Fires in Australia

The Shocking Size of the Australian Wildfires

The devastating California wildfires of 2018 and last year’s fires in the Amazon rainforest made international headlines and shocked the world, but in terms of size they are far smaller than the current bushfire crisis in Australia, where approximately 12 million acres have been burned to date. Fires in remote parts of northern Russia burned 6.7 million acres last year, but most of the regions were sparsely populated and no casualties were reported.

While the California fires of 2018 have long been put out and the Amazon fires have been reduced at least, Australia is only in the middle of its fire season. Ongoing heat and drought are expected to fan the flames further. This week, shocking pictures of bright orange skies in Queensland and flames ripping through towns captured the world’s attention.

The bushfires grew more severe amidst a heatwave that saw Australia record its hottest day and simultaneously driest spring on record, according to The New York Times. New South Wales has been affected disproportionally, plunging Sydney into dark smoke in mid-December. Around 10 of the 12 million burned acres are located in the state.
Bushfires frequently occur in Australia, with some years bringing more severe destruction that others. Scientist are predicting that in connection to climate change, fires will become more frequent and more severe when they happen.

Source: Statista.com
www.statista.com

Infographic: The Shocking Size of the Australian Wildfires

The 2019 Australian wildfires and other recent wildfire events by acreage burned.
www.statista.com www.statista.com

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garp said:
You would think so, yes, but what they're dealing with here in many cases are not so much mere wildfires as huge firestorms with their own weather system, so the problem is that even if you've cleared everything for 100 metres or more around your building, a rapidly approaching front of 100m high roiling flames and sparks and hot ash burning at +800°C is still probably going to take you out if you're downwind of it. The heat is so intense even at a fair distance that many people are killed by it long before the actual flames even reach them.
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Yep, now add years of drought, temperatures in the upper 30's and into the 40's, with hot berg wind type conditions blowing from the interior pushing the firefront with gusts in places up to 70mph. (that is similar to the gusts produced by an average strong South Easter in C.T.)
Its pure disaster through and through.
 
From 2015...

Bushfire scientist David Packham warns of huge blaze threat, urges increase in fuel reduction burns

Forest fuel levels have worsened over the past 30 years because of "misguided green ideology", vested interests, political failure and mismanagement, creating a massive bushfire threat, a former CSIRO bushfire scientist has warned.

Victoria's "failed fire management policy" is an increasing threat to human life, water supplies, property and the forest environment, David Packham said in a submission to the state's Inspector-General for Emergency Management.

And he argued that unless the annual fuel reduction burning target, currently at a minimum of 5 per cent of public land, "is doubled or preferably tripled, a massive bushfire disaster will occur. The forest and alpine environment will decay and be damaged possibly beyond repair and homes and people [will be] incinerated."
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Just got back yesterday from a road trip with my GF. If we had planned our holiday to start 1 day earlier we would have been caught right in the middle of this **** storm. We called off half our holiday the day before we were supposed to go to Batesman Bay and that next day the place basically burned down with people staying on the beach as the only point of safety.

Redirected to Canberra where we spent new years eve. News years eve day was a bit smokey but not too bad and did a few touristy things. Went into a restaurant for dinner that evening and it drizzled for about 2 minutes. Straight after that all the smoke decended and you couldn't see further than 10m in front of you and the smell of smoke was like standing right in a braai. Next day my GFs nose kept bleeding and I was feeling nauscios. Canberra declared to have the most polluted air anywhere in the world. It was so bad even with aircons and air filters on you couldn't get rid of the noxious burning smell.

The pics and videos you see online don't even do justice to how utterly horrifying it is to see flames and fires like these firefighters are dealing with. In some cases you can't even get within a few hundred meters of the fires because they burn so hot and so high and all these places have literally turned yellow/orange/red it's scary.
 
krycor said:
This is a tricky one.. pending your view on Climate Change as fact or fiction.

If fact ie carbon in atmosphere = leading to heating of planet.. well isn’t the pot calling the kettle black? Australia is one of the biggest polluters (other than SA.. we not innocent, US, etc) directly (dirty electrical generation via coal) as well as indirectly exporting coal to China en mass.

If you watch the politics being played they very careful with their statements as gov pointing finger at climate change means 4 pointing back to source of carbon.

Controlled burning again exacerbates things as.. more carbon pollutant.. see India, Brazil and Congo for impact that has.. hell Delhi has major air quality issues as a result of deforestation & annual field clearing via burning.

I wonder if this will start climate lawsuits with Nzl being a good example. They now suffer degraded air quality.. if this was controlled burning.. yes it would be lesser but impact would be there if blew into Nzl airspace. Would they be able to sue?

Interesting times ahead as always.. I dunno about others but till recently the major issues globally have been man controlled mainly around war or financial.. this time round it seems those are side issues waiting to flare as the climate brings all previous issues together and to the fore again.

Reality is if we all have same human rights on this planet, either developed world lifestyles gonna have to be put in check or we accept that 3rd or developing world has to be the slave class.. but then the lottery of birth is again a big thing.
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It is a deep rabbit hole. If they did control burns as are done around the world in better-managed areas, then this would not be as big as it is at the moment. Sure, everybody has strong opinions about this, but if commercial forests can manage it, then the government can manage the wilds. Especially since they KNOW it will burn.
 
****, looks like they're fighting a losing battle out there.

As a Capetonian I know all about seasonal droughts - and the fires that go with them. Sometimes they get out of hand if the necessary precautions aren't taken (pre-burning areas, etc), but there's always a lesson to go with it: don't throw cigarette butts out of car windows, don't braai or light fireworks in dry areas, leave glass lying about in the bush - you know, all common sense stuff.

Out of interest, have they found the people who started these fires?
 
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It's bad, I'd you live in a veld area then good chance your house is going up in flames, and if you're in a city then most days it's just smoke and wood fire smell. The last few months I've seen skylines I never thought I'd see in Australia (like smog worse than Jo'burg).
 
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