UPDATE at 6.20 AM on Friday: Fire investigators will return to the scene of a massive factory blaze in Burleigh Heads this morning, to try and figure out how the fire started. Seven fire trucks and a support team were called to the scene on Taree Street around 7.20pm last night, following reports of a…

Residents in the bushfire-ravaged central Queensland community of Deepwater have joined forces to help a local business owner left homeless and without an income when his honey production farm was destroyed. The fires burnt through 45,000 hectares late last year, destroying homes, farms and sheds and causing more than $2 million in damage to George…

The Big Brother Australia house is still standing after allegedly being deliberately lit over the weekend. Fire crews were called to bushland near the structure, tucked away near Gold Coast’s Dreamworld amusement park, at 2.20pm on Sunday. Firefighters had the blaze under control within 10 minutes of arriving and say the cause is not known.…

The Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017 and Melbourne Lacrosse building fire in 2014 put a spotlight on Australia’s cladding industry, which was discovered to be rife with non-compliant combustible cladding. Amendments have since been made to the National Construction Code (NCC), banning the use of combustible elements making up building façades, although this in turn…

More than 450,000 rental properties in Queensland are affected by new smoke alarm laws, which could see landlords paying up to $2000 for new smoke alarms – or risk being unable to tenant their dwellings. Every rental property in Queensland must meet the new smoke alarm rules by 31st December 2021; to meet this deadline,…

Following the tragic Grenfell Towers fire in the UK, the CEO of Fire Safety Australia (FSA), Scott Williams, is urging the federal government to consider setting up a national register of fire-rated building materials to help prevent a similar situation happening here. In Australia, fire rated building materials are governed by an existing Australian standard…

Architects have always sought to make tall buildings safe. This can be done in two ways- first is by using a range of suppression technologies, in other words stopping fires from taking hold in the first place, or limiting their spread if and when they do. The second was is by extinguishing—ensuring that there are…

The nation’s biggest bank has backed the creation of a searchable public register of buildings with flammable cladding to ensure potential purchasers know what they are buying. Under current rules, purchasers rely on vendors to declare any issues with cladding in sale documents. Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which has the nation’s largest home loan book,…

The fire that tore through a block of units and a commercial business in South Brisbane on Thursday is believed to have been started by a clothes dryer machine. The fire started in the unit block, which was gutted, the business next door was damaged and thick plumes of grey smoke were sent skywards, blanketing…

A unit has been destroyed by a blaze that broke out in a unit complex and caused the evacuation of 50 people in Brisbane’s northside. Emergency services were called to Camborne Street at Alderley about 9pm on Saturday. A Queensland Fire and Emergency Services spokesman said the fire was under control half an hour after…