seems to be the biggest fire of all time. fires have always happened in california too but those are also worse than ever in recent years. fires can be a thing that have always happened and yet also getting worse
Yeah it's definitely a bad year. Back-burning is the key.
Its actually a human problem that makes for really bad fires. It's because we go around putting them out. This lets the undergrowth build up to unnaturally high levels then when there's all that fuel and you have a hot dry summer there are bad fires.
The most intense fires are always in areas that haven't burnt in too many years.
As for the worst, how do you measure that? I vividly remember the
Ash Wednesday Bushfires. I can still picture the massive wall of smoke I could see riding my bike home from school. It looked like a thunderstorm but it was the wrong color and in the wrong place.
75 people died that day. Choked or burned to death. 12 of the CFA volunteer firefighters who died were from our local fire brigade. They burned. The front changed so fast they had nowhere to go. Some of them were in the open, a couple of them tried to shelter under their truck. They would have known they were dead, but I guess it's just instinct to try to get away. There was only charred remains left.
I was 12 years old. They will always stick in my memory as being pretty bad, but if you are going by human lives then the
Black Saturday Fires were worse. 173 people died that day, including probably the most well known
TV news anchor in Victoria who burned in his home. That was pretty bad.
Are the current fires worse? I certainly hope not. They are a part of life here, but they are horrible, horrible things. Certainly they are now much better publicised. All of a sudden the whole world wants to use them to push their own agendas or ghoulishly fantasize about the ridiculously color-enhanced satellite images, but really they should all send donations to the
Country Fire Authority or just fuck off and push their barrows elsewhere
1851 Black Thursday Bushfireshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires_in_Australia