Anna Reynolds looks out from her loungeroom in the foothills of kunanyi/Mount Wellington across suburban bushland filled with homes.

Key points: Hobart City Council will spend $1.9 million on bushfire preparations

Hobart City Council will spend $1.9 million on bushfire preparations The next extensive fire "will be through lots of parts of Hobart", mayor says

The next extensive fire "will be through lots of parts of Hobart", mayor says Homeowners need to secure their properties

"Every firefighter and fire expert I speak to says it's not a question of if we get a big fire, it's when," Cr Reynolds, Hobart's Lord Mayor, says.

"And a lot of them are increasingly nervous that when is going to be very soon."

Her council will spend $1.9 million on bushfire preparations this year. The money will go to fire-trail management, hazard reduction burns and firebreaks.

Anna Reynolds says firefighters are nervous Hobart will be hit by another large fire soon. ( ABC News: Leon Compton )

"It's absolutely the number-one risk to Hobart. We've always been a dry city. But with climate change it's becoming a tinderbox city," she says.

She fears there is a gap between the concern felt at council and within the Tasmanian Fire Service (TFS), compared with what she sees happening in backyards.

"If we get the big fire it'll come with a big wind, and so it won't just be if you're right next to bushland. It'll be through lots of parts of Hobart," she says.

'1967 will happen again'

More than 60 people died in Tasmania's 1967 bushfires. ( ABC Archives )

On February 7, 1967, David Brill was a young cameraman at the ABC, racing from inferno to inferno and capturing images that went around the world.

Sixty-two people died in those fires. More than 1,000 homes were destroyed.

"It's beautiful to live in the bush. But one day 1967 will happen again. It will happen. Particularly with climate change," Brill says.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 33 seconds 33 s Memories of a gutted trolley bus come back to David Brill, who filmed it in 1967

One of the images that has stayed with him for 50 years is the memory of racing to the Cascade Brewery in South Hobart. The brewery was razed, the homes and bush smouldering. In the middle of the road was a trolley-bus.

"There was a trolley-bus here, burned out. All the tyres melted. The windows were blown out by memory. Where did the people go?" he asks.

As he stands beside the Cascade Brewery looking up into the hills and the houses that dot them he worries that the lessons of the past have been forgotten.

"I'm not saying this to frighten people. I'm just saying, from my own experience, that no-one expected that [Black Tuesday] to go like it did. You just couldn't imagine it," he says.

Cascade Brewery looks very different now than when it was destroyed by fire more than 50 years ago. ( Supplied: Ian Woolford )

'I've got to give the house a chance to survive'

University of Tasmania's bushfire ecologist Professor David Bowman says most Hobartians are in "deep denial" about what a "dangerous" place the city is.

He would like to see greater focus on two key areas to reduce the risk posed by bushfire.

"More mechanical fuel treatment. Not necessarily flattening the bush, but modifying the bush by removing the understorey and doing patch burns," he says.

Professor David Bowman says most Hobartians are in "deep denial" about the severe fire threat. ( ABC News: Leon Compton )

The second change would involve offering more incentives for people to start retrofitting their houses to get the housing stock up to speed to withstand an ember storm.

Richard Jackson won't be leaving anything to chance. ( ABC News: James Dunlevie )

Up in Ferntree repelling an ember storm is exactly what one homeowner is thinking about as he tests his homemade roof sprinkler system.

Richard Jackson's home is surrounded by forests on four sides. He lives in a home he built himself in 1995. As fire standards evolved the house evolved too.

"When I saw that I was a bit deficient in construction for protection, that's when I said, 'I've got to do something about a sprinkler system'," he says.

The homemade project took years to finish, at a cost of about $20,000.

There are five sprinklers on the roof and 12 sprinklers on the eaves. They are connected back to a tank supply of water, powered by an electric pump with a petrol generator for back-up.

"I've got to give the house a chance. A chance to survive," he says.

Richard Jackson's spent tens of thousands of dollars constructing a homemade sprinkler system to protect his home. ( ABC News: James Dunlevie )

Preparation determines whether home burns or not

TFS community safety officer Sandra Whight says a lot has changed since the 1967 fires.

"We've got a fire service now. The second thing is the introduction of permits and total fire ban days and regulatory controls," she says.

Sandra Whight says a lot has changed since the 1967 fires. ( ABC News: Leon Compton )

One of the significant reasons the 1967 fires were so catastrophic was that dozens of them were deliberately lit by well-intentioned landowners. They escaped as the weather worsened.

If a fire was to start behind Hobart now the response would be very different.

"We've got spotters and we've got fire trails and we've got ways to get crews in to access these sorts of places," Ms Whight says.

There is also the lattice of fuel reduction burns that have been put in over the past five years to slow any fire that might start.

For all the institutional preparation to reduce the impact of the next fire to threaten Hobart, the reality is it is homeowners who will have the biggest say.

Former TFS chief Mike Brown says that what homeowners do in their yards to prepare will determine whether their home survives or burns.

Scorched land at the base of Mount Wellington has since been replaced by a housing development. ( ABC News: Erin Cooper )

"As those embers land in coir mats, in garden mulch, in wood piles stacked around the house are going to be the things that are impacting on their property and have an immediate impact on their survivability," Mr Brown says.

He grabs a handful of eucalypt mulch, popular with homeowners to help save water in the garden.

"If it's hard up against the cladding of a house and a spark gets into that on a hot windy day it's going to burn, burn very well, blow about and set fire to the property," he says.