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Comment by chris_wot | Hacker News Reader

Let’s put it in more perspective. So far in the 2019-2020 season (which is still going) we have lost 1011 homes and 5.9 million ha have been burned.

This is the single largest and most destructive fire season in Australian history. It is still ongoing and currently there are fires burning out of control across the country.

Our PM knew this was happening, but went on holiday. He at least came back. The NSW Emergency Services Minister took a holiday to Europe in the middle of it all. We still don’t know if he is coming back.

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You'd know better than I would, but isn't this problem kind of endemic to the region? There's a long history of devastating bushfires going back to the turn of the last century; if casualty numbers have gone up (and '66, '39, and '25 look really bad), so has population and density, right?

The areas burning, the time of the fires and the size of the fires are all aberrant to anything in recorded history, and probably anything in indigenous history. Casualties are actually not as bad as they could be due to fairly strong evacuation warnings. Property losses have been very high despite stronger fire fighting resources being near higher populated areas.

Basically, for the first time in living memory there are areas of Australia that are on fire. We know this fairly accurately from soil, sediment and tree sampling.

Can you help me understand how this is different from, say, the Black Friday bushfires?

BBC has nice info-graphic comparing different Australian fires. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/ECEF/production/...

article: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50951043

As you can see from the graph, other fires came much later in the season. If only the weather can stop the fires, there is still long way to go.

The black friday fires started in January 1939. Australia at the time had seriously inadequate training and equipment to deal with this. It also started during a heat wave. In total around 2 million hectares were burnt. In 1851 we had black Thursday in which 5 million hectares were burnt. That fire started in February.

The current fires have now burnt close to 6 million hectares and the fire season started in September. The areas currently being burnt include temperate rainforest that hasn't burnt in living memory. There are concerns from climate and fire experts that some of the areas have been damaged so badly that they will not be able to recover.

Also, these fires are far from over, and many new fires have started in the last couple of days.

In the last few weeks Australia has recorded the hottest temperatures on record, while being in one of the worst droughts on record, and this hasn't been a single year aberration. The last 10 years have each set new records for the highest temperatures on average.

The only reason that casualties have been so low is that we have good communications with areas under threat, and residents in these areas know to leave when the threat gets beyond a certain level.

> being in one of the worst droughts on record

If you think that that was bad, now the problem has worsened exponentially. You can expect more hot in the next years now that the nature buffer has being hit and weakened. Is like a sort of slipping "extinction vortex" for the entire local area.

Australia seems to still think that can win against this monster with an army of volunteers and the minimum amount of resources possible.

The difference is that we now have a once-a-century fire every Friday.

Indigenous Australians used to start big fires, so it's quite possible they've seen a few bad ones too.

The indigenous Australians used to start fires at a specific time of year for the particular area, and on a particular cycle of n years for a particular area. Some of these cycles and times are known. This meant that, for thousands of years, the fuel load in the eucalypt forests were reset on a regular schedule.

Not only do we not do this anymore, the schedules that worked for millennia probably wouldn't work any more due to the change of rainfall patterns, temperatures and moisture content.

Indigenous Australians certainly would have seen some huge fires, but according to soil / sediment and tree sampling, probably nothing like the ones going on right now.

Here's a good explanation why it's not really an "endemic problem": https://twitter.com/JediJeremy/status/1208997157346242561 (I mean devastating bushfires are not endemic, general fires are, but you can safely drive through and see a normal for up close)

Originally massive fires like this were partially mitigated by fire stick farming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming These days we should do the same on a large scale, but we stopped.

It is endemic, however this year it has been particularly bad. Firstly, I can’t recall a fire season that went for this long. It’s getting well into it’s second month now and doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

Secondly, the fire fighters are saying that it has been exacerbated by a lack of fuel reduction (basically back-burning). This has been not from lack of wanting to do this, but the climate changed such that they have been unable to find sufficiently long enough periods to back-burn safely.

So the answer is - as a nation we are used to, and expect, bushfires. They wouldn’t normally cause massive concern - which is probably why Scott Morrison went on holidays during bushfire season - but this year has been the worst in recorded history.

Legitimately asking - what can the PM do to help the situation? What would he have done for the fires had he not gone on holiday?

pragmatism is nice but the goal of government is not only to affect the problem, moral support, presence is critical IMO

Regardless, it still looks bad. Captain goes down with their ship and all.

Yea I see people make arguments like this all the time. We frequently get news articles about leaders who aren’t in the capital legislating/leading despite the fact that these people never really escape their work even if they do travel.

The PM isn’t going to do much of anything at this point. The time for the PM to act is prior to the fires starting.

Australia are introducing very harsh laws targeting climate / environmental activists. He could start by reversing those. E.g. Tasmania, up to 21 year jail term for trespass.

Part of the role of being a leader is... leading. The presence of top elected officials reassures the public that somebody is in charge and gives a shit about about what is happening.

When a leader goes off on vacation while some event happens, it puts off the impression that the government is ineffective and out of touch. It undermines the people on the ground who perhaps are doing something.

Also, in terms of "What would he have done for the fires", there are any number of things. The gravitas of having the man on top demanding action ensures that things happen quickly. As a trivial example, if the Assistant Deputy Commissioner of Brush Fire Extinguishing needs X, he'll get it when the truck or helicopter is available. When the PM needs it, the truck or helicopter is made available, period. Or it could be as simple as giving some sort of speech in your crisis windbreaker to rally the troops.

I don’t expect a CEO of a startup or corp to squash bugs or submit PRs, and similarly I don’t expect a PM to literally put fires out.

I do expect him to show leadership in times of crisis, bring unity, and just ‘be there’, especially when so many volunteers are fighting the fires and his countrymen are dying and losing their homes.

Admit that Australian coal extraction is unsustainable and then resign? Admittedly that does nothing for these fires, but without some change future ones are going to be worse.

Bringing that lump of coal into Parliament was a declaration that he wasn't going to care if Australia burnt to the ground so long as he got his share of the coal money.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/09/scott...

Australia is about 1% of global CO2 emissions. I'm not arguing for being careless, of course, but either way it's not going to change much.

Australia supplies a large fraction of the coal burned by Japan, China, Korea and India. Mentioning the CO2 emissions of Australia itself is missing the point completely.

We are the largest global exporter of coal with over two hundred million tonnes sent to other countries to burn last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/29/chinas-p...

There are over 40 countries that contribute to at least 1% of global carbon. If each one of them takes this ridiculous stance, we won’t be easily able to reduce our carbon footprint.

Your argument is pretty awful.

Not reject international assistance.

Is that the case this time? I was wondering why I hadn't seen the usual local (NZ) news coverage of fire fighters being sent across the Tasman. It was becoming a regular story for the last few summers.

Leadership.

It doesn't mean you're fighting the fires but it does mean you're staying informed, keeping people motivated through long hours and bad news and ready to make difficult decisions.

> This is the single largest and most destructive fire season in Australian history.

This is just not true.

173 human beings died in bush fires in recent history in 2009, Black Saturday as it's known.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires_in_Australia

But I guess this is to be political about the PM perhaps.

I guess the whole article is a lie

> Bushfires in Australia so big they generate pyrocumulonimbus starting more fires

Since it's clearly going out to sea from the picture. And it wouldn't be hard to overlay lighting data if it was causing lightning.

But god forbid we'd talk about pyro-cumulonimbus, and instead we'd talk about the far less talked about topics we are discussing.

Currently the death toll is 19 and dozens are missing. The Black Saturday bushfires were a major learning experience though as you’ll notice authorities have been emphatic that people need to leave immediately.

In terms of sheer destructiveness, the fires have not stopped yet and don’t look to be abating. There are over 500 homes lost.

The area burnt and length of time the fires have been burning has never been matched. So it’s hardly a lie to say what I said.

I live in Sydney and have family and friends who have been in fire zones. Calling this political and a “lie” is insensitive and shows you really don’t know what you are talking about. I am well aware of the Black Saturday fires as I lost a friend Bian Tan in those fires. This time round I hope authorities and people more effectively learn how to save lives and homes. I think a number of factors will help us reduce casualties, but that doesn’t mean this won’t be the most destructive fires in Australian history, just in sheer length of time and area burned.

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