Thanks guys for the kind thoughts. The major population centres - Greater Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane - have had a lot of smoke, sometimes consecutive days at "extreme" levels. Where I live on the coast in suburban Sydney, where the sea breeze can help clear some of it, visibility was down to around 1km yesterday and I wore a P2 smoke mask, though many people didn't. The fires have burnt out huge areas in the national parks surrounding Sydney, including many houses in the semi-rural urban fringes.
The major damage has been (and continues to be) in rural communities. The forests and farming country are bone dry following prolonged drought. The scale and intensity of these fires has led to forced evacuations of many small communities and villages and also several larger towns. Some coastal communities cut off by road have been fleeing to the beaches and into the water to escape the fire fronts. Pictures of this have gone viral. Away from the coast escape has been difficult as the fires are so large and rapidly moving that the few escape routes are easily blocked by fire or falling trees. Evacuate early is the message, which thankfully most are heeding, in part because there’s still memory of the Black Saturday fires of 2009 in which 180 people died. Damage so far has been very significant - I think the last count is over 2,000 homes destroyed and a staggering number of native animals, as well as farming stock.
Much of Australia’s farming country is vulnerable. Fires are racing through farming country sometimes as fast as you can drive a car, fanned by fire-generated weather that produces 60-100kph winds, carrying embers that create spot fires well in advance of the fire fronts. Lightning from pyro-cumulus also creates new fires.
We've had some cooler weather on the east coast the last few days but it's been windy and temps are expected to rise again to 40C tomorrow. Australia is a big continent, the size of the contiguous US States, so not everywhere has the same weather.
My sister in law lives on the south coast of NSW close to the town of Eden, which was evacuated. She tells me it's been dark during the day due to the smoke, and they're packed and ready to evacuate at any moment. A few days ago it was black as night in the middle of the day.
I'm feeling a big shift in public perception about climate change due to the constant barrage of dramatic (and often frightening) pictures and video of the fires. Climate deniers cannot avoid the evidence of these abnormal events appearing nightly on TV news and other media. Everyone asks "is this the new normal?" Photography and video are a powerful medium to change public opinion.
I was reading yesterday that the conditions around Kinglake, close to Melbourne, the site of the Black Saturday fires are now identical to those that preceded the Black Saturday fires. The vegetation around Kinglake has regrown and is now as dried out as it was then. There is a heavy fuel load in the countryside. This new reality is not going to go away no matter how many lumps of coal our Prime Minister brandishes in our Parliament with declarations that coal is still important for Australia’s future. I think (and hope) the conversation has moved on, and that change will happen. I hope for our children’s sake.
There is a disinformation campaign trying to attribute these fires to arson. Most of the fires originated from lightning strikes in remote, rugged country difficult to access even on foot. Some were started by damage to electricity cables. Yes there have been some arsonists but they are not the primary cause. These fires would not have propagated so widely nor been so intense had the country not already been dried out, the result of documented increases in average temperatures along with the drought. Some industries stand to lose billions of dollars if investment and demand is channelled towards renewables. Those industry lobby groups have worked hard to maintain access and influence to government. You have to wonder who is behind the disinformation. These fires are different from those that have become before by an order of magnitude in both scale and intensity.
There’s lots of stories and pictures of these fires appearing in world media now but I’ll add links in this thread to any outstanding ones that catch my eye. Please feel welcome to contribute.
Meanwhile here's the latest must-have accessory - selling out everywhere:
