If you haven’t heard, Australia is on fire. Not just a few fires here and there, I mean parts of the nation are engulfed in flames. Over 100 fires are burning in my home state of New South Wales alone.
As temperatures soar past 40C (104 F), there isn’t much light at the end of the tunnel, at least for now.
Since November 2019, typically the beginning of Australia’s bushfire season, lives have been lost, 1000’s of buildings destroyed and the fires continue to sweep through the country.
Make no mistake, Australia is no stranger to bushfires. But with 2019 being Australia’s hottest year on record and as another heatwave sweeps through, things will likely get worse before they get better.
Why am I talking about the Australian bushfires in 2019/2020?
My country is on fire… my people are dying. Our animals are being lost. We are in a state of emergency.. my heart is breaking. Our firefighters are true heroes..💔 … #AustraliaBurning #AustraliaFires #ClimateEmegency pic.twitter.com/ALN9k2cmri
— Mel-ing about 🛸 (@theQueerwriter) January 2, 2020
I grew up on Australia’s east coast, near the city of Newcastle. I have friends and family on alert and planning to evacuate their homes due to fires closing in.
People have lost their lives, their homes, their possessions. Almost everything.
I see the images of my home nation literally up in smoke, koalas and kangaroos burnt alive because they could not escape the wrath of the flames, firefighters battling flames over 70 meters high that leave them totally exhausted.
I live half a world away, but it scares me to wake up every morning and look online to see updates.
Let me put just how massive this situation is into scale.
In 2018, California experienced wildfires that burnt roughly 767,000 hectares of land and in 2019 the Amazon Rainforest, or the “lungs of the earth”, suffered more than 900,000 hectares burnt due to wildfires. As it stands, Australia’s bushfire season has covered 6,300,000 hectares.
100 hectares = 1 square kilometer
That’s roughly 63,000km2 of land burnt.
There’s currently a single fire in Victoria covering 6,000 hectares, or 60 square kilometers.
It’s estimated almost half a billion animals have died in this bushfire season. That’s not a typo. Half a billion.
Seeing as New South Wales (NSW) just declared a state of emergency for the next week, authorities are calling for the situation to only get worse.
Sure, fires in Australia are common. Fires start naturally a lot of the time, but these unprecedented temperatures are setting the country up for a bushfire season worse than ever before. And the Australian summer isn’t half over.
#AustraliaFires #AUSTRALIANBUSHFIRES
This is climate change. Apocalyptic wildfires have now killed nearly half a billion animals and burned more than 14.5 million acres, 6× the size of the 2019 Amazonia fires. Ecologists have estimated that slow-moving animals are unable to – pic.twitter.com/IxT1mNAVTk— A. Habbal (@ahmadhabbalkon) January 4, 2020
Why are the fires in Australia so bad?
To get back to basics, fires need three things:
1. Fuel
Things that will burn to keep the fire going.
The Australian bush is full of things that burn. Trees and grass feed the flames that allow fires to grow and spread. Hazard reduction helps reduce the fuel available before a fire can take hold. This helps fires become much more manageable.
2. Heat
The more heat, the more intense the fire will be. This helps catch things on fire faster and spreads quicker.
Wednesday, the first day of 2020, Australia’s climate broke a record you don’t really want to break.
The average maximum temperature for the country hit 41.9 C (107 F). It broke the record set by the previous day.
3. Oxygen
Fires need oxygen to burn. With such hot days, breezes can shape fire into a devastating force very quickly.
This is devastating. #AustraliaOnFire #AustraliaFires pic.twitter.com/314LFOYHqk
— بلە (@bradosst) January 4, 2020
Australia is no stranger to fires and hot weather, but to look at the devastation that is being reported as the worst in recorded history and climate change is a major factor in the intensity and duration of these fires.
Hotter days create plenty of dry, easy to burn fuel for the fire to become more intense and become uncontrollable for those battling the blaze.
These fires have begun earlier in spring than usual and spread so widely across Australia, experts are calling for this to only get worse.
While climate change isn’t solely responsible for beginning such devastation, the unrelenting heat causes dry conditions, couple that with a bit of wind and there’s a recipe for disaster. Literally.
What is the current state of the Australian fires in 2020
At the time I write this (5th of January), over 100 fires burn through New South Wales (NSW) and more than 40 in Victoria, as well scattered throughout the country.
At the time of writing, the fires across the nation have claimed 25 lives with 7 missing, over 1500 homes lost and devasted an area the size of Belgium and Albania…combined.
The flames are producing so much smoke, ancient glaciers in New Zealand are getting a tint of brown. That’s a distance over 2,000km (1242 miles).
Towns along the east coast of Australia are being evacuated as fires rage closer, and with no end in sight, who knows what the future holds for the Land Down Under that’s up in flames.
The town of Mogo, on the NSW south coast, has sadly been devastated by the bushfires. Photos by the Herald’s @JamesBrickwood #NSWFires #AustraliaFires
Follow our coverage of the bushfires here, for the latesthttps://t.co/hMUY7vyH3G pic.twitter.com/P2l8oQm8Rl— The Sydney Morning Herald (@smh) December 31, 2019
What can be done to help fight the fires in Australia?
If you would like to help the effort to fight the fires and help those affected by this national disaster, you can do it in a few ways:
Donate to the firefighters themselves
Firefighters are fighting a war against an enemy that has zero remorse or consideration. Fires can race up hills, spread easily and change as quick as the wind.
If you would like to donate, you can find New South Wales Rural Fire Service and Victorian Fire Association donation links here.
Donate to those affected
Lives are lost, homes are ash. Some people have lost pretty much everything they have. A couple of organizations are leading efforts to help those in need:
Donate to wildlife relief efforts
It’s hard to put a number to wildlife deaths, but Sydney University has given a ball-park figure of 480 million animals have died since September, 2019. Yes, million. That number is expected to climb as the fires continue to rage.
You can donate to WIRES (NSW Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service) through that link.
Summary of the current situation in Australia
It’s a terrible thing happening to Australia right now. These fires are wiping out natural habitats of wildlife, destroying lives and creating a terrifying thought of what the future holds for not only Australia, but humanity as a whole.
Want to have your say over the fires in Australia? Join the conversation below, or share this post to social media.
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