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:
(Score: 4, Interesting) by deimtee on Thursday January 02 2020, @08:49PM (2 children)
That map is not showing all of the fires. I know of fires in Bundoora (suburban Melbourne) and near Naracoorte, SA that are not shown on it. It's possibly because they are now out and it is updating in real time, but they were burning within the last day or two.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday January 02 2020, @11:52PM (1 child)
This one [vic.gov.au] does - it's for Victoria, but I'm sure other states have equivalents. For non-AU dwellers looking at the map, Victoria's area is 227,000km2.
Apparently the new measure of busfire size is Belgium (30,500km2).
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday January 03 2020, @03:46AM
That would have to be a road train of bendy buses.
Unless I meant bushfires.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.