2019/2020 Bushfires
Australia has always had hot and dry summers, as emphasied in the poem by Dorothea Mackellar:
“I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!”- from My Country, Poem by Dorothea Mackellar
However Australia’s Summer of 2019-2020 experienced uncharacteristic catastrophic bushfires. The bushfire season started in winter and was the worst on record for New South Wales in terms of its intensity, the area burned, and the number of properties lost. It was also the worst season on record for properties lost in Queensland according to the Climate Council
In a report by the Climate Council, it was found that climate change fuelled the bushfires. This was mainly due to extremely hot, dry conditions, underpinned by years of reduced rainfall and a severe drought, set the scene for this summer’s unprecedented fires.
Adding fuel to the fire (excuse the pun) was the amount of misinformation spread by trolls and even mainstream media. Many were blaming the arsonist and the greens for preventing hazarding reduction burns. Even Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce hopping on the bandwagon of blaming the greens for preventing backburning.
According to a Guardian article, the boss of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service says hazard reduction is important but not a panacea for bushfire risk and has “very little effect at all” on the spread of fire in severe or extreme weather.
