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: 2, Informative) by deimtee on Thursday January 02 2020, @09:20PM (1 child)
1851 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Thursday_bushfires [wikipedia.org]
1898 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Tuesday [wikipedia.org]
1983 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Wednesday_fires [wikipedia.org]
2009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires [wikipedia.org]
or just go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires_in_Australia [wikipedia.org] and scroll to the list about half way down for many more.
The current fires are very bad, but they are not unprecedented. The increase in damage is partly due to more extreme drought, but also to fire suppression causing increased fuel loads, as well as more people living in the bush. This last point in particular, people who lived in the bush in the previous two centuries cleared around their houses and worked the land, these days living close to nature in the hills is popular, resulting in many more house going up in flames when a fire does come through.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 02 2020, @10:41PM
Yes, Australia has always had bushfires: but 2019 is like nothing we've seen before [theguardian.com]