SYDNEY, Australia – The first big fire of the Australian forest fire season has now blackened roughly half of Fraser Island, an idyllic haven north of Brisbane known for its golden beaches and abundant biodiversity.
With evacuation orders reaching residents on Monday, Australians who had hoped there wasn’t much to burn after last year’s colossal fires are now fighting with a brutal reminder: In a vast country that is at risk of fire and particularly vulnerable to The risk of record-breaking infernos never goes away.
In fact, it continues to increase.
“I’m sure it’s a hit for us and everyone watching,” said Jack Worcester, 34, whose family owns Cathedrals on Fraser, a campground that was recently evacuated. “There is currently no normal for a fire season – any fire season can be pretty serious.”
At this point last year, desiccated forests outside Sydney had been burning for weeks, covering the city’s sky with an orange-gray haze. But while this year (so far) feels less overwhelming, one question hangs on the mind of many Australians, and it’s the same question the Californians asked a few months ago and will be asking again next year: How bad is it going? to get?
Fires are usually measured and recorded using hard statistics – acres burned, homes and lives lost – but before counting there is an impressionistic mapping of the risk, shaped by terrain, climate, human activity and chance.
This year’s Australian seasonal prospect maps show a broad red amoeba for areas of above-average danger that run through the grassy plains of central New South Wales, the southeastern state of which Sydney is the capital. But you have to dig deeper to see that many other areas are also at risk.
For example, Fraser Island is marked as “Normal Fire Potential”. The fire that is now burning, pulling firefighters ashore and on planes to put out the flames and close the island to visitors, is believed to have been caused by an illegal bonfire lit by tourists on October 14th has been.
“By and large, fire is a natural part of the Australian landscape. Even if we say the year has normal or below average risk, it doesn’t mean there is no risk, ”said Naomi Benger, climatologist with the government’s Bureau of Meteorology. “It means the risk is as high as in an average year.”
Due to climate change, she added, the average risk of fire is increasing.
“It only takes a day or two to be disastrous,” she said. “People shouldn’t be complacent.”
La Niña, a large change in tropical Pacific temperatures that affects global weather patterns, is the dominant factor in the 2020-21 Australian fire season. La Niña brings cooler water closer to the ocean surface in the central and eastern tropical Pacific, and this year has provided above-average rainfall for most of the country.
Thunderstorms and long spring weeks have filled the reservoirs, relieving farmers in New South Wales and Queensland after many years of drought. But the soaked rains have also created fields of grass in the plains west of the Great Dividing Range, the mountain range that runs up and down the east coast of Australia.
With just a few hot, dry days, these grasses turn green to brown, making them as easy to light as a dry piece of paper, maybe even easier. This creates a particularly unpredictable and deadly danger.
“The main difference is the intensity; Grass fires are less intense than forest fires in general, but they spread very, very quickly, ”said Richard Thornton, who heads the Cooperative Research Council on Bushfires and Natural Hazards and makes the maps that most countries use to assess each fire base season. “They are certainly moving faster than you can run or walk in front of them, and they are very much dominated by the wind.”
In 1969, a dozen grass fires near the town of Lara killed 23 people, including 17 trapped in their cars on the highway. Some of them tried to escape the fire and failed.
Grass fires also generate enormous amounts of radiant heat. When willow trees caught fire along the surrounding woods in Batlow town in January, the heat from the flames in the grass melted some of the fire trucks and firefighter helmets.
“Because they can move quickly and change direction quickly, people can easily be caught and overrun by a grass fire,” Thornton said. “We’ve seen it before.”
Climate connections
La Niña is just one factor among many. Other weather forces have created drier than normal conditions in places like tropical Queensland.
Fraser Island saw fewer thunderstorms than usual in November, and these dry conditions were exacerbated by the heat. Last month was Australia’s hottest November ever. Projections also suggest that December through February maximum temperatures in parts of southeast and western Australia and along the Queensland coast will likely be above the long-term mean.
That means a higher risk. The onset of a heat wave or two or three this summer could dry out many areas and make fires even more difficult to fight.
Scientists argue that this is climate change in action. As global average temperatures have risen by one degree Celsius since the pre-industrial era, variability in weather patterns is increasing, particularly in Australia, the world’s driest inhabited continent.
What once looked like an anomaly can quickly become the new normal.
“With the Australian fire season last year combined with that in California last year, it can be said that this is what the future will be because of climate change,” said Thornton. “Last year’s fires were unprecedented, but they are no longer like that. Now that we’ve had these fires, they have to be part of the planning. “
A recent report by an independent Royal Commission on fires last year recognized that climate change had already significantly increased the risk of natural disasters in Australia. Numerous changes to fire fighting in the country have been recommended, calling for more aircraft and better coordination of data and communications equipment.
Very little of what the Commission requested has been put into practice or even approved. Prime Minister Scott Morrison goes on to claim that his administration’s efforts to combat climate change – widely viewed as overwhelming and weak by climate researchers in the country – are sufficient.
Emergency managers say the bigger challenge, whether in the US or Australia, is getting the general population in fire-prone areas to understand the changing environment and the risks.
“It’s hard,” said Mr. Thornton. “You don’t want to face the fact that your place of residence is risky.”
Until they can see the fire and the smoke.
Mr. Worcester, the campsite owner on Fraser Island, said that at one point he was exposed to flames close enough for a rock to reach.
“I stood on our property during the ceasefire and watched it be less than 100 meters north of us,” he said. “It was 15 meters tall.”
He said he now intends to buy his own personal fire fighting equipment “just to calm down”. And yet, he already knows that the relief will be short-lived.
The campsite, which was 40 percent full when it had to be evacuated and is now being asked to cancel reservations left and right, is surrounded on three sides by bushland, with the sea in front.
“The vegetation will have grown beyond what it was this year,” Worcester said. “We’ll have two or three years less risk, then another eight years of high risk.”
“At the end of the day,” he added, “when it’s really serious, there is only so much you can do.”
