A safe room that can withstand close to 1,000 degrees Celsius has been designed as a potential last resort for people trapped by bushfire.
The room, tested by QUT researchers, could also be used to protect valuables from intense fires.
"The bushfire safe room demonstrated excellent bushfire heat resistance," lead researcher Anthony Ariyanayagam from QUT's engineering faculty said.
"In theory, people could survive in this shelter for up to two hours."
Dr Ariyanayagam said safe rooms could potentially save lives.
"Policymakers think that if there is no way for people to leave then they should shelter in their home," he said.
"It's not best practice because many homes in bushfire areas were built before standards were introduced.
"During past bushfire events, an estimated 30 per cent of all recorded bushfire fatalities happened due to late evacuations, therefore, increasing the need for standardised shelters as a last resort option when evacuation is no longer safe."
To test it, the room was blasted by fire for more than an hour.
A gas-fired burner was used to simulate three bushfire phases — approaching fire, fire immersion, and post-fire.
Temperatures around the room, which is the size of a small shipping container, reached 958C, with the aim to replicate a real-life fire scenario.
Surfaces inside remained under 29C — rising by only a single degree in a half-hour test.
Bushfire conditions were simulated using guides from the CSIRO and Australian Building Codes Board, and tested at the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services campus at the Port of Brisbane.
Dr Ariyanayagam said it was the first full-scale safe room experiment to simulate bushfire conditions.
Although the test indicated people theoretically could survive inside the shelter, Dr Ariyanayagam said it could not be recommended until conditions like air quality were tested.
"Most of the time smoke is the main concern for human survival so we have to block the smoke penetrating to the safe room," he said.
The structure had three separate compartments to help make sure smoke did not filter through the safe room.
Dr Ariyanayagam said only testing a vacant structure in a real bushfire would provide definitive results, but the tests had added to the knowledge of building structure bushfire performance.
Bushfire-resilient buildings are the future
Bushfire architect Ian Weir said research into private bushfire shelters was a "no brainer".
"It's a bloody good idea ... but the success of it will be more related to space planning rather than the science aspect," he said.
This refers to where the safe room is set up, whether on the property or as part of the home.
Dr Weir said more bushfire resilient buildings were the future.
"I think the future will see people build an affordable house to withstand 90 per cent of bushfire impact, which comes from embers, not direct flame contact, and then just spend a serious amount of coin on a part of the house being resilient to bushfire and buying time," he said.
"It's really valuable for new builds. I see less application for retrofits … so it's invariably still going to be kind of a boutique thing."
He also wants to see research into how people react under extreme stress in a bushfire, to inform how homes could be made safer in that scenario.
