire seasons of 2020-21 in easter Australia, the CSIRO looked at bushfire trends down under. What they found was links to climate warming.

With a warming climate, hotter days and sometimes drier conditions, fires conditions are worsening.

Fire seasons are getting longer. Larger areas of land are now bushfire effected. More extreme fires are occurring, more regularly.

This means that we humans (and everything that inhabits this big brown country) now have more bushfire risk and impacts to contend with, due to a warming climate.

It’s time to get serious and get prepared. If you live in a bushfire zone, this means you. But even travellers can get caught up in bushfires.

What are risks do you face in a bushfire?

Knowing what to expect during a bushfire – the risks you face – can help you prepare the equipment you need to survive one.

Bushfires are terrifying. They’re physically and mentally draining. In a bushfire it can be hard to see, impossible to breathe, frighteningly noisy, and unbearably hot.

The physical risks from a bushfire are heat stroke, burns, smoke inhalation, and in extreme cases loss of life.

These impacts on our well being, property and environment stem from 3 causes of bushfire damage: direct contact with flames, ember attack, and radiant heat.

Having the right equipment ready can help us deal with these bushfire risks:

• intense ambient heat leading to heat stroke and dehydration
• floating embers and direct contact with fire – burns
• difficulty breathing due to smoke
• poor vision due to darkness and smoke
• loss of essential services – power, water, road access
• destruction of assets and property.

Knowing these physical risks focuses you on the dangers you face, and the importance of bushfire preparation.

What to put in a bushfire emergency kit?

With our Bushfire Emergency Kit list below, you’ll have everything you need to get through a bushfire and start rebuilding quickly afterwards.

In a bushfire, you may need to make a decision about whether you:

1. Evacuate to a safe area, or
2. Stay at home and protect your property.

This is a really important decision. Your life, and that of your family, could be on the line. Before you make this decision, think about how our warming climate is impacting bushfires.

In Australia, our bushfire seasons are getting longer, with more ‘catastrophic’ fire days. Drier, hotter and windier conditions make for more extreme and large scale bushfires.

This why the overwhelming advice of authorities is to evacuate, and evacuate early.

Your Bushfire Emergency Kit should prepare you for both. To evacuate. Or to shelter in place if you are stuck in a bushfire situation.

Evacuating a Bushfire – get your Grab and Go Bag sorted

When bushfires are raging, every minute counts. You may have only a few minutes to get out of the bushfire’s path and make it to safety, so it’s important to be prepared in advance.

An evacuation kit is the first thing you need to prepare for any emergency, including a bushfire.

Evacuation kits are also called Go Bags or Grab and Go bags. They are designed to last for several days (minimum 3).

Their purpose is to help you get safely to an evacuation centre or or other place of shelter.

They’re perfect if you are faced with an evacuation order in a bushfire. Whats more, you can easily tailor your Go Bag to make it the perfect Bushfire Emergency Kit.

What to pack in an Emergency Go Bag

Your Grab and Go Gag (evacuation kit) is a generic emergency kit that includes the basics for human survival – water, food, warmth, light, communications.

Here is a short list of Grab and Go Bag essentials:

• Drinking water
• Non perishable food
• Mini first aid kit
• Your wallet, bank cards, cash and spare house and car keys
• Your mobile phone and chargers
• Important documents like insurance policies, marriage certificates and emergency contact numbers
• battery powered radio with extra batteries
• A torch with spare batteries.
• Spare clothes
• Toiletries
• Tools

Check out the full Go Bag Essentials Checklist in pdf  – you can download it for free.

A Grab and Go bag will not provide for temporary shelter, sleeping or basic sanitation. It doesn’t include toilet paper, blankets, tents or other necessities. This is because an Evacuation Centre will likely have these things prepared for you.

The good thing about packing a generic Go Bag is that you can use it in any emergency. It’s a great base to build from. But it’s not designed specifically for bushfires.

There are some items you must add to to your Go Bag, to make it into a Bushfire Emergency Kit.

Let’s look at these next.

How to pack your Bushfire Emergency kit

If you’ve already packed an Emergency Go Bag, it’s just a matter of adding the bushfire specific items on the list below to your kit.

Some of the items in our Bushfire Emergency Kit you should pack inside your Go Bag. These are specific to bushfires, and will help if you need to evacuate.

Other items in our Bushfire kit – the ‘household essentials’ – you should keep at home. These will help if essential services like power and water are cut off. They will also help if you are stranded without access to food and medical supplies.

Must have items for your Bushfire Emergency Kit

The list you’ve been waiting for. Here are the items to include in your Bushfire Emergency Kit – covering both your evacuation and shelter in place needs.

1. Your Emergency Go Bag (pack this generic evacuation kit first, using the list above).

Everything below is a SUPPLEMENT to your Go Bag. Add these items to your Go Bag, depending on your situation.

Food and cooking

Whether you include food and cooking provisions is down to your circumstances. We pack it because of the power outages that go hand in hand with big weather events like fires.

If you’re heading to an emergency evacuation centre, you may not need to bring all of your own food. If you’re just heading out of the bushfire danger zone then pack your own food and cooking equipment. Here’s a list of basics to think about

2. Camp stove and the means to light it
3. Dehydrated/freeze dried meals
4. Canned food and can opener
5. Freeze dried rice, beans, vegetables
6. Seasonings, herbs, salt and pepper
7. Camp cook pot
8. Water for cooking
9. Cooking and eating utensils
10. MREs (Meals ready to eat)

Medication

11. Full first aid kit and manual

Warmth and sleep

If you’re heading to an evacuation centre, you won’t need a tent, cords or tarps. But a sleeping bag is still a must to make sure you’re warm enough. And at least you’ll k now that your sleeping gear is clean!

12. Lightweight water proof tarp
13. Compact, lightweight tent
14. Telescoping tarp poles
15. Cordage
16. Sleeping bags

Lighting

17. Matches
18. Candles
19. Glow sticks

Tools and storage

20. Multi tool – swiss army knife
21. Whistle
22. 40L or 50L backpack

Personal Protection

23. Long sleeved pants and shirt
24. Leather boots with a thick sole (no runners)
25. Goggles
26. A P2 mask or breathing apparatus
27. Broad brimmed hat (to protect your head and embers falling into your clothing)
28. Protective leather work gloves.

Household essentials

Here’s a list of items to have at home in case – worst case scenario – you find yourself stuck and forced to ‘shelter in place’.

Do not stay and defend your home on catastrophic fire danger days. It will be undefendable, say our Fire Services.

Only stay and defend your home if your property is built for bushfires and you are physically able and well prepared to fight the fire in tough and scary conditions.

You also need the right fire fighting equipment. The CFA says that defending your property requires a minimum of 2 fit adults, 10,000 litres of water and a fire fighting pump on backup power.

Here are household items to help prepare for a bushfire:

29. Buckets, – to store water.
30. A ladder – to clean and clear gutters, wet your roof.
31. Hoses – sufficient to reach around your home.
32. Mops – for ember attacks, to wet down objects
33. Old towels – to wet and seal window frames
34. A rake and shovel – to fight ember attacks
35. Gutter plugs – so you can fill your gutters with water as the fire approaches
36. Garden saws, loppers, secateurs, pruners and hedge trimmers – to clear overhanging vegetation.
37. A whipper snipper – to clear long grass.

Special items

Survival kits are personal. They should always be custom to your individual needs, and those of your family. Think about your family make-up when you pack.

You may need to include some special items like:

38. provisions for pets – food, bowls, crates, leads and a comfort toy
39. medical aids for the elderly
40. food supply dietary needs – allergies, celiacs, vegans
41. prescription medicines
42. playing cards, toys, games or other comfort supplies for children

You can download the full Bushfire Emergency Kit Checklist in pdf right here. It’s completely free. 

Where to store your Bushfire Emergency Kit

A good place to store your Emergency Go Bag is in a cupboard by the front door. So you can literally grab it and get out quickly. You may store one large Go bag for the family, or have a smaller one for each family member.

The ‘household essentials’ can be kept in a storage container, in the garage, shed or laundry.

6 steps you can take today, to prepare for bushfires

According to our Fire Services, bushfire survival comes down to good preparation and decision making.

Here are the 6 key take aways from our bushfire experts on how to prepare for bushfires:

1. Know the local bushfire risks, ratings and warnings – Did you know that fire danger ratings changed in 2022? Learn the new ones down below.
2. Plug into warning systems – download the BOM App. Follow your local fire emergency services on social media.
3. Write down your Bushfire Emergency Plan – use a template if you don’t know how.
4. Prepare a Bushfire Emergency Kit – use this checklist to save time on what to put in it.
5. Prepare your home and your family members for bushfire season,
6. Practice your Bushfire Emergency Plan.

This article on How to prepare for a Bushfire in Australia will step you through an expert round up of what each step means, and how to do them.

You can also prepare by knowing beforehand the dos and don’ts of surviving a bushfire.

Conclusion

If you live in a bushfire zone, it’s important to always have a bushfire emergency kit prepared. This kit should include all of the equipment you need to survive major risks during a bushfire. It’s also important that you know what to do if you need to evacuate or shelter in place. Make sure you back a Go Bag and supplement it with our list of Bushfire Kit items so you can be as safe as possible during an emergency.