HOW DO WE SLEEP WHILE OUR BEDS ARE BURNING? A COMPREHENSIVE DEBRIEF ON THE AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRE CRISIS
The Facts
In November 2019, the Australian government declared a state of emergency when dozens of fires erupted in New South Wales. The fires rapidly spread across all states to become some of the most devastating in the last few decades. At least 27 million acres of Australia has been burned, a surface area almost equal to Portugal. On January 4th 2020, The Guardian reported that due to the fires, at least 23 people had died nationwide and in New South Wales alone, more than 3,000 homes had been destroyed or damaged. And according to an estimate from the University of Sydney, more than 1 billion mammals, birds and reptiles have likely lost their lives in blazes. The blazes from the fires have ravaged through bushland, wooded areas and even national parks like the Blue Mountains. Some of the bushfires could be contained within days of starting, but the biggest blazes have been burning for months. Alongside the dangerous flames from the bushfires, the smoke has become another disaster. On January 1st, Australia’s capital recorded the worst pollution it has ever seen in history. The air quality index was noted 23 times higher than the ‘hazardous’ level. At one point, Canberra health authorities had advised all residents to “spend more time indoors”. Additionally, the smoke in the city was
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so extreme, it had made its way into birthing rooms and stopped MRI machines from working. The smoke had also reached New Zealand, where it created an eerie scene atop glacier-covered peaks. In Australia, summer extends from December to February, with the fire season typically peaking in late January or early February. Bushfires and grass fires in Australia are a regular and widespread occurrence that have significantly moulded the nature of our continent over millions of years. According to the Geoscience Department of the Australian Government, natural ecosystems have evolved with fire, as the landscape, becomes more biologically diverse. Apart from the hot, dry weather which makes it easy for blazes to start and spread, natural causes have been blamed in the past for most bushfires. Often this is lightning strikes in drought-affected forests. In late December 2019, Victoria State Emergency Service had reported that dry lightning was responsible for starting a number of fires in Victoria’s East Gippsland regions, which travelled more than 20 kilometres in just five hours. Additionally, a police statement indicated that the New South Wales police had charged at least 24 people with deliberately starting bushfires, and have taken legal action against 183 people for fire-related offences since November 2019.
