Paper Example on Bushfires in Australia

Introduction

Bushfires are deadly natural disasters across the world and are likely to increase in sizes and numbers due to global warming and climate change. Bushfires are fast-moving especially when aided with strong winds and primarily damage livestock, crops and in some cases human beings due to their higher heat output. While bushfires can pass in minutes, they smolder for days. When fires reach the top of tree canopies, they can move very rapidly. Bushfires are an intrinsic part of the environment of Australia as the country's ecosystems have evolved with the landscape and fire, both recent and historical. Most of the native plants of Australia are prone to fires because they are highly combustible since most of them rely on fire for regeneration. Historically, the indigenous populations have used fire in Australia as a means of managing the land either as a means of protecting properties from natural uncontrolled fires or clearing land for agriculture. In the history of Australia, bushfires have caused damage to property and loss of lives. What is particularly alarming is that bushfires that occur naturally cannot be averted either in Australia or any other part of the world. This paper shall examine the history of bushfires in Australia and other parts of the world to examine the likelihood of this natural disaster occurring in Australia as well as how Australians have dealt with the likelihood and advent of the disaster in the past.

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Discussion

Bushfires are usually catastrophic in nature due to their ability to engulf acres and acres of everything that lies in their path. They often cause deaths when they come across areas habited by man. Across the world, there have been great fires but the greatest bush fire in history occurred in Siberia in 2003. These fires destroyed 47 million acres of forest getting destroyed by the flames. The emissions from this single incident equaled the European Union promised cuts under the Kyoto Protocol. This fire resulted from the increasing temperatures and the consultant thawing of the permafrost in Siberia. The effects of these fires in Taiga forests were so devastating that their effects on the environment were so great to the extent that they caused a significant depletion in the ozone layer.

Other large fires have been witnessed in Canada, the US, South America, and Africa. Aided by the increasing world temperatures, Brazil's Amazon is currently on fire and has been attracting a global outcry. By the end of August 2019, NASA's satellite images detected approximately 2127 fires in addition to the over 10,000 fires extending in the African continent from Madagascar to Mozambique and Congo to Angola (Clifford, 2019).

Due to climate change, bushfires are staring early in various parts of the world and increasing in size. Hardly has spring arrived in Australia but about 50 fires are ravaging the countryside in Queensland and New South Wales (Clifford, 2019). This is the first time in the history of Australia that such strong bushfires this early in the season. Bushfires are highly likely to occur in Australia especially in the dry seasons especially in the southern part of the country. With climate change taking hold across the entire planet, the risk of intense and more frequent bushfires is increasing significantly.

Contributing Factors

Several factors contribute to the occurrence of bushfires including an ignition source, oxygen, and fuel presence. Moreover, the speed and intensity of the spread of fire depending on fuel load, slope angle, speed of the wind, moisture and ambient temperature (Milic & Miljevic, 2016). The climate of Australia is generally dry, hot and prone to frequent droughts. Hence, at almost any season of the year, some parts of the country are prone to bushfires.

The fire seasons in the country are reflected in the different weather patterns in the continent. For example, the summer and autumn are the dangerous seasons for the majority of the southern Australian region. The spring and early summers are risky times in the south of Queensland and New South Wales. The winter and spring season are the risky periods in the Northern territory. During the drought periods or periods of low rainfall, the bushfires are likely to occur due to the heavy fuel loads provided by the Eucalypt forests.

The Australian ecology provides adequate fuel load for bushfires. Fuel load is the number of small branches, leaf litter, and fallen bark accumulating in the landscape. In general, greater fuel loads result in intense and hotter bushfires. The smaller pieces of leaf litter, twigs and branches burn very quickly especially when they are very dry and arranged loosely. These burn rapidly in the fire front before the large fuel loads such as the trunks of trees start to burn.

Eucalypt trees that are present in large numbers across Australia have lots of natural oil that promote the combustion of fuel (Stephens, 2018). The moisture of the fuel also determines whether a fire will occur or not. While wet and damp fuel is unlikely to burn, dry fuel burns rapidly. Hence, in assessing the dangers of bushfires, the time after a rainfall as well as the amount of rain received are an essential consideration. Extreme bushfire conditions will continue to increase in Australia and the world at large due to moisture deficit and the frequency and intensity of droughts.

Another major contributor to bushfires is the speed of the wind. The wind is the element that helps in the spread of fire because it blows the flames of the fire onto fresh fuel and also bringing a continuous supply of oxygen. The wind also plays a deadly role in the rapid spread of fire through spotting. Spotting is the ignition of new fires through embers that are lofted into the air by the wind. A strong and fast wind is capable of spotting fires up to thirty kilometers downwind. When the speed of the wind reduces below 15 km/h, a fire that has a heavy fuel load burn slowly and are easily controllable (Hannam & Peter, 2019). Fast winds not only increases the speed of the bushfires but also the size of the width of the fire because any slight shift in its direction immediately widens the fire front. The presence of fast winds in large sections of the continent makes bushfires likely to spread in Australia to become a full-blown natural disaster.

Moreover, humidity, temperature and slope angle of the Australian landscape make the likelihood of a fire outbreak and spread highly likely. Higher temperatures raise the likelihood of the start of a fire or its ability to continue burning. At high temperatures, the fuel is as closest to its ignition point as possible while pre-heated fuel loads are likely to burn faster. With the Australian continent not spared from the increase in global temperatures, Australia is likely to experience an increase in fires due to the increase in the ambient temperature. Humidity plays an important role in bushfires because plants become flammable at low humidity since they release their moisture much more easily than during a period of high humidity.

The landscape of the country also makes the likelihood of the occurrence of bushfires high due to the slope angle. Bushfires pre-heat their sources of fuel through convection and radiation. Consequently, bushfires accelerate faster when going uphill and considerably decelerate when going downhill. The rate of the spread of fire is, therefore, determined by the steepness of the slope because the speed doubles with every 10 degrees increase in the slope. Despite its general flatness, the landscape has many slopes as evidenced by the presence of many mountains.

Lastly, the source of the ignition of fire is an important contributing factor in the prevalence of bushfires. The ignition source of bushfires can be both natural and as a result of human activity (Hannam & Peter, 2019). For example, about half of all bushfires in Australia are predominantly started by lightning. Sometimes, people start fires to achieve the desired outcome before conditions suddenly change resulting in an uncontrollable spread of fire. Other fires are started by arsons.

Deliberate and accidental fires, unfortunately, take place near human settlements, thereby resulting in a disproportionately high risk of loss of human lives and infrastructure. With the settlement of human beings continuously expanding due to growth in population, encroachment into forests and previously unsettled areas increases the risk of human deaths significantly. While its population growth has been steadily declining, immigration is accounting for significant growth in population. This population is at risk of bushfires or a potential danger to the environment through manmade activities that cause a fire ignition.

History of Deadly Bushfires

One of the deadliest bushfires in the world includes the 1825 Miramichi Fire in Canada and the Peshtigo Fire in the US in 1871. The Miramichi Fire in the Canadian province of New Brunswick took place during a dry summer. The fire charred 3 million acres of land, killed 160 people and left about 15,000 homeless (Bouchard, 2009). The fire originated from settler fires and fanned by the dry and windy weather. This bears similarity to California's Peshtigo Fire that was started by railroad workers who were in the process of clearing land for new tracks during a very dry summer period (Rosenwald, 2017).

One of the important information to gather from these two world bushfire incidents is that they happened during dry summers when the vegetation was very dry and the winds were strong. With these conditions now becoming common in Australia, it is easy to see why such deadly fires have taken place in Australia and why more should be anticipated as climate change threatens to make droughts frequents and more intense in the future.

Bushfire disasters can happen anywhere because they have virtually happened in every world continent, therefore, not unique to North America, South America, and Africa alone. For example, the Green Forest Fires of 2007 took place in Greece, Europe. Over 3000 fires engulfed over 670,000 acres of land from June to September 2007. About 84 people died from this tragedy (Stephens, 2018). The intensity and size of the fire were as a result of dry, hot and windy conditions that threatened to burn down the historic sites of Athens and Olympia. The contributing factors are evident in Australia, making the probability of bushfires in the country very likely. As observed, as long as the conditions allow, bushfires can take place in any continent and cause untold damage and suffering in terms of loss of infrastructure and loss of human life.

Australia and Australians are not strangers to bushfires. One of the earliest bushfires in the history of Australia took place in Victoria in 1939. This particular fire tragedy hit the nation at the beginning of the year after a long and hot summer. The Victorian bushfires were very destructive because they took place during a period of strong winds. They were the most destructive natural disaster that Victoria had ever seen. Millions of hectares of land were laid bare and it took several decades for the environment affected to recover. The fires were so huge that the ashes from the fire fell as far as New Zealand. According to Pascoe (2010), A total of 71 people died from the fire.

In the lead up to this disaster, Victoria had witnessed a long and dry summer following a drought of several years. Many rivers and creeks had dried up. So dry was the environment that the people of Melbourne had been on water restrictions. As reported by The Sydney Morning Herald, Victoria had been so hot and dry that the "the topsoil easily blew up into dust storms." Hence, the forest floors and open plains were very dry (Hannam & Peter, 2019). When the fires that h...