AUSTRAILIAN FIRES PART 2

Australia is no stranger to bushfires. However, the 2019-2020 season proved to be unprecedented in many ways.

The first major bushfires began even before the official arrival of spring in June and then new out-of-control fires sprung up at the beginning of Sept. 2019.

The fire situation worsened significantly at the beginning of November 2019 with increasing temperatures and a prolonged drought. In mid-January 2020, a wave of heavy rain finally brought relief in some areas hit by bushfires but was nowhere near sufficient to extinguish the fires. It did provide a respite for firefighters in some areas who had seen only occasional breaks in the weather in the previous months. Hotter temperatures, drought and high winds escalated the crisis again over the first weekend in February. In mid-February an extremely heavy rainstorm allowed firefighters to contain all of the fires in New South Wales (NSW), although fires continued to burn in Victoria. All of the fires were either extinguished or contained by March 4, 2020 – nine months after the first ones began to burn.