Australia’s Wildfire Crisis: Key Numbers Behind the Disaster

Australia’s Wildfire Crisis: Key Numbers Behind the Disaster(Source Bloomberg)

Australia is in the grip of deadly wildfires burning across the country. The unprecedented scale of the crisis, and images of terrified tourists sheltering on beaches from the infernos, has shocked many Australians. With summer only just beginning and the nation affected by a prolonged drought, authorities fear the death toll will continue to mount as more homes and land are destroyed. Here are some key details of the crisis. Since the fire season began months ago during the southern hemisphere winter, 20 people have died and with 28 people missing in Victoria state, authorities fear the death toll will rise. Among the fatalities are volunteer firefighters, including a young man who died when his 10-ton truck was flipped over in what officials have described as a “fire tornado.” Australia’s worst wildfires came in 2009 when the Black Saturday blazes left 180 people dead. Massive tracts of land have burned. More than 12 million acres have been destroyed — that’s more than twice the size of Wales, and larger than Denmark. In New South Wales state alone, 8.9 million acres of forest and bush has been destroyed, while more than 1.8 million acres has been burned in Victoria. The fires are so large they are generating their own weather systems and causing dry lightning strikes that in turn ignite more. One blaze northwest of Sydney, the Gospers Mountain fire, has destroyed more than 1.2 million acres — about seven times the size of Singapore. The scale of the blazes dwarfs the California wildfires in 2018, which destroyed about 1.7 million acres, and about 260,000 acres in 2019.

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