Australia can expect far more fire catastrophes. A proper disaster plan is worth paying for

Australia is in the midst of inconceivably bad bushfires. The death toll is rising, thousands of buildings have been destroyed and whole communities displaced. This scale is like nothing before, and our national response must be like nothing that has come before.

Australia needs a nationally mobile, fully-funded
 emergency management workforce.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Sunday somewhat acknowledged the need for unprecedented action. He took the extraordinary step of calling up 3,000 Australian Defence Force reservists and mobilising navy ships and military bases to aid the emergency response. This has never before happened in Australia at this scale.

Read the story from The Conversation by the Professor of Hazards and Disaster Risk Sciences from the University of Sydney, Dale Dominey-Howes -  “Australia can expect far more fire catastrophes. A proper disaster plan is worth paying for.” 

Tragedy as NSW bushfire death toll rises to seven

The death toll from the NSW fires has risen to seven after the body of a man fleeing the NSW south-coast fires was found in a burnt-out car near Yatte Yattah near Lake Conjola this morning.

Fire destroyed buildings and homes in Cobargo,

Three people were confirmed dead today, two found in separate vehicles and another in the family home. The fatalities are on top of the father and son found dead in Cobargo on New Years Eve and the firefighter who died near Albury when his truck rolled in a freak firestorm.

“Today we have the three deaths. The police have confirmed at Yatte Yattah, a body found in a vehicle there, which is near Lake Conjola,” NSW police deputy commissioner Gary Worboys said.

“One at Sussex Inlet, a body in a vehicle. And ambulance officers have told us about a body that they have located as well, deceased. Unfortunately, I hate the number of homes we’ve lost but at the end of the day this is about people’s lives. That’s the most important thing right now.”

Read the story from The New Daily by Samantha Maiden - “Tragedy as NSW bushfire death toll rises to seven.”

Black Saturday is an Australian tragedy that redefined the way we live with fire.

I’d visited the Latrobe Valley a few times before I really took in Hazelwood power station. Of course, I’d seen it. How could anyone miss it? But now I beheld the concrete behemoth, its towering chimney stacks creating their own thin, brown cloud-stream.

 With a death toll of 131, Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires
 are considered the worst in Australia’s history. 

I was writing about the adjacent town of Churchill, built in the late 1960s as a dormitory suburb for Victorian electricity workers. In 1971, a toddler named Brendan Sokaluk had moved to Churchill with his parents, who believed the coal fields would provide a better life for their children. Brendan was raised in the town, and never left. Aged 39, he woke on the morning now known as Black Saturday, and just after lunch, got in his car – a view of Hazelwood visible from his street – and took the short drive to a eucalypt plantation where he set a blaze that engulfed the surrounding world.

Driving to the town, and the area devastated by what is called the Churchill Fire, meant passing the power station, and for the first time I didn’t just half-look at the building.

Read the story from The Guardian by Chloe Hooper - “Black Saturday is an Australian tragedy that redefined the way we live with fire.”

’Worst yet to come': 14 dead as North Carolina faces Florence flooding

As the death toll from Florence rose and hundreds were rescued from their flooded homes, North Carolina slid into the next stage of the disaster: catastrophic flooding.

Flooding - first responders check flooded cars for trapped
occupants during the flood in North Carolina in the U.S.

On Saturday Mitch Colvin, mayor of Fayetteville, told reporters: “The worst is yet to come.”

On Sunday, the death toll in North and South Carolina rose to 14; the city of Wilmington was cut off by floodwater; 15,000 people were in temporary shelters; and 760,000 North Carolinians remained without power.

“The storm has never been more dangerous than it is now,” Governor Roy Cooper said. “Many rivers are still rising, and are not expected to crest until later today or tomorrow.“

Read the story from The Guardian - “’Worst yet to come': 14 dead as North Carolina faces Florence flooding.”

(“Adaptation” will be centre-stage in understanding how we deal with the vastly different scenarios that arise from climate change, just as we are witnessing in North Carolina in the U.S. People were first forced to deal with the initial onslaught of Hurricane Florence, being the powerful winds and now it is lingering floodwaters of a magnitude never seen before, along with an ongoing loss of power.

Interestingly, Shepparton heard about this phenomenon in 2013 when the former leader of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Anna Rose, told more than 600 people at the Slap Tomorrow forum, “Climate Change: a wake-up call”, that a warming world would see such events; events where massive amounts of water were absorbed from the oceans and then dumped over land, and that is just what is in the U.S. right now - Robert McLean)

Europe burns as climate change fuels 'forest fire danger extremes

London: As the official death toll from Greece’s wildfires mounted on Tuesday, it became clear this was a national tragedy of a kind awfully familiar to Australians.

Horrific stories emerged as rescue workers made gruesome discoveries, such as the group of 26 men, women and children who perished while huddled together, trapped between the fire front and a sheer cliff. The death toll stood at 74 on Wednesday morning.

Many more survived by the skin of their teeth – fleeing into the sea as the fires overtook their holiday houses. It is the peak holiday period for locals as well as tourists. Fishing and coastguard vessels patrolled the coast, plucking people out of the water to safety.

Strong, unpredictable winds fanned and spread flames that killed people in their homes and in some of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cars that had tried to flee at the last minute but were lost in smoke and gridlock.

Read Nick Miller’s story from The Sydney Morning Herald - “Europe burns as climate change fuels 'forest fire danger extremes.”

Nepal landslide death toll rises with more rain expected.

Kathmandu: Residents have had to be rushed to safety as water levels continue to surge near Kathmandu, with the death toll from landslides and floods brought on by monsoons this week rising to 53 across Nepal.

Heavy rains have caused widespread
floods and death in Bhaktapur, Nepal.

Three members of a family became the latest fatalities after they were buried alive on Thursday when a landslide struck their makeshift home in a village of Bhaktapur district, officials said.

"Hundreds of security personnel have been deployed in the sites," said chief district officer Narayan Prasad Bhatta.

Read the story from The Age - “Nepal landslide death toll rises with more rain expected.”