The 1967 Tasmanian fires were an Australian natural disaster which occurred on 7 February 1967, an event which came to be known as the Black Tuesday bushfires. They were the most deadly bushfires that Tasmania has ever experienced, leaving 64 people dead, 900 injured and over seven thousand homeless. The resulting insurance payout was the then largest in Australian history. In 2017 2 more people that had died were officially recognised as victims of the bushfires, they had previously been excluded as the deaths had not been investigated by the coroner at the time.
Comparison with other major Australian bushfires
If considered in terms of both loss of property and loss of life, in 1967 this represented one of the worst disasters to have occurred in Australia. It is comparable in scale with the 1939 Black Friday bushfires in Victoria (where the loss of 72 lives was spread over several days) and the subsequent 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia, which claimed 75 lives and razed over 2,000 homes. The 2009 Black Saturday bushfires north of Melbourne, and elsewhere in Victoria, in which 173 people died, share the same commencement date of 7 February.
Australian National University history professor Tom Griffiths has described the 1967 fires as marking the advent of a "new type" of bushfire in which suburban areas of large cities were threatened, contrasting with earlier major fires which had solely occurred in rural areas.
Memorial
A memorial for the 1967 Bushfires was built at Snug in the Kingborough municipality, south of Hobart, where a plaque with the names of the 62 people killed is fixed to a brick chimney. The memorial has storyboards telling the story of the 1967 fires, as well as bushfire preparedness information. It is surrounded by a garden of fire resistant native plants. In 2017 2 more people that had died were officially recognised as victims of the bushfires and added to the plaque making the total 64 people.