Bushfires in Australia
Bushfires in Australia are a widespread and regular occurrence that have contributed significantly to shaping the nature of the continent over millions of years. Eastern Australia is one of the most fire-prone regions of the world, and its predominant eucalyptus forests have evolved to thrive on the phenomenon of bushfire. However, the fires can cause significant property damage and loss of both human and animal life. Bushfires have killed approximately 800 people in Australia since 1851, and billions of animals.
The most destructive fires are usually preceded by extreme high temperatures, low relative humidity and strong winds, which combine to create ideal conditions for the rapid spread of fire. Severe fire storms are often named according to the day on which they peaked, including the five most deadly blazes: Black Saturday 2009 in Victoria ; Ash Wednesday 1983 in Victoria and South Australia ; Black Friday 1939 in Victoria, Black Tuesday 1967 in Tasmania ; and the Gippsland fires and Black Sunday of 1926 in Victoria. Other major conflagrations include the 1851 Black Thursday bushfires, the 2006 December bushfires, the 1974–75 fires that burnt 15% of Australia, and the 2019–20 bushfires. It is estimated that the 2019–2020 bushfires led to the deaths of at least 33 people and over 3 billion animals.
The gradual drying of the Australian continent over the last 6,000 years has produced an ecology and environment prone to fire, which has resulted in many specialised adaptations amongst flora and fauna. Some of the country's flora has evolved to rely on bushfires for reproduction. Aboriginal Australians used to use fire to clear grasslands for hunting and to clear tracks through dense vegetation, and European settlers have also had to adapt to using fire to enhance agriculture and forest management since the 19th century.
History
Before European settlement
According to Tim Flannery, fire is one of the most important forces at work in the Australian environment. Some plants have evolved a variety of mechanisms to survive or even require bushfires, or even encourage fire as a way to eliminate competition from less fire-tolerant species. Early European explorers of the Australian coastline noted extensive bushfire smoke. Abel Janszoon Tasman's expedition saw smoke drifting over the coast of Tasmania in 1642 and noted blackened trunks and baked earth in the forests. While charting the east coast in 1770, Captain Cook's crew saw autumn fires in the bush burning on most days of the voyage.The fires would have been caused by both natural phenomenon and human hands. Aboriginal people in many regions set fire to grasslands in the hope of producing lusher grass to fatten kangaroos and other game and, at certain times of year, burned fire breaks as a precaution against bushfire. Fire-stick farming was also used to facilitate hunting and to promote the growth of bush potatoes and other edible ground-level plants. In central Australia, they used fire in this way to manage their country for thousands of years.
File:Bushfire damage.jpg|thumb|right|Bushfire damage to forests in East Gippsland, Victoria from the 2003 Eastern Victorian alpine bushfires, two years after fires swept through the area, showing the recovery of trees and undergrowth
Flannery writes that "The use of fire by Aboriginal people was so widespread and constant that virtually every early explorer in Australia makes mention of it. It was Aboriginal fire that prompted James Cook to call Australia 'This continent of smoke'." However, he goes on to say: "When control was wrested from the Aborigines and placed in the hands of Europeans, disaster resulted." Fire suppression became the dominant paradigm in fire management leading to a significant shift away from traditional burning practices. A 2001 study found that the disruption of traditional burning practices and the introduction of unrestrained logging meant that many areas of Australia were now prone to extensive wildfires especially in the dry season. A similar study in 2017 found that the removal of mature trees by Europeans since they began to settle in Australia may have triggered extensive shrub regeneration which presents a much greater fire fuel hazard. Another factor was the introduction of gamba grass imported into Queensland as a pasture grass in 1942, and planted on a large scale from 1983. This can fuel intense bushfires, leading to loss of tree cover and long-term environmental damage.
19th century
Australia's hot, arid climate and wind-driven bushfires were a new and frightening phenomenon to the European settlers of the colonial era. The devastating Victorian bushfires of 1851, remembered as the Black Thursday bushfires, burned in a chain from Portland to Gippsland, and sent smoke billowing across the Bass Strait to north west Tasmania, where terrified settlers huddled around candles in their huts under a blackened afternoon sky. The fires covered five million hectares, around one quarter of what is now the state of Victoria. Portland, Plenty Ranges, Westernport, the Wimmera and Dandenong districts were badly hit, and around twelve lives were recorded lost, along with one million sheep and thousands of cattle.New arrivals from the wetter climes of Britain and Ireland learned painful lessons in fire management and the European farmers slowly began to adapt – growing green crops around their haystacks and burning fire breaks around their pastures, and becoming cautious about burn offs of wheatfield stubble and ringbarked trees. But major fire events persisted, including South Gippsland's 1898 Red Tuesday bushfires that burned and claimed twelve lives and more than 2,000 buildings.
A shows over 7,000 bushfires reported in contemporary Australian newspapers.
20th century
Large bushfires continued throughout the 20th century. With increasing population and urban spread into bushland came increasing death tolls and property damage during large fires.1925–26: Gippsland fires and Black Sunday
During the 1925–26 Victorian bushfire season, large areas of Gippsland in Victoria caught fire, leading to the Black Sunday fires on 14 February, when 31 people were killed in Warburton, near Melbourne. These fires remain the fifth most deadly bushfires recorded, with 60 people killed over two months.1938–39 season and Black Friday
The 1939 fire season was one of the worst on record for Australia, peaking with Victoria's devastating Black Friday bushfires of 13 January, but enduring for the full summer, with fires burning the urban fringes of Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, and ash falling as far away as New Zealand. The Black Friday fires were the third deadliest on record, with some 71 people killed and 650 houses destroyed. They followed years of drought and a series of extreme heatwaves that were accompanied by strong northerly winds, after a very dry six months. Melbourne hit and Adelaide. In NSW, Bourke suffered 37 consecutive days above 38 degrees and Menindee hit a record on 10 January.New South Wales also lost hundreds of houses, thousands of stock and poultry, and thousands of hectares of grazing land. By 16 January, disastrous fires were burning in Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT at the climax of a terrible heatwave. Sydney was ringed to the north, south and west by fires from Palm Beach and Port Hacking to the Blue Mountains. Fires blazing at Castle Hill, Sylvania, Cronulla and French's Forest in the city. Disastrous fires were also reported at Penrose, Wollongong, Nowra, Bathurst, Ulludulla, Mittagong, Trunkey and Nelligen. Meanwhile, Canberra faced the "worst bushfires" it had experienced, with thousands of hectares burned and a fire front driven towards the city by a south westerly gale, destroying pine plantations and many homesteads, and threatening Mount Stromlo Observatory, Government House, and Black Mountain. Large numbers of men were sent to stand by government buildings in the line of fire.
; Black Friday
The state of Victoria was hardest hit, with an area of almost two million burned, 71 people killed, and whole townships wiped out, along with many sawmills and thousands of sheep, cattle and horses around Black Friday. Fires had been burning through December, but linked up with devastating force on Friday 13 January, plunging many areas of the state into midday blackness. The Stretton Royal Commission later wrote:
The townships of Warrandyte, Yarra Glen, Omeo and Pomonal were badly damaged, and fires burned to the urban fringe of Melbourne, affecting towns including Toolangi, Warburton and Thomson Valley. In the Victorian Alps, the towns of Bright, Cudgewa and Corryong were also hit, along with vast areas in the west, in particular Portland, the Otway Ranges and the Grampians. Black Range, Rubicon, Acheron, Noojee, Tanjil Bren, Hill End, Woods Point, Matlock, Erica, Omeo, Toombullup and the Black Forest were also affected. Huge amounts of smoke and ash were generated, with reports of ash falling as far away as New Zealand.
; Legacy
After the bushfires, Victoria convened a Royal Commission. Judge Leonard Stretton was instructed to enquire into the causes of the fires, and consider the measures taken to prevent the fires and to protect life and property. He made seven major recommendations to improve forest and fire management, and planned burning became an official fire management practice.
1966–67 and Black Tuesday
In the summer of 1967, Tasmania suffered its most destructive fire season, and Australia's fourth most deadly on record. A verdant spring had added higher than usual fuel to the state's forest floors, and strong northerly winds and high temperatures drove at least 80 different fires across the south-east, burning to within of the centre of Hobart, the state capital. The infernos killed 62 people and destroyed almost 1,300 homes.1974–75 bushfire
In the summer of 1974–1975, Australia suffered its worst recorded bushfire, when 15% of Australia's land mass suffered "extensive fire damage". Fires that summer burnt an estimated.The fires killed six people, approximately 57,000 farm animals, farmers' crops, and destroyed nearly of fencing.