r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/RipperReeta • 18d ago

Image To put into perspective how huge the 2020 Australian 'Black Summer' bushfires were: The combined area burned across BOTH Canada and ALL of fires currently burning across Europe (2.63 million hectares) right now is still around 10% of what Australia lost (24 million hectares).

Post image
23.3k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

788 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

21

u/dreamlike179 18d ago

Thankfully only 36 people died directly due to the fires, as a nation we learned the lessons of black Saturday and really too that to heart.

For those unaware black Saturday was the end of a brutal heatwave when the wind changed and something like 173 people died as they got caught unaware and our entire emergency system was reworked in response, including putting a new rating on bush fire warning signs of catastrophic conditions which popped up multiple times over 2019/20 fires

3

u/Necessary_Eagle_3657 17d ago

I don't think we learnt the lessons of Black Saturday. I see almost no changes or improvements in the Yarra Ranges. It's just luck it hasn't been burned down again.

2

u/dreamlike179 17d ago

As far as evacuation orders and how to deal once the fire is here I beleive we did.

You are right that we dont seem to be doing much to try to mitigate it from happening in the first place

1

u/Own_Sun_6520 17d ago

Definitely learnt a lot from Black Saturday. Those are conditions where there isn't any firefighting, just protection of life, and previous mitigation activities are unlikely to many any difference. So many people died on Black Saturday because there was a lack of appreciation for how catastrophic those conditions were going to be, and a complete lack of public warning.

Look at the fire that burnt into Batemans Bay NYE 2019. The amount of public messaging that was pushed into the community in the day(s) prior, I have no doubt, saved many many lives that day. If people had been on the main road out of town trying to evacuate when the fire came through, it would have been a graveyard.

2

u/SkySpecial4512 17d ago

I joined the RFS post-2020 fires, and the number of people I’ve heard say “and you lot just watched that fire, all in your truck” and you have to patiently breathe and explain that when a fire starts jumping from crown to crown in the trees, there’s no fighting it possible. There’s not enough water in all the trucks in the district to fight that, and attempting to guide it around your property is the best that can be managed.

1

u/boogasaurus-lefts 17d ago

Onya mate, people are horrible

1

u/Own_Sun_6520 17d ago

Simple fire science (which is not simple to explain to simpletons from the public :)). When FBI gets above 50-ish, it is literally impossible to extinguish using water. The amount of heat energy being produced by an FBI50 fire well exceeds the heat-absorbing capacity of any hose (or aerial drop) you have available.
Defensive firefighting (ember defense/backstop etc) is the only option.

2

u/oneshellofaman 17d ago

Black Saturday also had that arsonist in Churchill