Bushfires in the tropics: Queensland faces terrifying new reality

Late on Sunday night, a tropical cyclone formed off the north Queensland coast.

 Queensland firefighters say blazes have become more
intense and longer-lasting in recent years. 

The storm has begun a track towards the coast, where more than 100 bushfires are still burning after week-long heatwaves and “unprecedented” conditions. Tropical cyclone Owen will bring some relief from the stinking heat; lower temperatures and rainfall that should help firefighters control the most threatening fires by midweek.

Queensland’s exhausted emergency services will not welcome Owen’s track towards the shore with any sense of respite; to them the blended ends of disaster seasons represent a horror scenario, but one many have seen coming.

Paul Gray, a representative of the Queensland Firefighters’ Union, says the nature of bushfires has noticeably changed in recent years. The fires, he says, have become more intense and longer-lasting. Last week conditions in parts of Queensland were classified “catastrophic” for the first time. The rating has only existed since 2009, but no bushfire in the state since 1966, when warnings were first introduced, would have been considered so dangerous.

Read the story from The Guardian by Ben Smee - “Bushfires in the tropics: Queensland faces terrifying new reality.”