emse232

Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management

Crisis and Emergency Management

April 2009 Volume 16 - Number 3

International Updates...

Australian Fires

By Lisa Bordeaux

A bushfire is a wildfire that occurs in the bush. In southeast Australia, bushfires tend to be most common and severe during summer, autumn, drought years, and particularly the Ell Nino years. In the north of Australia, bushfires usually occur during winter in the dry season, and fire severity tends to be more associated with seasonal growth patterns. In the southwest, similarly, bushfires occur in the summer dry season and severity is usually related to seasonal growth. Fire frequency in the north is difficult to assess, as the vast majority of fires are caused by human activity, however lightning strikes can cause bush fires too. Australia is known to have some of the worst Bush Fires/Wild Fires in the world. This is due to the extreme weather conditions and it is not uncommon for Australia to have wild fires every fire season which are started by a variety of causes. These fires could be attributed to natural causes such as lightning strikes, accidental causes such as sparks from farm machinery, incinerators, power lines, vehicle crashes, escapes from burning off and camp fires. It has been determined over the years that a large number of bush fires are deliberately lit.

Most recently a raging wildfire killed at least one hundred thirty people, decimating massive span of land and leaving thousands of residents homeless, creating a situation where officials expressed that this has never been experienced during any previous wildfire. The fires swept through the state of Victoria, so fast leaving some of their firefighters and police to describe the destruction as something out of a holocaust. The fire was so devastating that it wiped out two towns. The police called the wildfires the worst in the nation’s history. The number of dead exceeded the toll of seventy fires in the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983 and close to 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of land have burned, according to Kendra Jackson, leading senior constable of Australia’s Victoria state police.

Although the wildfires caught so many of its victims off guard the 11^th chapter of the second working group of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that fires in Australia were “ virtually certain to increase intensity and frequency because of steadily warming temperatures over the next several decades.” Australian government’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization reported that by 2020, there could be up to 65% more extreme fire danger days compared with 1990, and the by 2050, under the most severe warming scenarios, there could be 300% increase in such days. “The fires are a reminder of the need for the nation and the whole world to act and put at a priority the need to tackle climate change,” Australian Green Party leader Bob Brown told the Sky News. So the question becomes how do we as individuals cope with this issue along with everything else going on in the world today. The answer is stop, listen, and pay very close attention to your immediate surroundings.

Sources

Deguara, Jimmy. “Bush Fires Wild Fires Australian bushfires wildfires Article” 2009. Retrieved February 22, 2009

http://australiasevereweather.com/fires

CNN, Ahmed, Saeed, Ariosto, David and DeMoura, Helena. “Police: Australian fires create ‘a holocaust Article” 2009. Retrieved February 22, 2009

http://www.cnn.com/2009/World/asiapcf/0208/australia.wildfires

Walsh, Bryan. “Why Global Warming May Be Fueling Australia’s Fires- Time Article” 2009. Retrieved February 22, 2009

http://www.time.com/time/health/article

CNN, “Man charged over Australian bush fires named- CNN.com” 2009. Retrieved February 22, 2009.

Statement Attesting to Original Work

This paper, examination, report, or the section thereof for which I have indicated responsibility, is my own work. Any assistance I received in its preparation is acknowledged within the report or examination, in accordance with academic practice. For any data, ideas, words, diagrams, pictures, or other information from any source, quoted or not, I have cited the sources fully and completely in the text, in endnotes, or in footnotes and bibliographical entries, as required. Furthermore, I certify that the material was prepared by me specifically for this class and has not been submitted, in whole or significant part, to any other class in this university or elsewhere, or used for any purpose other than satisfying the requirements of this class, except that I am allowed to submit this material to a professional publication, peer reviewed journal, or professional conference. In adding my name following the work “signature”, I intend that this certification will have the same authority and authenticity ad a document executed with my hand-written signature.”

Signature Lisa S. Bordeaux Date March 07, 2009