Eastern Australia endured severe “off the scale” fire conditions yesterday amid a record-breaking heatwave that sparked dire warnings from authorities.
While bushfires are common in Australia’s arid summer, climate change has pushed up land and sea temperatures and led to more extremely hot days and severe fire seasons.
“The conditions for Sunday are the worst possible conditions when it comes to fire danger ratings,” New South Wales State Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told reporters on Friday.
Photo: EPA
“They are catastrophic, they are labeled catastrophic for a reason. They are rare, they are infrequent, and to put it simply, they are off the old conventional scale. It’s not another summer’s day. It’s not another bad fire weather day. This is as bad as it gets in these circumstances,” he said.
Fitzsimmons said yesterday afternoon several homes may have been lost in bushfires across the state.
About 2,500 firefighters were battling more than 80 blazes in New South Wales, with 32 “not contained,” the Rural Fire Service said.
The organization added that a person from a fire at Boggabri, a small town in northwestern New South Wales about 470km from Sydney, was flown to the harbor city after suffering burns.
Further north in Queensland, the Bureau of Meteorology said yesterday numerous temperature records for this month were being broken across the state as the mercury soared above 40°C.
Temperature records were also breached across New South Wales on Saturday, the bureau said.
Cooler conditions were forecast to come through later yesterday.
Australia has warmed by approximately 1°C since 1910, according to the biannual State of the Climate report from the Bureau of Meteorology and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation released in October last year.
The number of days each year that post temperatures of more than 35°C was increasing in recent decades except in northern Australia, the report said.
Meanwhile, rainfall has reduced by 19 percent between May to July in southwestern Australia since 1970.
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