There's a fire in Australia the size of Manhattan - CNN

The fires joined overnight in the Omeo region in Victoria state, creating a 6,000-hectare (23 square mile) blaze, according to Gippsland's Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning.

In neighboring New South Wales state, a fire in the Wollondilly region south of the capital Sydney remains "out of control," according to the Rural Fire Service. It has burned 264,000 hectares (1,020 square miles) of land in recent months.

Weather conditions are deteriorating rapidly on Saturday, with the country's Bureau of Meteorology warning that winds are picking up and temperatures increasing. "Today will be a day of severe to extreme fire danger through many districts," the bureau said.

The country's capital, Canberra, smashed its heat record of 80 years, reaching 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday afternoon, according to the meteorology bureau. In the western Sydney suburb of Penrith, the mercury climbed to 48.9 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) -- setting a new record for the whole Sydney basin.

The death toll is rising as conditions worsen -- Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Saturday that 23 people had been killed nationwide, up from 18 from earlier in the week. More than 1,500 homes have also been destroyed since the fire season began in September.

Victoria has declared a state of disaster and NSW has declared a state of emergency -- both granting extraordinary powers and additional government resources to battle the fires.

It marked the first time VIctoria has activated these powers since the 2009 Black Saturday fires, the deadliest bushfire disaster on record in Australia with 173 people killed and 500 injured.

On Saturday, Morrison announced the deployment of up to 3,000 Australian Defense Force Reserve troops to affected states. Four planes will also be leased by the government to provide water bombing, while the navy's largest ship, HMAS Adelaide, will be mobilized to evacuate citizens along the coast.

"Today is about ensuring we deal with the urgent crisis that is existing across fire grounds in four states in particular, to ensure we're giving everything that is needed on ground without being asked," Morrison said at a press conference.

Evacuations ahead of deteriorating weather

All three branches of the ADF -- the navy, army, and air force -- have been working this week to rescue residents from fire-threatened areas and isolated towns cut off by closed roads. On Friday, the navy evacuated about 1,000 people from the Victoria beach town of Mallacoota, Morrison said.

Some residents have chosen to stay and defend their homes, even with authorities urging people to get out while they can. Matt Runko, a homeowner in Moruya, NSW, departed late Friday -- but was forced to leave his neighbor behind.

"He's pretty confident he's got enough water and resources over there to fend it off," Runko told CNN -- but admitted it's "definitely a little bit distressing" that his neighbor was staying in the fire threat zone.

Saturday's hot, dry and windy weather is expected to hinder firefighters and worsen the flames, after a brief improvement in conditions on Thursday and Friday.

The Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe weather warning on Saturday morning for "damaging winds" in NSW, the state hardest hit by fires so far. A passing cold front is causing temperatures to spike and humidity to drop, and bringing strong gusts up to 90 kilometers per hour (55 miles per hour) across the state's southeast.

Some of the biggest fires have been burning for months, but the real danger on Saturday is the wind. Not only does it make the fires grow faster and bigger, but the wind can carry embers far distances and start entirely new fires in new locations.

These winds will change directions once the cold front passes -- making the fires even more difficult to control. Some rain is expected by the end of the weekend heading into Monday, but won't be enough to extinguish the large ongoing blazes, according to CNN meteorologists.

Angus Barners, an incident controller at the Rural Fire Service in Moruya, NSW, said he expected "very challenging conditions."

"We can't stop the fires, all we can do is steer them around communities," he told CNN.

CNN's Mitchell McCluskey contributed to this report

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2020-01-04 11:11:00Z
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Australia fires: Are Australia's wildfires getting worse? 'Too late to leave' - Express.co.uk

Australia is still battling a rash of wildfires at the opening of 2020, as severe heat grips much of the country. Officials have enlisted military aid to tackle the scores of blazes, and some people have had to evacuate.

Are Australia’s wildfires getting worse?

The latest Australian wildfires are some of the worst the country has ever seen, with blazes in every state.

New South Wales has seen some of the worst activity, with more than 900 homes now destroyed by the oncoming flames.

Nationwide, a total of 17 people have died, and authorities are struggling to contain the flames even with foreign aid.

READ MORE: Australia bushfires: Raging infernos ravage homes as fires spread

Authorities have now rated the wildfires the worst on record, and they show no sign of abating.

Continuing hot, dry weather has spurred the flames through the Australian summer, which lasts until February this year.

More than 19,000 square miles of land has burned since before the season began last year.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said fires would likely persist until the country gets “decent rain”.

Flames are just part of the deadly risk the fires pose as they sweep Australia, as smoke has caused air quality to plummet to dangerous levels.

Bushfires on the south coast have poured smoke into Australia’s capital of Canberra, which recently recorded its worst-ever air quality.

Air Quality Index (AQI) readings in the city peaked at 3,463 on Wednesday, far exceeding the baseline “hazardous” rating of 200.

Officials advise those living under a hazardous warning to stay indoors and keep all windows closed.

Speaking to the Guardian, Dr Sophie Lewis, a Canberra-based University of New South Wales climate scientist, said the smoke makes everyone “panic".

She told the publication: “It’s permeating everything. It is the fine particulates that get through everything. This is the worst it has been.

“Last night it started to blow in and you do start to feel quite anxious and stressed.

“Smoke just makes us all panic.”

Animals are particularly suffering from the wildfires, as millions of Australia's native fauna have died as a result of the deadly blazes. 

Ecologists from the University of Sydney estimate nearly half a billion (480 million) mammals, reptiles and birds have died since the fires began. 

Koalas are among the worst-hit species, as the slow-moving creatures make their homes in eucalyptus trees, many of which are in the path of the vicious fires. 

Reports have also surfaced of farmers returning to their land to find their livestock dead, and kangaroos have been spotted fleeing the flames. 

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2020-01-03 09:03:00Z
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Australia Is Committing Climate Suicide - The New York Times

BRUNY ISLAND, Tasmania — Australia today is ground zero for the climate catastrophe. Its glorious Great Barrier Reef is dying, its world-heritage rain forests are burning, its giant kelp forests have largely vanished, numerous towns have run out of water or are about to, and now the vast continent is burning on a scale never before seen.

The images of the fires are a cross between “Mad Max” and “On the Beach”: thousands driven onto beaches in a dull orange haze, crowded tableaux of people and animals almost medieval in their strange muteness — half-Bruegel, half-Bosch, ringed by fire, survivors’ faces hidden behind masks and swimming goggles. Day turns to night as smoke extinguishes all light in the horrifying minutes before the red glow announces the imminence of the inferno. Flames leaping 200 feet into the air. Fire tornadoes. Terrified children at the helm of dinghies, piloting away from the flames, refugees in their own country.

The fires have already burned about 14.5 million acres — an area almost as large as West Virginia, more than triple the area destroyed by the 2018 fires in California and six times the size of the 2019 fires in Amazonia. Canberra’s air on New Year’s Day was the most polluted in the world partly because of a plume of fire smoke as wide as Europe.

Scientists estimate that close to half a billion native animals have been killed and fear that some species of animals and plants may have been wiped out completely. Surviving animals are abandoning their young in what is described as mass “starvation events.” At least 18 people are dead and grave fears are held about many more.

All this, and peak fire season is only just beginning.

As I write, a state of emergency has been declared in New South Wales and a state of disaster in Victoria, mass evacuations are taking place, a humanitarian catastrophe is feared, and towns up and down the east coast are surrounded by fires, all transport and most communication links cut, their fate unknown.

An email that the retired engineer Ian Mitchell sent to friends on New Year’s Day from the small north Victoria community of Gipsy Point speaks for countless Australians at this moment of catastrophe:

“All

we and most of Gipsy Point houses still here as of now. We have 16 people in Gipsy pt.

No power, no phone no chance of anyone arriving for 4 days as all roads blocked. Only satellite email is working We have 2 bigger boats and might be able to get supplies ‘esp fuel at Coota.

We need more able people to defend the town as we are in for bad heat from Friday again. Tucks area will be a problem from today, but trees down on all tracks, and no one to fight it.

We are tired, but ok.

But we are here in 2020!

Love

Us”

The bookstore in the fire-ravaged village of Cobargo, New South Wales, has a new sign outside: “Post-Apocalyptic Fiction has been moved to Current Affairs.”

And yet, incredibly, the response of Australia’s leaders to this unprecedented national crisis has been not to defend their country but to defend the coal industry, a big donor to both major parties — as if they were willing the country to its doom. While the fires were exploding in mid-December, the leader of the opposition Labor Party went on a tour of coal mines expressing his unequivocal support for coal exports. The prime minister, the conservative Scott Morrison, went on vacation to Hawaii.

Since 1996 successive conservative Australian governments have successfully fought to subvert international agreements on climate change in defense of the country’s fossil fuel industries. Today, Australia is the world’s largest exporter of both coal and gas. It recently was ranked 57th out of 57 countries on climate-change action.

In no small part Mr. Morrison owes his narrow election victory earlier this year to the coal-mining oligarch Clive Palmer, who formed a puppet party to keep the Labor Party — which had been committed to limited but real climate-change action — out of government. Mr. Palmer’s advertising budget for the campaign was more than double that of the two major parties combined. Mr. Palmer subsequently announced plans to build the biggest coal mine in Australia.

Since Mr. Morrison, an ex-marketing man, was forced to return from his vacation and publicly apologize, he has chosen to spend his time creating feel-good images of himself, posing with cricketers or his family. He is seen far less often at the fires’ front lines, visiting ravaged communities or with survivors. Mr. Morrison has tried to present the fires as catastrophe-as-usual, nothing out of the ordinary.

This posture seems to be a chilling political calculation: With no effective opposition from a Labor Party reeling from its election loss and with media dominated by Rupert Murdoch — 58 percent of daily newspaper circulation — firmly behind his climate denialism, Mr. Morrison appears to hope that he will prevail as long as he doesn’t acknowledge the magnitude of the disaster engulfing Australia.

Mr. Morrison made his name as immigration minister, perfecting the cruelty of a policy that interns refugees in hellish Pacific-island camps, and seems indifferent to human suffering. Now his government has taken a disturbing authoritarian turn, cracking down on unions, civic organizations and journalists. Under legislation pending in Tasmania, and expected to be copied across Australia, environmental protesters now face up to 21 years in jail for demonstrating.

“Australia is a burning nation led by cowards,” wrote the leading broadcaster Hugh Riminton, speaking for many. He might have added “idiots,” after Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack blamed the fires on exploding horse manure.

Such are those who would open the gates of hell and lead a nation to commit climate suicide.

More than one-third of Australians are estimated to be affected by the fires. By a significant and increasing majority, Australians want action on climate change, and they are now asking questions of the growing gap between the Morrison government’s ideological fantasies and the reality of a dried-out, rapidly heating, burning Australia.

The situation is eerily reminiscent of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, when the ruling apparatchik were all-powerful but losing the fundamental, moral legitimacy to govern. In Australia today, a political establishment, grown sclerotic and demented on its own fantasies, is facing a monstrous reality which it has neither the ability nor the will to confront.

Mr. Morrison may have a massive propaganda machine in the Murdoch press and no opposition, but his moral authority is bleeding away by the hour. On Thursday, after walking away from a woman asking for help, he was forced to flee the angry, heckling residents of a burned-out town. A local conservative politician described his own leader’s humiliation as “the welcome he probably deserved.”

As Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, once observed, the collapse of the Soviet Union began with the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986. In the wake of that catastrophe, “the system as we knew it became untenable,” he wrote in 2006. Could it be that the immense, still-unfolding tragedy of the Australian fires may yet prove to be the Chernobyl of climate crisis?

Richard Flanagan won the Man Booker Prize for “The Narrow Road to the Deep North.” His latest novel is “First Person.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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2020-01-03 07:55:00Z
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Australia Fire Updates: Bracing for an Even Worse Weekend - The New York Times

SYDNEY, Australia — Already besieged by one of the worst wildfire seasons in Australian history, evacuees and those staying put on Friday braced for conditions to grow even more dire.

Across Australia’s southeast, supermarket shelves emptied, gas stations closed and roads became clogged with traffic as skies turned a hellish red or a smoke-choked white. Firefighters were overwhelmed by more than 100 raging blazes and families were forced to make perilous stay-or-go decisions.

The toll so far includes 18 deaths, more than 1,000 homes destroyed and thousands of animals killed. On Friday, experts and government officials offered a grim warning: The upcoming weekend is likely to be the most dangerous yet.

Predictions for Saturday

Early Friday, the New South Wales Rural Fire Service dramatically expanded its estimate of the amount of land at risk from spreading fires, including “ember attacks,” in which burning wood fragments are carried by wind. The weekend is expected to bring high winds and temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 38 Celsius.

New South Wales, the state that includes Sydney, declared a state of emergency in its southeastern region on Thursday. Residents and tourists across a broad swath of the southeast were advised to flee.

Rescue by sea

The Royal Australian Navy began rescuing people trapped in Mallacoota, a seaside town in Victoria, after fires cut off its land-based escape routes. The Department of Defense said on Friday afternoon that 57 people had departed on one of its ships, and about 900 would leave throughout the day.

About 4,000 people, including about 3,000 tourists, were trapped in the town, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Some people would be unable to board the ships because it required using ropes to get on board, ABC reported. Those who made it onto a ship will take a 17-hour voyage to get to Melbourne.

‘It feels like it’s not real’

People staying behind on the south coast were preparing for the worst, after days of dwindling resources.

Clarinda Campbell, 37, said she and her two children had been without power and had barely slept since Tuesday, when fires swept through the area. They fled to a property owned by her parents in Surf Beach, where phone reception was out in all but a few spots. Water and food sources were running low, with no way to store them, and there was no garbage disposal service. Radio was the main source of information, and shops were accepting only cash.

But the community rallied together, she said. On Friday, a neighbor brought fresh bread, which is now a luxury.

“It has been very touching,” Ms. Campbell said. “In the crisis you see the best and the worst.”

On Friday, the family fueled up their cars in case a getaway was necessary.

Without the use of phones, they had to make contingency plans. Ms. Campbell said she was nervously waiting for Saturday, when her husband, who had stayed behind in the town of Broulee to defend their home, was supposed to run to a nearby hilltop with a sliver of cellular reception, to let her know if he was safe.

But with the possibility of fires blocking escape routes, she was trying to reach her husband on Friday to persuade him to leave.

“It feels like it’s not real,” she said. “I’ve gone to sleep every night and woken up every morning hoping that it was just a bad dream.”

Bernard Kreet, a caterer in Catalina, said he was hosting two families who had been evacuated from other towns, thinking that Catalina would probably avoid the worst. While his partner had left for the next town north, Mr. Kreet opted to stay behind.

“It’s so hard to get out of town, it’s chaos down here,” he said.

Catalina has run out of rice and fuel is low, he said. Power was out from Tuesday to Thursday.

When fire swept close to the area on Tuesday, he huddled with about 300 others at a Catalina golf club, waiting to hear if it would come their way.

“The feeling in that room, of 300 people just frightened — it was heavy,” he said. “There will be so many people with PTSD after this. So many people are just so anxious.”

Isabella Kwai reported from Sydney, and Daniel Victor from Hong Kong.

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2020-01-03 06:30:00Z
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Australia's Scott Morrison heckled by angry Cobargo residents after fire destroys town - The - The Washington Post

Devastated residents, some of whom had lost their houses and livelihoods, vented their frustration at Morrison, a vocal supporter of Australia’s coal industry and a climate change skeptic.

In a video captured by Australia’s ABC News broadcaster, one resident glared at Morrison and told him that she would only shake his hand if he provided more funds for Australia’s fire service, which relies primarily on volunteers.

“So many people here have lost their homes. We need more help,” she said, as he moved on.

“You control the funding, and we were forgotten," a woman in a Led Zeppelin T-shirt walking a goat shouted at Morrison.

“You won’t be getting any votes down here, buddy,” promised an angry man. “No Liberal [Party] votes. You’re out, son. You are out.”

As Morrison headed to his car, one Cobargo resident had the final say.

“You’re not welcome here,” he shouted in the video, calling the prime minister an expletive.

In response to the heckling, Morrison later told Australia’s ABC news broadcaster: “I understand the very strong feelings people have.”

“They’ve lost everything, and there are still some very dangerous days ahead," he said. “My job is to ensure that we steady things through these very difficult days and support the states in the response that they are providing.”

Morrison faced flak last month for taking a vacation to Hawaii while the fires burned. He apologized and returned home, but many Australians remain incensed at what they see as government neglect.

An unprecedented environmental crisis

Since September, bush fires have killed 18 people and destroyed over 1,200 homes in New South Wales and the adjacent Victoria state. Just this week, at least another 17 people in these areas were reported missing, and about 4,000 people were trapped in a beach town in Victoria, unable to escape because of advancing fires. The government has declared a state of emergency there for the first time.

Bush fires are a yearly occurrence in parts of dry Australia. But climate scientists have tied the longevity and severity of this year’s fires to climate change in a country that relies heavily on carbon-producing industries such as coal. The fires began earlier than average, and heat waves in the fall and winter made for even more combustible conditions. December was one of two hottest months on record in Australia and 2019 the hottest and driest year yet. Dec. 18 ominously marked Australia’s hottest day ever, beating out the record set the day before.

Reckoning with climate change — and its skeptics

The fires have prompted a moment of political reckoning in Australia. Images of destroyed buildings beneath apocalyptic red-orange skies have not played well for the country’s conservative, coal-supporting prime minister.

Morrison has called on Australians to be patient and rebuffed criticisms that his government hasn’t done enough to reduce emissions.

“Morrison is firmly part of Liberal Party politicians who are outright opposed to taking any steps that could compromise Australia’s coal economy,” said Matto Mildenberger, an assistant professor of political science and environmental politics at the University of California, Santa Barbra, who is writing a book on Australia’s climate politics. “He’s opposed to climate reforms and committed to the fossil fuels economy.”

In November, the prime minister pledged to outlaw climate protests, saying that they disrupted the economy. Just before heading off on his ill-timed Hawaii holiday, Morrison’s government announced plans to underwrite two gas-fired power stations. But he also didn’t rule out new coal-fired power plants.

“I am quite agnostic, just as long as it is reliable and it is cheaper…. You deal with the environmental challenge, you make sure you keep your economy growing and get power prices down," he said, according to the Guardian, adding, “There’ll be lots of shouting noises elsewhere, but I tend to listen to those quiet still voices.”

Morrison used similar language in May, when he praised “quiet Australians” for helping him win reelection. Morrison’s Liberal party did notably well in Queensland, where there’s a controversial plan in the works to build one of the world’s largest coal mines.

A 2019 study by Sydney University found that 78 percent of Australians support reducing fossil fuels and 64 percent approve of higher taxes to do so. Even 62 percent of those who voted for Morrison said they back fossil fuel reductions, and 48 percent support raising taxes. The bush fires are one of several environmental crises — including the bleaching of the country’s Great Barrier Reef and an ongoing drought — currently facing Australians.

“The issue of climate change has roiled Australian politics for a decade and a half now,” said Mildenberger, explaining that politicians both for and against climate action have lost power over policy debates.

As May’s election showed, however, climate change hasn’t often been the dominant issue driving votes.

“Climate change has rarely been the ballot question,” Mildenberger said. It’s a trend he’s noted in research around the world — anti-climate-policy politicians have been elected despite populations showing support for government action on climate.

That, though, could also be shifting in Australia. For people already concerned about climate change, said Mildenberger, events like the bush fires are “going to make climate change a bigger part of the narrow set of questions that they are using to make political and electoral decisions.”

In the meantime, Australians remain consumed by just making it through the fires. As one response, Australian artist Scott Marsh has been fundraising for the country’s rural fire service (RFS) through prints and T-shirts he created: The image on them shows Morrison in a Hawaiian shirt and Santa Claus hat, holding a drink and surrounded by flames.

“Merry Crisis!!” reads the caricatured prime minister’s speech bubble.

As of Thursday, Marsh had raised more than 90,000 Australian dollars, or more than $60,000 in U.S. currency.

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2020-01-02 20:26:00Z
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Australia fires: Thousands flee coastal towns as country burns - The - The Washington Post

Robert Oerlemans AP Boats are pulled ashore as smoke and wildfires rage behind Lake Conjola, Australia, on Thursday.

SANCTUARY POINT, Australia — An Australian navy troop carrier was preparing to evacuate up to 4,000 people trapped in a remote region of Victoria state by advancing wildfires that have consumed an area almost the size of West Virginia.

The situation in Mallacoota — a beach town popular with families over the holiday season — is so dire that officials spent Thursday afternoon assessing who would be capable of climbing ladders from small boats to a navy ship anchored offshore, designed to carry 300 soldiers and 23 tanks.

Those unable to climb the ladders and wishing to leave will be flown out by helicopter, although heavy smoke that has reached as far as New Zealand is making flying hazardous.

While Sydney held its fireworks display on New Year’s Eve on Dec. 31, thousands of beachgoers were stuck on the coast of the country due to raging wildfires.

Some 17 people have been killed since the fires started in October, eight of them this week. At least another 17 are missing, and more than 1,000 homes and buildings have been destroyed.

More than 200 fires are burning in the continent’s southeast, and firefighters fear the worst may be yet to come. Temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit and high winds are forecast for Saturday, which could whip up existing blazes and trigger new fires up to seven miles from the main front.

Peter Parks

AFP/Getty Images

A burned-out car destroyed by wildfires is seen outside Batemans Bay in New South Wales on Thursday.

In Mallacoota, families cried and hugged on Thursday as they discussed whether to take up the evacuation offer or wait with their cars and belongings for the fires to burn out, which could take weeks. The pall of smoke contributed to the sense of desperation.

“You can feel it in your eyes. You can feel it in your lungs, and that’s made people even more desperate to get out,” Elias Clure, a journalist in the town, said on the Australian Broadcasting Corp. network.

“It is hell on Earth,” Michelle Roberts, owner of the Croajingolong Cafe, told Reuters.

Farther north, in New South Wales state, the main coastal highway was cut off when a fire that had been under control flared up between the regional centers of Nowra and Ulladulla.

On a cloudless day, smoke reduced visibility on the road to six feet in some places, making driving for the firefighters highly dangerous. Three have died in road accidents in the past few weeks.

The fire department of New South Wales posted dramatic video Dec. 31 showing one of their trucks enveloped by a raging fire, amid huge blazes which have destroyed more than four million hectares (10 million acres) in Australia.

The New South Wales Rural Fire Service asked tourists vacationing in a 150-mile strip along the state’s south coast to leave Thursday morning. Lines of cars up to a mile long could be seen at gas stations as drivers waited to refuel and get out.

https://twitter.com/NSWRFS/status/1212336600853733376">

Prime Minister Scott Morrison asked people to be patient as they navigated congested roads. Criticized last week for vacationing in Hawaii while the country burned, Morrison was heckled Thursday when he visited Cobargo, a town in southern New South Wales where most of the main street was wiped out on Monday.

Earlier, he emphasized that the primary responsibility for fighting fires belongs to state governments, while taking credit for making military resources available.

“It’s important as we work through those evacuations that people continue to remain patient and remain calm and to follow instructions,” Morrison said at a news conference Thursday. “What we cannot have, in these situations, is governments stepping over the top of each other in a national disaster like this.”

The premier of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, visited towns on Wednesday that were virtually wiped out, and she passed on messages to family members from residents who could not reach the outside world because phone networks had failed. “They wanted their relatives to know that they were okay,” Berejiklian’s spokesman said.

Peter Parks

AFP/Getty Images

Cars line up to leave Batemans Bay in New South Wales on Thursday. The New South Wales Rural Fire Service asked tourists vacationing in a 150-mile strip along the state’s south coast to leave Thursday morning

One problem facing those who have lost homes, or fled with few possessions, is Australia’s almost-ubiquitous use of contactless payments. With even landlines down, banks shut and ATMs empty, the cashless economy in some areas seized up, according to fire brigade officials.

In the town of Sanctuary Point, about three hours south of Sydney and a few miles from a major blaze, about 400 anxious residents attended a briefing Thursday by the regional fire commander at the local country club, which is also a designated evacuation center.

With conditions deteriorating, Superintendent Mark Williams said residents should leave soon if they are not physically capable of defending their homes from the encroaching smoke and flames.

[Thousands forced to take refuge on Australian beach as deadly wildfires close in]

“What we have got is a massive event in front of us,” he said in the briefing, which was also attended by representatives of the Australian Red Cross and state police. “If you’re not prepared at the moment, you are running out of time.”

For residents planning to stay and who need medical assistance, a local doctor said she would open her clinic to the community all weekend and provide free advice over the phone.

“That’s what makes Australia great,” Williams responded, triggering applause from the room.

Heather McNab/AAP

Reuters

Smoke hangs over burned-out bushland along the Princes Highway near Ulladulla, New South Wales, on Thursday.

As a dry continent, Australia has a history of wildfires. But the current crisis and the earlier-than-usual start to the summer fire season have triggered angst over what many perceive to be a tepid response by the Australian government to the threat of climate change. In particular, the government has faced criticism for appearing reluctant to move away from coal, one of the country’s top export earners.

December was among the top two hottest months on record in Australia, while 2019 was the hottest and driest year to date. Climate scientists have tied the severity of the wildfire season overall, along with the extraordinary heat waves this fall and winter, to climate change.

Morrison, however, said no individual fire can be attributed to climate change.

[On land, Australia’s rising heat is ‘apocalyptic.’ In the ocean, it’s worse.]

But as Australia’s population grows, the loss of life and property from fires will increase, said Andrew Sullivan, who leads a fire research team at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), a government agency.

“It’s a natural part of the Australian environment,” he said in a telephone interview. “When conditions are bad, there is not a lot anyone can do about it.”

While Australia burns, neighboring Indonesia is facing extreme weather of a different sort.

Severe flooding and landslides caused by torrential rain have killed 26 people, submerged dozens of neighborhoods and displaced tens of thousands in the capital, Jakarta.

Peter Parks

AFP/Getty Images

A helicopter drops water on a fire near Batemans Bay in New South Wales on Thursday. Thousands of tourists were evacuating the region ahead of a predicted worsening of conditions on Saturday.

Read more

Thousands forced to take refuge on Australian beach as deadly wildfires close in

Australia has its hottest day for a second straight day as areas face ‘catastrophic’ fire conditions

Some flee, others restock before Australia’s wildfires grow

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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2020-01-02 12:26:00Z
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Wave of Blazes Strains Firefighting Network, From Australia to California - Wall Street Journal

By

Rachel Pannett and

Rachel Pannett
The Wall Street Journal
• Biography
• @RachelPannett
• rachel.pannett@dowjones.com
• rachel.pannett@wsj.com

Mike Cherney

Mike Cherney
The Wall Street Journal
• Biography
• @Mike_Cherney
• mike.cherney@wsj.com

Updated Jan. 2, 2020 7:18 am ET

A helicopter fighting a bush fire in the East Gippsland region of Victoria, Australia. Photo: handout/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

RICHMOND AIR FORCE BASE, Australia—Smoke from huge wildfires near Sydney wafted over the tarmac as Jonas Doherty readied a newly modified Boeing 737 equipped to drop 4,000 gallons of firefighting liquid above the blaze.

Mr. Doherty and his co-pilot descended to 150 feet and slowed the aircraft to about 150 miles an hour to empty the load, pressing a red button in the cockpit labeled “tank drop.” The duo and other air-tanker pilots are working 12-hour shifts and flying as many as 15 times a day as Australia battles its worst wildfire season in years.

“It’s relentless,” said Mr. Doherty, a 41-year-old pilot from Idaho who flies for Coulson Group, one of the international companies contracted by Australian authorities for aerial firefighting services. “This is like a magnitude of five times what we’ve seen before.”

Air-tanker pilots Jonas Doherty, right, and Shawn Dugan in the cockpit as they waited to be assigned missions dropping firefighting liquid on wildfires in Australia. Photo: Mike Cherney/The Wall Street Journal

The Australian fires are exposing vulnerabilities in the global firefighting network as fire seasons around the world overlap.

For years, the U.S. and Australia shared firefighting resources—such as specialist firefighters—in each of their off-seasons. But that tradition is coming under pressure as fire seasons start earlier and run for longer, due in part to climate change, scientists say, as well as drought and extreme temperatures. Major fires broke out in Australia within days of a wildfire north of San Francisco in late October, a period of extreme fire weather that had California utilities collectively cutting power to millions of people.

The Australian fires intensified in the past few days, killing at least eight people and obliterating some small towns. Authorities said Thursday 17 people are missing in Victoria state, in the country’s southeast. Military helicopters and ships were sent to assist thousands of people stranded by fires burning right down to the waterline in some places and turning the sky blood red. Tens of thousands of vacationers were told Thursday to evacuate popular holiday spots stretching along the south coast of New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, to the Victorian border, before extreme temperatures hit again Saturday.

Horses tried to move away from bush fires on Tuesday near the town of Nowra in the Australian state of New South Wales. Photo: saeed khan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The overlapping fire seasons are challenging contract companies that help firefighting agencies world-wide because customers in different regions are increasingly requesting aid at the same time. Bolivia leased a Boeing 747 water bomber from the U.S. to fight fires in the Amazon in August. That same month, blazes broke out in Australia amid tinder-dry conditions as winter rains failed to arrive.

“Our whole paradigm of progressive fire seasons is out the window,” said Greg Mullins, a former New South Wales Fire and Rescue commissioner who recently toured areas devastated in the Californian fires to learn lessons for Australia’s worsening wildfire risk. “We’ll be fighting over the very small fleet of aircraft.”

California’s fire season in the Sierra Nevada is now nearly 75 days longer than it was four decades ago, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

“The problem is our fire seasons are getting longer and longer,” said Ken Pimlott, who retired as the director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in 2018. “We’re sort of competing, now, for the same resources on the edge of our fire season.”

Heating Up

Tourists were advised to leave as authorities expect more fires over the weekend.

Area of

detail

Hotspots and fires*

NEW SOUTH

WALES

Sydney

Corryong

Canberra

Batemans Bay

South coast

evacuation

zone

VICTORIA

Melbourne

Mallacoota

200 miles

200 km

*detected between Dec. 26, 2019 and Jan. 1, 2020

Sources: NASA (hotspots); NSW Rural Fire
Service (evacuation area)

The U.S. Forest Service plans to source all of its large air tankers from private contractors through 2022, according to a strategy paper published in 2018, a shift from previous years when it attempted to use repurposed search-and-rescue planes from the Coast Guard. This program was plagued by costly delays in converting the aircraft and was only intended as a bridge until private industry could meet demand.

Only a handful of contract companies operate large air tankers world-wide. In the U.S., the forest service has contracts with 10 Tanker Air Carrier, Aero Flite, Aero Air, Neptune Aviation and Coulson Aviation.

Buying or leasing these highly modified and expensive firefighting planes isn’t as easy as sharing firefighters in the off-season—as the U.S., Canada and Australia have done for many years. It takes as much as a year to equip a firefighting plane, including getting certification from local aviation authorities to cut holes in the aircraft.

Australian authorities on Tuesday said they have requested additional specialist aviation equipment from the U.S. and Canada, as well as fire crews able to work in extreme conditions.

Children played on Tuesday in the southern New South Wales town of Bega where they were camping after being evacuated from nearby sites hit by wildfires. Photo: sean davey/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Canada-based Coulson recently expanded its Australian operations and is currently operating across three continents, with aircraft in Orange County, Calif., Chile and Australia. “It’s just one big fire season right now around the world,” said Wayne Coulson, the company’s chief executive. His planes are typically on contract in the U.S. from May through November. In 2019, the company’s first aircraft landed in Australia in August and it has been busy ever since. “We’re flying our butts off right now.”

Wildfires in Australia continued to intensify over the weekend and into Monday as local officials warn that large areas of the country are still at risk. Photo: Associated Press

With so many fires burning and ground conditions unpredictable, Mr. Doherty said flight plans are being changed more frequently than previous fire seasons—even after the air tanker has taken off.

On a 43-minute flight on Sunday, Mr. Doherty said his aircraft was rerouted twice after firefighters decided the original destination was under control. But Mr. Doherty and his co-pilot, 33-year-old American Shawn Dugan, ultimately couldn’t dump their firefighting gel because too much smoke made it difficult to see.

“A lot of times in previous years, you take off, and you can see for 100 miles and you can see the column of smoke that you’re going to,” Mr. Doherty said. “Now it’s just, everywhere you look, there’s smoke.”

—Erin Ailworth contributed to this article.

Write to Rachel Pannett at rachel.pannett@wsj.com and Mike Cherney at mike.cherney@wsj.com

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2020-01-02 12:18:00Z
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