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posted by martyb on Thursday January 02 2020, @01:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the fire dept.

Bushfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia. They're Only Going to Get Worse:

Australia has deployed military planes and ships to provide aid as hundreds of wildfires rage across Australia, forcing residents to flee and destroying homes.

The Australian Defense Force is sending ships to the Victoria town of Mallacoota on a two-week supply mission and using helicopters to bring in more firefighters since roads were inaccessible, according to the Associated Press (AP).

On Tuesday, thousands of people from the town on Australia's southeastern coast fled towards the water as a fire ripped through the area.

Photos of residents taking shelter on boats circulated on social media.

[...] In New South Wales, where Sydney is located, firefighters are battling more than 100 fires, according to the state's Rural Fire Service.

Sydney's famed New Years Eve fireworks went ahead despite the fires. A petition calling on the government to cancel the display and give the funds to firefighters and farmers instead got more than 280,000 signatures.

[...] New South Wales' Rural Fire Services Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said this wildfire season is the worst on record.

"We've seen extraordinary fire behavior," he said Tuesday, according to the AP. "What we really need is meaningful rain, and we haven't got anything in the forecast at the moment that says we're going to get drought-breaking or fire-quenching rainfall."

More than 900 homes have been destroyed in the state, according to New South Wales Rural Fire Service.

A fire tracker map maintained by researchers in Western Australia shows that they are also threatening areas around every major city in the country.

Additional coverage:


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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 02 2020, @07:19PM (1 child)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday January 02 2020, @07:19PM (#938759) Journal

    Think about that for a second...

    Dude had to go back to 1939 to cherry-pick a comparative fire. And the best he could come up with was only half as large!

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @07:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @07:42PM (#938767)

    The Black Thursday bushfires were a devastating series of fires that swept the state of Victoria, Australia, on 6 February 1851 [an estimated 5 million hectares were burnt]. Twelve human lives were lost, along with one million sheep, thousands of cattle and countless native animals.

    "The temperature became torrid, and on the morning of the 6th of February 1851, the air which blew down from the north resembled the breath of a furnace. A fierce wind arose, gathering strength and velocity from hour to hour, until about noon it blew with the violence of a tornado. By some inexplicable means it wrapped the whole country in a sheet of flame — fierce, awful, and irresistible." -Picturesque Atlas of Australasia published in 1886