What happens when bushfire warnings can't be sent: one community's plan

When a bushfire warning is issued, but mobile phones fail, who will alert residents to the danger? A community in central Victoria has learned the hard way that communication networks supporting essential services like bushfire warnings are not foolproof.

On January 8, 2026, authorities warned of a catastrophic fire rating for the following day, describing conditions as "the most dangerous experienced this summer". One local brigade posted a stark reminder on social media: "160 people died on Black Saturday in the district 12 response area" on a similarly high-risk day.

Fiannuala Morgan, a resident of Castlemaine, was urging her parents to leave their property as conditions worsened. By 9 am the next morning, temperatures had soared to 31 degrees. "I was aware of this catastrophic rating but did not have an integrated sense of what that actually meant," she says. "Because when the fire started, it really went from zero to 100 in a matter of seconds."

As the fire approached, the power went out, and Fiannuala's emergency app froze. She tried to call her parents, but her phone was dead. "The first thing that happened was my emergency app froze. And then I tried to call my mother, and I couldn't get through on the phone. I tried to send a text to either my mother or my father, and that didn't work either."

A few kilometers away, a grass fire was racing towards the nearby town of Harcourt. Fiannuala knew about the fire because she was able to call her brother in Melbourne, who was updating her on the VicEmergency app.

As the situation worsened, Fiannuala left her house and walked up a nearby hill to try to get reception. From the hill, she watched as a thick cloud of smoke turned the blue sky an ominous shade of orange. Her brother told her the wind was pushing the fire towards Castlemaine. "I had always thought that Castlemaine was a very safe place if there was a fire but suddenly you realise, oh gosh, there's actually nowhere in these conditions that is safe," she says.

Fiannuala put her cat in the bath and tried to find a way to get more information. She turned on her car radio to listen to emergency broadcasts, but the broadcasting tower at Mount Alexander had burned. Alone and with dwindling access to information, she decided to find her parents, who were sheltering at a friend's house nearby.

Fiannuala warns that communication networks supporting essential services like bushfire warnings have "not been adequately strengthened". She believes recent changes, such as the rollout of the NBN and the shutdown of the 3G network, have left communities like Castlemaine dangerously unaware of the fragility of their communication systems.

Vince Di Pietro, a former naval aviator, has taken it upon himself to find a solution. After coordinating the recovery effort for the Currowan fire, which burned for two months and destroyed hundreds of homes, he realized that thousands of people had been stranded without access to information. "How did these people not know to leave earlier?" he asks.

Vince is working on a community information hub to provide timely and accurate emergency information. He believes that resilient telecommunication networks are lifesaving and that more needs to be done to bolster them in rural areas.