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: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 02 2020, @10:34PM (1 child)
According to the Bureau of Meteorology (@BOM_au), 2019 was both the hottest and driest year ever measured in Australia. [twitter.com]
(Score: 1) by evilcam on Monday January 06 2020, @07:20AM
To further add to this, according to Australia's peak scientific body, the CSIRO (and the BoM) in this 2007 study [csiro.au] (cited an amazing 247 times according to Google Scholar) climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of bushfires in Australia (and presumably the world).
To quote former NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner, Greg Mullins [smh.com.au]:
It's a long bow to draw and say that had there been policy decisions over the last 7 years of LNP governments tackling climate change that these fires wouldn't be happening. But the science indicates they wouldn't be nearly as bad if everyone would stop digging up coal and subsidising the shit out of fossil fuels.