Tyler McKay | Assistant News Editor
Featured image courtesy of Matthew Abbott/The New York Times
Background:
As of January 7 at 4 a.m. Australian Eastern Daylight Time, 130 fires were burning across New South Wales (NSW), a state in the southeast of Australia with around 2,000 firefighters on site. These fires have been burning since September.
“Bushfires are an intrinsic part of Australia’s environment. Natural ecosystems evolved with fire, and the landscape, along with its biological biodiversity, has been shaped by both historic and recent fires,” said Geoscience Australia, a branch of the Australian government.
However, these fires are burning at an enormous scale. Over five million hectares of land have burned. These fires are not going to be extinguished any time soon. They are expected to continue to burn for months.
This time of year is fire season, but Australia has been going through a major heatwave where the average temperature across the country is 40.9 degrees Celsius. This is drying out the land and forests, making them much more susceptible to fires.
The factors that can increase the likelihood of wildfires are: fuel load (how much there is to burn), fuel moisture, wind speed, temperature, humidity, and slope angle according to Geoscience Australia. Between 1967 and 2013, bushfires have caused over 8,000 injuries and 433 deaths. Over the same period, bushfires cost about 4.7 billion Australian dollars (A$).
This map shows where the fires are burning and their intensity. |
Courtesy of Google Maps/NPR
Social costs:
The social costs of these fires have been high. Over 2,100 homes have been either damaged or destroyed and as of January 4, 24 people have died. There have also been a reported increase in elderly people and people with asthma and other respiratory conditions going to the hospital as the air quality worsens. Many firefighters have been hospitalized for smoke inhalation as well. There is also a psychological component to these fires.
“I don’t think you can underestimate the psychological impact of not just the smoke but the existential threat of fire” said David Caldicott, a consultant emergency physician at Calvary hospital in Canberra to The Guardian.
“There are people who are anxious and who are vulnerable at times of anxiety who are looking for reassurance,” Caldicott continued.
Wildfires can also have adverse cultural impacts. This was noted in a document from the Australian government that evaluated the costs of wildfires back in 2010. Cultural impacts can include: “complete burning of scar trees, sooty covering and blackening of artefacts, movement of small artefacts down a slope through erosive processes and loss of rock art as a result of exfoliation of granite rock that has been subjected to intense heat.”
Economic costs:
Retail, commercial, and industrial sectors face decline during and after wildfires. Additionally, so do the tourism, forestry, agriculture, and horticulture industries. These losses come from fires destroying the products or place of business, but also the conditions of poor air quality keeps people from going out and purchasing products.
This includes people unable to go to work due to poor air quality and transportation services being down.
Consulting firm SGS Economics estimates that “Sydney generates roughly A$1.2bn a day worth of economic activity, but the haze is causing between A$12m and A$50m worth of daily disruption.”
Medical bills are projected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. A$240 million worth of insurance claims have been filed since October.
It was noted in Al Jazeera that water pipes have melted, so water needs to be shipped or trucked in from other towns.
Environmental costs:
An estimated 500 million mammals, birds, and reptiles have died since the fires began. However, there is also a pressing concern of populations of smaller organisms being devastated. “When that happens that’s going to affect the larger ecosystem, because that’s the building blocks for a whole community,” Vickii Lett told Al Jazeera, adding that everything has a role in nature.
“We just cannot minimize the effects of losing those smaller species.”
Lett is a volunteer wildlife caretaker in NSW.
On Kangaroo Island off the southeast coast of Australia, the fires have threatened the Kangaroo Island dunnart, which is a mouse-like marsupial.
The population of 300 is feared to soon be wiped out because, according to Heidi Groffen, ecologist at Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife, the animals are too small to outrun the fires and their food sources have been destroyed.
Since the landscape is much drier, the areas that might have remained damp enough to provide safety to animals that are now burning just like everywhere else.
Zoology professor Michael Clarke told Al Jazeera “these habitats that only exist in the absence of fire are going to be changed almost irreversibly by the presence of fire.”
As to how the fires are spreading, embers can be caught in the wind and blown to other areas where they can start new fires. These fires are able to affect the weather as well. As the smoke rises, it cools and forms clouds.
“This process is similar to the development of a thunderstorm,” said CNN Weather’s Derek Van Dam.
“As such, a downdraft forms within the base of the pyrocumulonimbus cloud, allowing for embers to be picked up and carried to form new fires.”
Political costs:
There have also been some political implications from these fires. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has faced criticism for vacationing in Hawaii during the fires as well as his government’s “insufficient targets to decrease greenhouse gas emissions.”
It is noted by Insider that Morrison is also criticized for his refusal to restrict the coal export industry which is seen to be key in the fight against climate change.
However, the CBC reported that Morrison said, “there is no dispute in this country about the issue of climate change globally and its effect on global weather patterns, and that includes how it impacts Australia.”
Yet, videos have emerged of volunteer firefighters and people displaced by the fires refusing to shake the PM’s hand and expressing their displeasure at his response to these fires.
Response:
Thousands of firefighters have been deployed to combat the blazes in addition to 3,000 army reservists. There are currently 95 Canadians from fire services across the country working in Australia while New Zealand and Singapore have aided with military support.
Victoria has declared a state of disaster and New South Wales has declared a state of emergency which frees up more money and resources to be directed at the fires. Army bases have been opened up to house people who have been displaced.
On January 5, PM Morrison unveiled plans for the National Bushfire Recovery Agency, which is designed to run for two years and provide mental and financial support to those who have been affected. The government has spent A$20 million to lease fire-fighting aircraft from overseas.
Tropical Cyclone Blake is approaching Australia from the northwest and will soon pass over areas that are currently burning. Additionally, rains are expected for most of this week in the south east. This may provide some relief to those areas most affected.
Is it climate change?
According to the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology, the average temperature has increased approximately 1 degree Celsius since 1910. The trend upwards really begins to take off around 1970.
Currently, across the country, heat records are being broken. Canberra, Australia’s capital, has reached 44 degrees Celsius. In a town west of Sydney, it reached 48.9 degrees. These hot and dry conditions are prime for wildfires.
However, there is another phenomenon that has been credited with the increased temperatures and dry conditions. This phenomenon is called a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, which means “sea surface temperatures are warmer in the western half of the Indian ocean and cooler in the east,” according to the BBC.
“As a result, there has been higher-than-average rainfall and floods in eastern Africa and droughts in south-east Asia and Australia.”
The positive IOD leads to less “rain-bearing weather systems” and higher temperatures in Australia.
The difference in temperatures between the east and west sides is the greatest it has been in 60 years.
An article by Arthur Chrenkoff in the Spectator makes the case using various media reports that arsonists may be responsible for lighting some of these fires. He highlights 17 media reports of suspected arson from August 2019 to January 2020. While he cedes that wildfire conditions are exacerbated by climate change, he is not convinced that these fires are started naturally.
Another article in The Australian has reported that 183 alleged arsonists have been charged across Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania since November 8, with 24 arrested for lighting bushfires on purpose.
This diagram shows how fires can create their own weather. |
Courtesy of Australian Bureau of Meteorology/BBC
Other fires – how does this compare?
According to the BBC, 4 million hectares have burned in NSW since July 1. This dwarfs the other noted fires, namely the 2019 Amazon fires at 900,000 hectares and the 2018 California fires at 800,000 hectares.
During the 2016 Fort McMurray fires in Alberta, over 1.4 million acres were burned. The fire was the costliest disaster for insurance providers in Canadian history at $3.7 billion. While the Fort McMurray wildfire is suspected to have been caused by humans, Alberta was facing extremely dry conditions as well.
The most deadly Australian fire happened in February of 2009 when approximately 180 people were killed in the city of Victoria.
