Category Archives: Forest Fires

While the world’s attention has been focused on the Covid-19 pandemic, northern Thailand has been experiencing the worst forest fires in decades. Already raging since mid-March, the fires are projected to continue well into May. With the news of Covid-19 dominating international media, the choking fires have gone under the radar even despite the “critical levels” of air pollution in Chiang Mai. …Thai space agency, Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA) reported that as of 30 March 2020, there were 3,809 hotspots in Thailand and 398 of them were found in Chiang Mai alone. It is unclear exactly how much forested area has been affected by the fires, but experts estimate that around 20 per cent of the total forest area in northern Thailand has been destroyed so far.

Forest fires that have been burning for several days in northern Ukraine are now no more than a few kilometres from the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear plant, reports say.  Tour operator Yaroslav Emelianenko said one had reached the abandoned town of Pripyat, which used to serve the plant.  He said it was now just 2km (1.24 miles) from where the most dangerous waste from the plant was stored.  Greenpeace said the fires were much bigger than the authorities realised.  The NGO’s Russia branch, quoted by Reuters, said the largest fire covered 34,000 hectares, while a second fire just a kilometre from the former plant was 12,000 hectares in area.  Mr Emelianenko also said that if the fire engulfed Pripyat it would be an economic disaster, as supervised tourist visits provided valuable revenue.

Eighteen firefighters and their guide have died while battling a forest fire in China’s Sichuan province, state media has reported. The Xinhua news agency said a sudden change in wind direction led to the group becoming trapped early on Tuesday morning. The fire in Liangshan prefecture has now spread across 1,000 hectares. More than 2,000 firefighters and rescue workers have been sent to the area and 1,200 people have been evacuated. The fire started on Monday at a local farm. Strong winds meant that the flames quickly spread to nearby mountains. The dead firefighters were among a group of 22 – including one farm worker acting as their guide – who went missing. Three survivors have been found and were taken to hospital.

BEIJING — Nineteen people have died while fighting a raging forest fire in southwestern China and hundreds of reinforcements were sent to fight the blaze and evacuate nearby residents, officials and state media reported Tuesday.  he area threatened by the fire in Sichuan province is thinly populated, but there was no estimate on how many people were leaving the evacuation zone. State media have described villages, a school, a chemical plant and other places as under threat.  It wasn’t exactly clear when the deaths occurred, but an information officer in the city of Xichang was cited as saying the fire started on a farm Monday afternoon and quickly spread to nearby mountains due to strong winds. It said one of those killed was a guide and the rest were firefighters.

SYDNEY, Australia — Wildfires that began in September, consumed millions of acres of forest and burned through beachside towns and suburbs are finally out in most of New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, emergency services said Friday. Some fires in the southern part of the state still haven’t been extinguished, said Rob Rogers, the deputy commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service, but they are under control. “All fires are contained, so we can really focus on helping people rebuild,” Mr. Rogers said. Fires continue to trouble firefighters in the southeastern state of Victoria, officials said. But torrential rain that has swept much of the eastern coast of Australia over the past week has helped put out many of the last few blazes.

Australian authorities warned on Friday of severe fire danger in densely populated areas this weekend, declaring a state of emergency in the capital, Canberra, as soaring temperatures and strong whipped up huge, unpredictable blazes. With temperatures above 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), emergency officials urged people to prepare for fires in parts of the southeast including hundreds of miles of coast south of Sydney that has already been badly hit in months of blazes. “Tomorrow will be the peak of the heat wave in NSW with some areas expected to reach extreme heat wave conditions,” the New South Wales (NSW) state Rural Fire Service said on Friday. Australia’s bushfires that have killed 33 people and an estimated 1 billion native animals since September. …In neighbouring New Zealand, where smoke from the Australian blazes has turned glaciers brown, firefighters were battling to contain about 25 fires that spread rapidly to cover about 100 hectares on the South Island.

A cohort of Canadian wildfire firefighters recently returned to the frozen tundra, after a stint down under helping fight the out-of-control bushfires raging across Australia. On Jan. 9, Morgan Kehr, director of wildfire operations with Alberta Wildfire, landed back in Edmonton after spending 39 days in New South Wales, a state that’s been seeing the brunt of the wildfire destruction. Kehr was part of a group of 21 Canadian firefighters who arrived in Australia at the start of December and said the reception from Australians was amazing. …The Canadian firefighters were mainly in incident management roles, helping with the logistics of fighting the fires. Some are also helping with the aviation units.

MELBOURNE — Thunderstorms and heavy rain swept across parts of Australia’s east coast on Thursday, bringing hope that some of the fierce bushfires razing the country will be extinguished – or at least slowed. Officials warned, however, that short, intense thunderstorms could lead to flash flooding, while lightning brought the risk of new fires being ignited. “We’re expecting unsettled weather for the next four or five days or so at least,” Jake Phillips, a senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio. …The wet weather brought some respite from the smoke haze that has plagued Australia’s major cities for weeks and has been tracked by NASA circumnavigating the globe. …Fire and weather officials have also warned the current cool and wet weather change will only be a temporary relief.

SYDNEY — Australia’s devastating bushfire season is far from over despite cooler weather this week, Victorian state officials warned on Tuesday as Melbourne was blanketed by hazardous smoke. At least 180 fires continued to burn across Victoria and New South Wales (NSW) states although widespread rainfall is forecast for fire-hit areas on the east coast from Wednesday. About 20 bushfires were yet to be contained in NSW, Australia’s most populous state, while in Victoria five fires were at the ‘Watch and Act’ advice warning, one level below emergency status, authorities said. “I wish I could say this was over, but we have a long way to go. We’ve got the smoke in our communities at the moment and it is at very poor or hazardous levels,” said Lisa Neville, Victoria’s emergency services and police minister. Brett Sutton, the state’s chief health officer, said air quality in Melbourne dropped to the “worst in the world” overnight…

BODALLA, Australia (AP) — Crews battling Australia’s wildfires said Sunday that they have been able to turn from defense to offense for the first time in weeks thanks to a break in the weather. Dale McLean, who is helping manage the response to a fire near the town of Bodalla in New South Wales state, was part of team that was bulldozing down small trees and burning scrub ahead of the fire’s projected path to try to stop it from reaching a major highway by starving it of fuel. Other workers echoed McLean’s comments, saying cooler temperatures and mild winds have finally offered them a chance to make progress. The weather is expected to remain benign for the next week, although any deterioration in conditions after that could see the wildfires flare up again.

Bill Slade

A veteran firefighter has been killed overnight while battling a bushfire in Victoria, bringing the total death toll from Australia’s worst-ever bushfire season to 28 nationwide. On Sunday, the sails of the iconic Sydney Opera House were aglow with a moving tribute to those who fought on the front line, as the news broke that another firefighter died while on duty. Bill Slade, 60, was killed by a falling tree as he was fighting a blaze in East Gippsland, the fourth person to be killed by Victoria’s devastating fires. “Bill contributed over 40 years [to] firefighting and caring for national parks in South Gippsland and I recently had the privilege of presenting him with his 40-year service recognition, which was an honour,” Parks Victoria CEO Matt Jackson said. Calmer conditions in recent days have allowed firefighters to concentrate on managing the blazes, with around 20 fires now contained across Victoria.

TOMERONG, Australia — The wildfire was behaving erratically last week, and Doug Schutz and his team needed to… widen a firebreak. …If anybody was qualified to make that call, it was Schutz. He began volunteering with the Rural Fire Service in Australia’s New South Wales state some 53 years ago, at the age of 13, back when Land Rovers were used as firetrucks. Now captain of the Tomerong brigade, Schutz has also been the victim of a wildfire that burned down his business on Christmas Day in 2001. Schutz is part of an army of 72,000 people from across the state who make up the world’s largest volunteer fire service. They’ve been at the forefront of fighting wildfires that have devastated parts of Australia since September. At least 26 people have been killed by the fires, including three volunteer firefighters.

The hot, dry conditions that primed southeastern Australia’s forest and fields for the bushfires that have been ravaging the country since September are likely to continue, scientists warn — and climate change has likely made the situation much worse. …The Australian bushfires were exacerbated by two factors that have a “well-established” link to climate change: heat and dry conditions, says Stefan Rahmstorf, department head at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. In recent years, Australia has experienced long-term dry conditions and exceptionally low rainfall. Scientists say that droughts in the country have gotten worse over recent decades. At the same time, the country has recorded record high temperatures; last summer was the hottest on record for the country.

New South Wales’s top fire brass has weighed in on a national debate about hazard-reduction burns, saying the practice made his organisation “public enemy number one” last year. Hazard reduction burns have come under the microscope in NSW…with some arguing more should have been done. NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons insists hazard reduction is an important element of fire prevention, but it’s not a panacea. …Federal Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce … attacked the Greens, claiming they did not support the practice — something the party’s politicians deny. The Commissioner has also defended fire management agencies… He said hazard reduction … did nothing to combat the massive “mega-fires” burning in NSW. “Hazard reduction burns that are only two years old, we’re seeing these fires on these bad days just skip straight through it,” he said. “We’re only seeing effective amelioration on fire spread through hazard reduction areas that have been done so in the last 12 months.”

Rain has brought some respite to the thousands of firefighters and volunteers tackling the blazes, which have been burning since September. The fires intensified over the past week, with a number towns evacuated. …In the worst-hit state, New South Wales (NSW), fire has affected almost five million hectares, destroying more than 1,300 houses and forcing thousands to seek shelter elsewhere. Hot, dry weather combined with prolonged drought and strong winds have created perfect conditions for fire to spread rapidly. About 130 fires were burning across the state on Monday, in the bush, mountain forests and national parks.

Bushfire season has begun in New Zealand with hundreds of hectares of forest going up in flames at half a dozen separate blazes on the east coast of the North Island. Seven helicopters and two planes are working to combat the largest blaze, in the Waipatiki forest outside of Napier, with about 70 firefighters on the ground, Fire and Emergency said. Strong winds are exacerbating risky conditions, with thousands around the country also losing power due to damaged lines. New Zealand sends troops to help with Australian bushfires as Pacific nations offer support. …Fire and Emergency said it was “confident” it had enough resources to battle the blazes, despite more than 150 New Zealand firefighters being stationed in Australia to face the unprecedented fire crisis there.

SYDNEY, Australia — Australia’s government said Monday it was willing to pay “whatever it takes” to help communities recover from deadly wildfires that have ravaged the country. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government was committing an extra 2 billion Australian dollars toward the recovery effort in addition to the tens of millions of dollars that have already been promised. “The fires are still burning. And they’ll be burning for months to come,” Morrison said. “And so that’s why I outlined today that this is an initial, an additional, investment of $2 billion. If more is needed and the cost is higher, then more will be provided.” Morrison’s announcement of the funds, which will go toward rebuilding towns and infrastructure destroyed by the fires, came as the death toll from the disaster rose.  …Nationwide, at least 25 people have been killed and 2,000 homes destroyed.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Saturday called up 3,000 defence force reservists as the threat of wildfires escalated on what shaped as a torrid weekend in at least three states. As temperatures in western Sydney reached 47 degrees Celsius, Mr Morrison said two more deaths had been confirmed on Saturday, bringing the toll since the country’s worst wildfire season on record began in September to 23. “We are facing another extremely difficult next 24 hours,” Mr Morrison told reporters, while also confirming his scheduled visits to India and Japan later this month had been postponed due to the ongoing situation. Australia was bracing for one of the worst days of the crisis yet on Saturday, as searing heat and strong winds were forecast to bring flames to more populated areas. Officials warned a fire in a national park west of Sydney had the potential to spread into the city’s outer western suburbs.