Originally Posted by
Rare White Ape
It takes a while to burn a trunk of a tree right through, particularly the hard dense wood of a gum. It'll still be good only an inch under the burnt outer layer, and they can usually sprout from there.
A lot of Australian species have evolved to handle fire, and some ecosystems require it for survival. There are even areas on the Whitsunday islands (Great Barrier Reef) that evolved to adjust to fire that was introduced by aboriginals over 60,000 years ago, but since the time of European settlement those tribes aren't around to keep up their burning, so the parks and wildlife service have to conduct prescribed burns just to keep those areas alive.
It's common for big (2ft+) stumps to smoulder away for weeks after a big fire and cause reignition and another fire later on. And tree roots can pose a problem, they'll burn underground and start a fire on the other side of a fire break, such as a road or a waterway.
Those things are impossible to prevent, it just requires monitoring in the days and weeks after a fire. Mt Kosciusko had a fire a while ago and teams were going out for a month to keep blacking out the burned areas. They're all volunteers as well. That's a big effort.