Bairnsdale to Sydney

Vic Jurskis wrote a document that was published on this web site 21st January 2019.

It’s the prediction in the last sentence of the 1st paragraph that drew our attention:

Greg Mullins’ dad told him about 1939 when “the sky seemed to be on fire every night”. John Mulligan lived through the Black Friday fires that burnt two million hectares of Victoria and killed 71 people. There were hundreds of fires in East Gippsland at that same time, but no major problems because the bush was kept clean by burning and grazing. John’s family weren’t worried, even when his uncle’s car repeatedly stopped because of vapour locks in the fuel lines with the extreme heat. John has formed the East Gippsland Wildfire Taskforce to try and restore sanity. If we get fires under the same weather conditions today, they’ll destroy everything from Bairnsdale to Sydney.

https://volunteerfirefighters.org.au/ex-frnsw-fire-chief-joins-climate-crazies

And now, 12 months later we are see burnt country that extends from Bairnsdale to Sydney with only a few unburnt areas remaining.

We overlayed the Victorian and New South Wales fire maps to show the devastation thus far, and this season is not over yet.

VIC data loaded onto the NSW map – 27th Jan 2020

Is the 2019 – 2020 Fire Season Unprecedented?

The element that is unprecedented this fire season is the fuel load, which takes us back to Vic’s statement 12 months ago:

If we get fires under the same weather conditions today, they’ll destroy everything from Bairnsdale to Sydney.

https://volunteerfirefighters.org.au/ex-frnsw-fire-chief-joins-climate-crazies

For a better understanding of the drought and weather conditions in the 1939 fires, we consulted the book titled “Ordeal by Fire – The Week a State Burned Up by W. S. Noble”.

Ordeal by Fire was first published in 1977 and can be downloaded by clicking HERE.

The 1939 bushfires were one of the greatest natural disasters in Australia’s history. Soaring temperatures, air from which almost all moisture had been sucked, raging winds and tinder-dry bush fanned existing outbreaks into fire-storms which destroyed hundreds of houses and towns, millions of acres of forest, and killed seventy-one people.
‘W. S. Noble tells the story of the fires for the first time, examining them in their historical context and assessing the significance of the holocaust in today’s attitudes to fire and its prevention.
In 1939 Victoria’s fire-fighting capabilities were hopelessly inadequate. Starved of funds during the depression, faced with vast areas of inaccessible forest which hid loggers’ cabins and sawmills, disaster was inevitable. But even with today’s modern equipment and rapid communication, if the conditions of 1939 were repeated Victoria would be incapable of combating the resultant inferno.
Ordeal by Fire, with its vivid photographs and gripping text, is not only of historical importance; it sounds a timely warning for all Australians.

Ordeal by Fire – The Week a State Burned Up by W. S. Noble – 1977

That quote (above) could be used to describe this fire season:

The 2019 – 2020 bushfires were one of the greatest natural disasters in Australia’s history. Soaring temperatures, air from which almost all moisture had been sucked, raging winds and tinder-dry bush fanned existing outbreaks into fire-storms which destroyed hundreds of houses and towns, millions of acres of forest, and killed many people.
Fire-fighting capabilities were hopelessly inadequate. Starved of funds, faced with vast areas of inaccessible forest, disaster was inevitable. But even with today’s modern equipment and rapid communication, if the conditions of 2019 – 2020 were repeated we would be incapable of combating the resultant inferno.

Unless we manage fuel loads more effectively.

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