Bushfires and burns

Each year, societies spend millions to protect people, infrastructure, flora, fauna and cultural assets from the threat of potential fire. Yet in the last 6 months across Australia, many of these defences have been pierced as a new reality exerts itself upon Australian communities, emergency services workers, and paramedics.

Since November, 2019, what started as a series of bushfires across the north-eastern areas of Australia has evolved into a national bushfire crisis of unprecedented scale and impact. This crisis has seen more than 7.7 million hectares of land burned, thousands of homes destroyed and dozens of people killed, including many firefighters.

On a personal level in my hometown of Port Macquarie, communities experienced the unnerving spectacle of blood-orange skies during the day as bushfires surrounded the town; they experienced the falling of ash and burnt leaves from the sky, like an eerie type of confetti, and they waded through the smoke which plummeted the air quality to levels worse than New Delhi and Beijing (Rubbo and Wellauer, 2019).