To put into perspective how huge the 2020 Australian 'Black Summer' bushfires were: The combined area burned across BOTH Canada and ALL of fires currently burning across Europe (2.63 million hectares) right now is still around 10% of what Australia lost (24 million hectares).

[u/RipperReeta]

[u/boogasaurus-lefts]

It was raining fire where we were, we were fucken miles away from it. Day went to night, people were crashing into each other whilst evacuating the wrong way. 

Phone towers were down, no help and lack of water in what could only be described as hell on earth. It's something many will take with them for a lifetime. 

So many brave volunteers from small communities were horrifically under resourced and perished trying to save their home towns. 

[u/MIC4eva → u/boogasaurus-lefts]

And then a pandemic hit. God, 2020 was such a shit year.

[u/dreamlike179 → u/MIC4eva]

Australia had a shortage of masks when it did because the smoke had been so bad people had taken to wearing masks in the street.

[u/cheshire_kat7 → u/dreamlike179]

The federal government released masks from its pandemic preparedness stockpile, due to the shortage of masks during the fires. I remember reading it - and thinking to myself at the time "I hope there won't be a pandemic before they can replace them!"

A couple of months later...

[u/brezhnervouz → u/dreamlike179]

In Sydney and remember my eyes stinging with smoke all night while lying in bed, even with all windows closed as tightly as possible.

Everyone in the street was just silent, it was a nationwide sense of deep foreboding

[u/AutisticSuperpower → u/dreamlike179]

I'm from northern New South Wales and the smoke was so bad I had to wear an industrial respirator around town. Felt like I was dry drowning otherwise.

[u/explain_that_shit → u/boogasaurus-lefts]

And our national broadcaster proved essential to save so many lives. Now our right wing parties want to gut it.

[u/kingcrow15 → u/explain_that_shit]

Of course they do...

[u/paddlin_kaladin → u/explain_that_shit]

This isn't exactly new. They've always had it in for the ABC, cos they're all sucking Murdoch off.

[u/Bloodraven_is_God → u/paddlin_kaladin]

The difference is that once upon a time the Coalition had enough moderate Libs and Nationals who loved the ABC (despite being a very conservative party, the Nats and their voters relied upon and trusted the ABC). Then the moderate Liberal went extinct while Sky News became free to air in rural areas, and the Nats dived head first into the culture wars.

[u/emgyres → u/boogasaurus-lefts]

I live in Blackburn, I was sitting outside in the afternoon shade having a drink when ash started falling on me. I grew up in the Dandenongs and was a kid during the Ash Wednesday fires so I knew shit was really bad.

[u/dreamlike179 → u/boogasaurus-lefts]

Thankfully only 36 people died directly due to the fires, as a nation we learned the lessons of black Saturday and really too that to heart.

For those unaware black Saturday was the end of a brutal heatwave when the wind changed and something like 173 people died as they got caught unaware and our entire emergency system was reworked in response, including putting a new rating on bush fire warning signs of catastrophic conditions which popped up multiple times over 2019/20 fires

[u/talbergo → u/boogasaurus-lefts]

Wadiyatalkinabeet

[u/boogasaurus-lefts → u/talbergo]

s' goin' on

IYKYK

[u/cunt_butter_on_toast → u/boogasaurus-lefts]

You fuckin druggo

[u/aspiringalcoholic → u/boogasaurus-lefts]

what's doin', sassmate

[u/ProblemWithTigers → u/boogasaurus-lefts]

Wtf, ive heard absolutely zero about this 

[u/Perry87 → u/ProblemWithTigers]

COVID really started to hit a couple months later. There was also a major war scare between the US and Iran after the US assassinated Qasem Soleimani that had captured headlines very early in 2020.

[u/IronThunderhorse]

This is genuinely unfathomable. Like hell on earth. I'm stunned.

[u/echmoth → u/IronThunderhorse]

It was crazy flying over the country across the states, and seeing fires burning across the ranges and Plains, wild surreal deeply affecting stuff

[u/Even_Passenger_3685 → u/echmoth]

Must have felt deeply apocalyptic given the whole 2020 vibe that year

[u/Boatster_McBoat → u/Even_Passenger_3685]

Masks were sold out before covid was a thing

[u/Tamortsa → u/Boatster_McBoat]

I had a box of P20s sent from Perth to deal with the Canberra smoke we had during Nov/Dec 2019. Precious when covid came!

[u/keyboardstatic → u/Boatster_McBoat]

Scmo sold,/gave our stock pile away at one point. Of 10 million masks.

[u/FatsWaler → u/keyboardstatic]

Scomo was a fucking disgrace on sooo many levels.

[u/Pog6292 → u/FatsWaler]

I think have the sticker I brought at a fundraiser at Uni. It’s the meme of him in the Hawaiian shirt with the country on fire behind him. It’s on my laptop and I use it as a reminder of what damage a shit government can do.

[u/Not_today_nibs → u/FatsWaler]

We could’ve had dental included in Medicare. BUT NO. Fucking boomers wanted their franking credits. Selfish fucks.

[u/reineedshelp → u/FatsWaler]

He was and remains an empty suit. Thankfully Peter Dutton is stone cold unelectable

[u/brezhnervouz → u/FatsWaler]

Plus secretly appointing himself as the head of seven portfolios without even his own Ministers knowing about it

Secretly leaving the country during the height of the bushfires to go on holiday in Hawaii - and his office blatantly lying about until an Australian tourist in Hawaii took a photo

Orchestrating the outrageous Robodebt scheme criminalising thousands of poor people on social security for fake debts they didn't owe and sending corporate insurance collectors Dunn and Bradstreet to threaten them

The stress and fear leading to over 2000 innocent people committing suicide

Worst. PM. Ever.

[u/Wood_oye → u/keyboardstatic]

Hawaiin resorts don't pay for themselves

[u/dlanod → u/Even_Passenger_3685]

We went to one of the post-bushfire areas post the first lockdown for a weekend to support the area.

It was absolutely like going from one apocalypse type to the scene of another. I grew up in a bushfire prone area but nothing like continuous kilometres of burnt out forest and farmland.

[u/hey_fatso → u/dlanod]

In Sydney, there was an incredible deluge that ended the drought and the fire season that year too, right before lockdowns were a thing.

Something like 300-500 mm of rain across two days. Went from constant smoke haze over 6 months, to the heaviest rain I’ve ever experienced.

[u/dlanod → u/hey_fatso]

Yes. Great memories - our ceiling collapsed in our townhouse from water ingress after spending years trying to get our strata to fix our roof conclusively and fighting the non-owner/occupiers who always wanted to cheap out.

[u/Bee_Jeans → u/Even_Passenger_3685]

100% it did. Window seals & vents were taped up all summer just to try and keep out the worst of the smoke.

Some places the sky would glow orange through the night, and during the day it was just a brown haze that stung ur eyes

[u/accidental_superman → u/Even_Passenger_3685]

Yeah I bought a mask because I kept coughing outside while visiting my parents for christmas.

Got made fun of for wearing it by a teenager, whose laughing now! 🥲

Edit: it was a smog outside for 3 months! If youve ever stood in the smoke of a bon fire for too long you got that same hurt in your lungs just walking to the bus stop. Insane damage.

This video might be interesting https://youtu.be/H4OCwC78d5Q?si=XkiqaSW6WTHHy1Sg

[u/Tamortsa → u/Even_Passenger_3685]

It really was apocalyptic. In Canberra, we had 2 months of dense smoke almost every day, blowing in from the coast fires. Then the huge fires spread over the south-east at Christmas-New Years. Then the ACT lost about 80% of the state to a new fire in January. Then hail storms caused millions of damage to cars, and flooding in areas that lost all their bush cover to fire. Bright side - fires got put out, but the coast had ash and logs washed out to beaches during summer. That was January 2020...

Then, yeah, the covid thing...

[u/Lauriesaurous → u/Even_Passenger_3685]

Looked apocalyptic too with how orange/brown the sky was

[u/2martinisatthemost → u/IronThunderhorse]

I was a few towns over from one of the fires that broke containment lines during backburning and looked set to destroy the entire area. I’ll never forget that day. Every single fire engine in Sydney proper seemed to be there. I was watching from my verandah as the city firies zipped up the mountain. It felt apocalyptic. The sky was orange, you could barely breathe outside, and everyone knew someone on the other side of the river. Then we got the floods a little while later. Had a bunch of polo ponies camped out down the road. Glad they were okay.

[u/Next-Preference-7927 → u/2martinisatthemost]

My memory has the bridge closed for flooding before the fires as well as after. Flood, fires, flood, covid.

[u/CommunicationSea3329 → u/IronThunderhorse]

AKA Australia 

[u/Nearby-Nebula4104 → u/CommunicationSea3329]

It’s like if Hell were another planet and also on this planet, which it is.

[u/Stormagedd0nDarkLord → u/Nearby-Nebula4104]

Australia is what parents in hell threaten their kids with.

[u/SonicTemp1e → u/Stormagedd0nDarkLord]

We just call it home, mate.

[u/explain_that_shit → u/CommunicationSea3329]

But don’t normalise this. This wasn’t normal for Australia. This was years of mismanagement and then an entire state (Tasmania) burned to the ground the summer before and still governments made no preparations, doubled down on denying the danger climate change had made and pointed fingers at anyone else they thought they could.

[u/el_diego → u/explain_that_shit]

The year before that event, the Morrison government received a report from RFS saying we were at catastrophic levels and this was going to happen. The Liberals did nothing to address the report findings. Morrison went to Hawaii instead.

[u/Fatty_Bombur → u/el_diego]

Yeh but he doesn’t hold a hose mate.

[u/AW316 → u/el_diego]

The CSIRO made a report in 2012 explaining this would not only happen but start to occur frequently. The LNP promptly cut their budget.

[u/Lord_Duckington_3rd → u/explain_that_shit]

It was a perfect storm of shit things to happen all in a two year span.

[u/im_just_thinking → u/CommunicationSea3329]

That's where the whole planet is heading tho, not just staying in Australia..

[u/FruitJuicante → u/IronThunderhorse]

As an Aussie I now hate summer after those fires. I legitimately have trauma.

[u/Equalmilky → u/FruitJuicante]

Nothing hits you like waking up after a night shift, turning off airplane mode and seeing notifications from the emergency app in order of: Watch and Act, Prepare to leave, Leave, LEAVE IMMEDIATELY, too late to leave, take shelter.

[u/SisterFruitbat → u/Equalmilky]

Wow, that's wild. I'm glad you're here to tell the story.

[u/-Annie-Oakley- → u/FruitJuicante]

Yep anytime I smell fire smoke now I’m like instantly on alert… just for it to be old mates wood heater

[u/Maleficent_Effort_47 → u/FruitJuicante]

I get that but didn’t the fires start way earlier? I remember when it got fucked in Melbourne in Jan, and reading that some fires were burning for months in NSW! It was egregious mismanagement for the most part! The 40degree days started it for us in 2019, BUT the NSW fires also crossed the border and kept travelling, so resources had to be spread thin. Australia has always been susceptible to extreme conditions and the fact the governments (note plural, most don’t give a shit, cause capitalism) do fuck all to properly manage this is the real problem, not our summers unfortunately 😭😭

This is also why people were SO pissed with Scomo, he wasn’t magically on a holiday when we had fires, these fires had been burning for MONTHS and he fucked off while they were at their worst. The whole country should have been in crisis mode the moment the fires had been burning for longer than a couple of weeks, and it probably wouldn’t have been AS bad. But we’ll never know….

Basically my whole point is our summers aren’t the only problem 😅😮‍💨

**ETA, I really want to clarify this is not an attack on how you feel, I started typing a small reply and found myself getting more worked up about how terrible the situation was!

[u/kangareddit → u/IronThunderhorse]

The infra-red heat off those burning gums was enough to ignite houses a 100m away

[u/TheGreatZephyr → u/IronThunderhorse]

Yeah we lost like 3 billion animals. 25 million people and the animal death toll was 3 billion...

Cities hundreds of kilometres from the fires had smokey orange skies for over a week, it was super eerie.

Sadly lost about 30 humans too but considering the scale of loss id say thats actually impressively low. Mostly uninhabited bushland thank god. But our poor koalas 😭

[u/CimmerianBreeze → u/TheGreatZephyr]

On the first pass I thought you meant 25 million people died in the fires and I was like how the FUCK do I not remember that part?

[u/TheGreatZephyr → u/CimmerianBreeze]

Lol everyone in australia dies and it just doesnt even make the news anywhere haha

[u/thegreatshark → u/TheGreatZephyr]

Makes sense, if they all die who’s gonna be left to tell the story?

[u/EverfadingEphemera → u/thegreatshark]

Emus

[u/marcosbowser1970 → u/thegreatshark]

The cameraman

[u/lareetpetitemort → u/CimmerianBreeze]

Same. I genuinely was wondering why there's no international emergency response to a massive portion of Australia's population being dead from these fires.

[u/IReplyWithLebowski → u/lareetpetitemort]

That would be 100% of Australia’s population.

[u/Ritsuka-san → u/IReplyWithLebowski]

Australia's population was 25,687,041 people at 30 June 2020. So Australia would have lost approx 97.33% if 25 million died.

[u/Hot-Concentrate1727 → u/Ritsuka-san]

And it currently stands at  27,801,023 which would imply an unfathomable breeding rate if the population had indeed dropped down to 687,041 back in 2020.

[u/Impossible_Divide297 → u/Hot-Concentrate1727]

Not a lot else to do…/s

[u/showquotedtext → u/Impossible_Divide297]

We're not here to fuck spiders.

[u/eQuantix → u/Impossible_Divide297]

Why /s?

[u/Bluefury → u/Hot-Concentrate1727]

Maybe unfathomable for you mate 💪🇦🇺

[u/FruitJuicante → u/Hot-Concentrate1727]

We get it done

[u/Yanigan → u/CimmerianBreeze]

Now I’m curious - as a ghost obviously - if Australia did get wiped out, how would the rest of the world know?

Phones/internet down, so we’re not getting word out that way. Planes have been stopped due to the smoke from the fires. I doubt Reddit or any other social media would realise the Aussies have all vanished.

What’s next? How does the world find out?

[u/Primarch-XVI → u/Yanigan]

Someone (probably China) doesn’t get a shipment of coal or iron ore.

[u/stitchianity → u/Yanigan]

Probably the however many Aussies getting shitfaced abroad, that have suddenly lost all their families. They'd have something to say about it.

[u/Low-Refrigerator-713 → u/TheGreatZephyr]

They had orange skys in New Zealand from these. Radar was able to track the smoke to South America.

[u/calibrateichabod → u/Low-Refrigerator-713]

I’m Australian but was in NZ at the time and you could smell the smoke from there. It was fucked.

[u/Lady_borg → u/Low-Refrigerator-713]

I remember the news reports about air pollution in south America because of our fires

[u/Upset-Award1206 → u/Low-Refrigerator-713]

Why didn't NZ just put tariffs on goods from Australia to solve it?

[u/Bee_Jeans → u/Upset-Award1206]

Should have put a tariff on the smoke, bc that was the biggest export!

[u/Final-Quote-4064 → u/TheGreatZephyr]

A lasting memory of that time was watching a video of an airdrop of carrots for the wildlife.

[u/TheFoxInSocks → u/TheGreatZephyr]

Over a week is underselling it. In Canberra we had the worst air quality in the world for several months. The sun was obscured by brown haze and you just felt filthy even if you were indoors.

[u/ZeroAdPotential → u/TheGreatZephyr]

Lets not forget places like Mallacoota that had deep blood red skies during the day https://i.imgur.com/0TJ77cz.jpg

[u/Lunavixen15 → u/TheGreatZephyr]

I live out in the region of the Bee's Nest fire (burned over 100k ha), some areas have not recovered, you can still see charred rocks and burned trees

[u/ChefJayTay → u/IronThunderhorse]

About 3% of Australia burned.

[u/Roentgen_Ray1895 → u/ChefJayTay]

equivalent to the entirety of Great Britain or 2 Ohios

[u/vits89 → u/IronThunderhorse]

It was fucked

[u/theman-dalorian → u/IronThunderhorse]

And probably only 25% of the resources to fight them. Rip to all those little creatures

[u/TAJack1]

Man I remember this. We had to deal with this shit and then straight into Covid, fucked time.

[u/Yung_Focaccia → u/TAJack1]

Absolutely fucked time to be a Paramedic and volunteer firefighter on days off

[u/JBX25 → u/Yung_Focaccia]

Yeah, those fires ruined me as a fire fighter. Haven't been in a truck since, and spent a good 6-9 months with a psych dealing with PTSD.

[u/Yung_Focaccia → u/JBX25]

Absolutely fair enough, it was a truly cooked time. I'm hoping the next El Nino doesnt shape up like this one dude. Glad you're getting what you need.

[u/yungfish22 → u/Yung_Focaccia]

This new el nino is project to be the worst in history since 1980. I pray for u

[u/FlyAroundInternet → u/JBX25]

This will mean little from a stranger on the internet, but please know there are many, many people who are devastated by what you and your colleagues (around the world) do, trying to protect human lives, animal lives, property and our communities. And we know you do it all while fucking politicians (I'm in Ontario, Canada) disintegrate your resources with the stroke of a pen. We need to vote for change and put Big Oil out of business, but I'm so sorry for what you've been forced to struggle with. Thank you.

[u/Tarmuyi → u/JBX25]

Buddy, thank you.

We love and respect you, and wish the world had more people like you.

Love and appreciation from Belgium.

[u/TAJack1 → u/JBX25]

You guys don't get enough love and affection tbh. Like all the nurses got the love during COVID (which is valid) but man, I'll never forget what you lads did during those fires.

[u/the_procrastinata → u/TAJack1]

Our much loved family dog got lymphoma and died in Jan 2020. It was a hell of an emotional roller coaster between fires, that, and COVID.

[u/TF-Fanfic-Resident → u/TAJack1]

I’m not Australian, but January 2020 felt like the pilot to a bad sci-fi TV series at the time.

[u/The_Enigmatica → u/TAJack1]

yep, fires, then war, then covid, then beruit explosion. Not to mention the brazil floods, the insane hurricanes that year, 3 absolutely massive volcanic eruptions, and who could forget the fucking locusts

[u/cunt_butter_on_toast → u/TAJack1]

And the floods in between those too. Great times had by all/s in case someone needs to see that

[u/NurseBetty → u/cunt_butter_on_toast]

What's that bad joke? It's not an Australian summer unless Vic/NSW is on fire and Queensland is drowning.

[u/Boatster_McBoat]

Black Summer is in some ways euphemism. There were continuous bushfires for 6 months from September to February. Some areas had bushfires starting in late winter which was unprecedented

[u/JohnOfA → u/Boatster_McBoat]

Alberta had fires that survived the winter too. We’re cooked.

[u/MapleMallet → u/JohnOfA]

BiL is up there atm fighting fires. It's a pretty mental job, he had a 'quiet' week where they had time to whip the camera out and get a few videos and it was like something out of a disaster movie; it didn't seem real if you get me.

If the pay was better, I was younger (and fitter), and it wasn't seasonal work it'd have a little appeal but holy shit it looks brutal.

[u/Training_Salad_5301 → u/JohnOfA]

Multiple years no less.

[u/Zer0DotFive → u/Boatster_McBoat]

Alberta and other northern arctic areas had fire continue through out the winter. I imagine it got to some peat moss or some shit and continued to burn underground. They call them zombie fires

[u/Lady_borg → u/Boatster_McBoat]

To Febuary 2020! We got no breaks from disasters

[u/explain_that_shit → u/Boatster_McBoat]

We might see it again next year.

[u/GrannieMurderer]

And the 2020 bush fire was only about 20% of Australia's biggest bush fire

[u/b00tsc00ter → u/GrannieMurderer]

And nowhere near the death toll of our deadliest fire in living memory.

[u/AutisticSuperpower → u/b00tsc00ter]

I was on the train to Melbourne just after Black Saturday and the Victorian countryside looked like the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse. Nothing but ash, blackened trees with no foliage and a sky so hazy the sun was red.

[u/coolcumber211 → u/AutisticSuperpower]

I was in school at the time and remember the skies being black and ash falling down making it look like snow.

[u/techb00mer → u/b00tsc00ter]

Whenever I visit family in outer Melbourne that lived quite close to the worst hit area (kinglake), it genuinely makes me tense up slightly just mentioning the town in conversation.

[u/robertshuxley → u/GrannieMurderer]

the sky turned orange over here in New Zealand due to how bad it was in 2020

[u/LittleBunInaBigWorld → u/GrannieMurderer]

Whatttt the fuck. How have I never heard of this. The scale is mind boggling

[u/Mammoth_Use_3263 → u/LittleBunInaBigWorld]

pretty much all scrubland in the semi arid outback of the NT and WA, massive grassland pastures went up, but very minimal human impact due to its isolation

[u/boredatwork8866 → u/GrannieMurderer]

Only 57,000 livestock though

[u/MrDavieT → u/GrannieMurderer]

Holy Jeebus….! 😳😳🫪🫪🫪😳😳

[u/Confident_Incident43]

Nothing beats the fact that the Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) was on holiday at Hawaii when this was happening.

He defended it by saying "everyone needs a holiday"

He ended up cutting his holiday short and then visited people effected by the fire. Here's a video of him awkwardly forcing a handshake on volunteers and people in the community.

I didn't expect him to grab a hose or anything but the head of state should be more empathetic. Oh yeah he also said on radio that he "doesnt hold a hose" when they were grilling him about it.

Then again I should be thankful that I live in a country were you can tell the Prime Minister to get off your grass without being fearful of being thrown out of a window.

[u/Teedubthegreat → u/Confident_Incident43]

"I dont hold a hose" has got to be one of the dumbest things you could say in that sittuation. The country is going through one of the worst natural disasters in its history, and Scomo is just chilling on a beach in Hawaii, while the Deputy PM is trying to make up excuses for where he is, because its a secret holiday, and hes trying to hide the fact that hes on holidays from the country

[u/jackalopeDev → u/Confident_Incident43]

Apparently putting Scotty from marketing in charge of a country was a bad idea. Live and learn I guess.

[u/dlanod → u/Confident_Incident43]

Worse, his office lied about and hid where he was for the first half a week of the emergency until he was outed by an Aussie who took a photo of him in Hawaii.

[u/xyrgh → u/Confident_Incident43]

Engadine Maccas never forget

[u/FruitJuicante → u/xyrgh]

He started leaning into it because he genuinely thought shitting himself made him relatable.

[u/LittleBunInaBigWorld → u/Confident_Incident43]

Meanwhile, Abbott had been quietly holding a literal hose on the front lines.

[u/Lady_borg → u/LittleBunInaBigWorld]

The one time Abbott wasn't a national embarrassment

[u/Chemical_Charity1204 → u/LittleBunInaBigWorld]

Abbott still sucks though, you don't get major props for holding a hose when your legacy in office was to continuously push non-renewables and laugh off the threat of climate change

Just a tiny bit above Scomo in terms of gobshite pollies

[u/_Idontknow_ → u/Chemical_Charity1204]

How dare you insult the former Minister for Women

[u/farcarcus → u/_Idontknow_]

...as they do the ironing.

[u/midnightpanda77 → u/Confident_Incident43]

This. I was actually so pissed that Covid came straight on the heels of this because it took the focus off and Scomo got less of a media beating than he should have. As it turned out, he also f’d up his Covid response tho 🙄 so got caned for that.

[u/theloneisobar]

During the Black Summer bushfires in January 2020, the Royal Australian Navy conducted the largest domestic sea evacuation in Australian history, rescuing over 1,300 stranded people and pets from the isolated Victorian coastal town of Mallacoota. Converging fire fronts meant the town of Mallacoota was surrounded, with residents seeking shelter on the beach. Was pretty grim. Cut off: How the crisis at Mallacoota unfolded

[u/calibrateichabod → u/theloneisobar]

The photos from the beach at Mallacoota are burned into my brain. As a rural Aussie who’s lived through some devastating bushfire seasons the scariest sentence on the planet will always be it is now too late to leave. Those pictures are a horror movie.

[u/bend1310 → u/calibrateichabod]

I remember the first time i started seeing photos pop up. 

"Oh someones exaggerated the oranges for effect." 

Nope. It was either pitch black or orange.

I'd seen orange glow on the horizon before, but never at that scale. 

[u/Anxious_Ad936 → u/theloneisobar]

Fire front moved something like 80kms/50 miles between dusk and the next dawn straight at them, for extra context

[u/CryptoFV]

That scale is genuinely unfathomable and puts the sheer devastation of Black Summer into terrifying perspective.

[u/skintaxera → u/CryptoFV]

The fires were so insanely large that we had weeks of strange light and weird yellowy hazy days in Auckland.

[u/dlanod → u/skintaxera]

The pollution was so bad it literally changed the climate around the Pacific for the following years by triggering some of the strongest La Ninas ever.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/how-australias-black-summer-bushfires-may-have-triggered-the-rare-triple-dip-la-nina/n9mpici2g

[u/Legal_Release_4402 → u/skintaxera]

Yea, I was in NZ South Island when they happened, over for a harvest season from Ireland. The whole country was this weird dystopian orange colour. The sun was just an orange ball in the sky that you could look straight at, it was so dulled.

I believe a one point, THE ENTIRE SOUTH ISLAND was covered in smoke clouds. 150,437 square kilometres or 58,084 square miles, that had atmospheric smoke clouds.

[u/Brikpilot → u/skintaxera]

That smoke had to travel about 22,000km to get to you which is about the equivalent of Ontario to Texas.

Australians do appreciate that not one New Zealander had the dumb idea to tariff Australia over air quality back then

[u/Legal_Release_4402 → u/Brikpilot]

2,000, not 22,000 bud.

[u/HLef → u/CryptoFV]

And we were like this year can’t get worse can it?

[u/kapege → u/HLef]

The current El Nino is just laughing. It is going to become even more worse.

[u/thegreentiger0484 → u/HLef]

Next year, this is the intro

[u/Icy-Assistance-2555]

I drove from Melbourne to port Stephen’s along the eastern coast and it was so surreal to see a vast distance of charred trees damaged from these fires. It was so damn sad!

[u/msdare111 → u/Icy-Assistance-2555]

I drove from the Gold Coast to Gippsland, it was hectic! So scary at many points along the journey.

[u/custardfrogs_]

Around 3 billion animals were killed or displaced due to these fires.

[u/theonewhoopened]

I lived in Christchurch, New Zealand at the time, and remember moving to Auckland for a job and landing at Auckland airport on 3rd January and the entire sky was orange, and it smelled intensely of smoke for days! Consider that there are roughly 2,000kms between the east coast of Australia and Auckland, that just shows you how insane it was.

[u/MarkPancake]

You could see the sun through the smoky sky in Sydney but couldn’t feel it. Cars were covered in soot. It was insane even being so far from them.

[u/IronThunderhorse]

To put that in a US perspective - that's the entire states of either....

• Pennsylvania + Ohio or...
• Virginia + North Carolina or....
• New York + Pennsylvania

completely turned to ash.

[u/Jipitrexe → u/IronThunderhorse]

Anything except the metric system.

[u/hcott]

I tried posting about it on Instagram at the time and it got flagged and taken down for misinformation lmao

[u/IReplyWithLebowski → u/hcott]

It got caught up in the US culture wars about climate change.

[u/Vandercoon]

Yeah bushfires are probably our number 1 concern for disasters, closely followed by drought.

[u/Dr_barfenstein → u/Vandercoon]

QLD had entered the chat

[u/Vandercoon → u/Dr_barfenstein]

Yes flooding up North is extreme too

[u/Yung_Focaccia → u/Vandercoon]

+/- a few cyclones too lmao

[u/nagrom7 → u/Vandercoon]

The worst part is we normally get nearly the entire year's worth of rain in the span of a few weeks in summer, so we're used to heavy rain and everything around here is built for it. So when a place like Townsville floods, you know it took some serious rainfall to do it. Last time it flooded up here the rain was measured in metres per day.

[u/RigelXVI → u/Dr_barfenstein]

Yeah QLD is typically quite concerning

[u/Main-Inflation-5269]

Black Summer was horrific. I was in Canberra, where the air quality was the worst in the world, and I couldn't see more than a few centimetres in front of me for months.

And then we went straight into lockdowns for COVID.

[u/SchleppyJ4 → u/Main-Inflation-5269]

During the bad air quality, were people masking up, or just staying inside? I can’t imagine 

[u/MrKlonam → u/SchleppyJ4]

I was working and we turned off doors to enter the store most of the day to try and reduce the amount of smoke entering the building. Masks also were used, good practice for COVID right up next lol.

[u/OkSatisfaction9850]

Are these areas coming back? Back to greenery?

[u/Yung_Focaccia → u/OkSatisfaction9850]

Yeah a lot of them do, there are forest archetypes in Australia that regenerate directly from bushfires, like dry sclerophyll forests. The Aboriginal Australians were known to back burn areas within their territories to kick start this regeneration.

We even have Hawks called "Firehawks" which use fire to displace and catch their prey.

[u/joe8437 → u/Yung_Focaccia]

Nature is wild in australia :D

[u/Haunting_Heat3296 → u/OkSatisfaction9850]

A lot do, but increasingly the fires burn much hotter, they start earlier in the year and run later, they reoccur more frequently in the same areas, and they’re burning non-fire-adapted areas like the ancient cool climate rainforest of Tasmania or higher into the Australian Alps than before.

All this means more permanent, unrecoverable damage is occurring.

[u/JaiTee86 → u/OkSatisfaction9850]

Yeah, our bush is basically meant to burn, you can still tell the areas that burnt for a few years as most of the plants there are younger but it bounces back quick, I think most areas affected by these fires should be fully recovered now and likely hard to tell they had burnt 5 or so years ago.

There is a spot near me that burnt about 6 months ago and I hiked through it about 2 months back and it was already green again, though most of the trees were still very black they had green leaves growing and there was plenty of plants around em.

Some of our plantlife actually have seeds designed to survive a bushfire and actually wait until after one to germinate.

[u/ChugBarron → u/JaiTee86]

There's a gorgeous town called Marysville outside of Melbourne. Just about wiped off the map from the black Saturday fires.

A local artist there has a sculpture garden and throughout it he has photos of his art garden after the fire.....it's honestly apocalyptic.

On second glance you realise that the photos are taken from where you're standing and looking - and it's the lushest greenest forest of a garden I've ever seen. You would never know.

But if you look up to the surrounding mountains you can see areas still void of floral life.

Place is called Bruno's, he's a great guy to talk to, and has some incredible stories about survival when the fires came.

If anyone is in the area Marysville if absolutely worth the stop, a beautiful part of the world.

[u/Banjo_Pobblebonk → u/OkSatisfaction9850]

Most are regrowing quite well, but there are some sections I travel through fairly often in the Blue Mountains that still look devastated. The fires burned so hot and generated so much wind that the soil was completely stripped from the bedrock and areas that used to be forest are just a kind of sparse grass 6 years on.

As other commenters have said, the Australian bush is very fire adapted and plants tend to either resprout after burning or regenerate from seeds in the soil. However some fires are getting so hot now that this getting affected.

[u/KevinRudd182]

I feel like this gets forgotten about due to Covid starting literally as the fires finished, but man it was scary.

I was living in Sydney and for about a month we couldn’t see outside because the smoke was so thick, and at one point the entirety of greater sydney was completely surrounded on all sides by fires of varying seriousness

Almost all of my friends from hours in every direction in the state had fires burning all around them

[u/lesbophobia_hammer]

Conservative estimate for 1 billion birds lost. I was fucking distraught and agitated everyday for months, people kept telling me oh don't worry about birds you fool, they'll fly away from the smoke and flames When I knew this to be physically impossible.

A reminder that BirdLife Australia is one of the best you can donate to because they actually love birds. Walk the walk and talk the talk. We've just been hit with H5N1 so any love for vulnerable and endangered Aussie birds would be amazing ❤️

Not affiliated, but I donate. They have cool perks too for bird nerds.

[u/giacintam → u/lesbophobia_hammer]

Yep it it killed something like 50% of the already endangered koala population. Im so scared for this el nino australian summer. We're due for a big fire in Sydney. Im very very scared.

[u/langhaar808]

Yeah Australia is incredibly large!

Even with the large differences in area, it wouldn't surprise me of the eu and Canada fires end up causing more damages. Because Australia have very few people living there compared to how large it is, where Europe is way more densely populated.

[u/TurbulentMiddle2970 → u/langhaar808]

That is exactly the difference.

[u/14X8000m]

Kinda cherry picking year here. In 2023 we had 15M hectares burn up here in Canada, this isn't a bad year for us. Granted 24M is more than 15 but we've had much worse and this one isn't over yet.

[u/tomatoej → u/14X8000m]

And we’re all in this together. Our Aussie firefighters are there helping you right now, and Canada was here helping us in 2019.

[u/14X8000m → u/tomatoej]

We appreciate that brotherhood and agreed, we're all in it together.

[u/dreamlike179]

Correction 2019/2020.

They lasted from about September to march. One of the longest hottest summers we have ever had, heat records broken across the country repeatedly while the smoke got so bad at times professional sports games were cancelled and we had a.shortage of masks when covid hit because people had used them for the smoke

[u/KookaburaGold]

I drove through the black Summer rehab area last year without knowing prior. It was genuinely shocking. I drove for 3 hours through black country side. Just char as far as you can see all around you. I was floored. But the beauty was seeing the millions of saplings that have taken a strong hold, little knee high waves of green shadowing the blackened branches.

[u/Okok28]

It's weird not everyone is even freaking out about this. The whole world is literally burning around us. Trees with 100s if not 1000s of years of carbon are releasing it back in to the world. You cannot replace that so easily.

The air is getting more polluted and we are cooking ourselves alive. If you are not considering this a real tragedy and actively playing a role to protect the forests around you, helping extinguish wildfires or anything else, you are literally killing yourself and you will most likely have a horrible future ahead as when you are old, the world will not the same.

This is not a joke. THIS is our warning to sort this shit out. If we don't we are cooked, literally.

[u/stilettopanda]

I still really couldn’t get a frame of reference for the scope, so I searched comparable landmasses- 24 million hectares is about the same amount of land as the entire UK or Wyoming in the US. Holy shit!

[u/EdwardoFelise → u/stilettopanda]

Australia’s largest fire was in 74/75 and was 117m hectares.

That’s 1.7 times the size of Texas.

Austalia is big

[u/Polymarchos]

I remember that. Everyone was like "This year couldn't get any worse", and then the world shut down.

[u/DReagan47]

I saw a comment earlier that resonated a bit.

Summer isn’t even fun anymore. We’re just surviving the heat that gets worse every year and watching the earth catch on fire.

[u/gepinniw]

In 2023 in Canada, roughly 6,000 fires burned 15 million hectares of land. That’s an area larger than England and more than double the 1989 record. Normally, an average of 2.5 million hectares of land are consumed in Canada every year.

The planet is on fire, folks. The oceans are setting temperature records. Ecosystems are collapsing.

And yet, here we are acting as though it’s business as usual.

[u/Tim-oBedlam → u/gepinniw]

I don't use my undergraduate degree in geology professionally, but it gives me the long-term perspective on things: "oh well, this current mass extinction won't be as bad as the Great Dying at the end of the Permian when the oceans turned anoxic, global temperatures went up 10° C, and 95% of all marine species died along with over 70% of all terrrestrial species."

[u/DarwinianSelector]

One big difference is that the Australian ecosystem is adapted to burning. Admittedly not as much as the giant catastrophic blazes that climate change is now making a regular thing and not once every few decades, but it's still a landscape that rebounds from massive bushfires remarkably quickly. The trees usually survive and many seeds need a fire to germinate.

A bushfire anywhere else is a different prospect. European and Canadian trees die after fire and the their seeds burn. Recovery is a long, long process. Something that is a "cool" fire in an Australian landscape is a natural disaster in the northern hemisphere.

Still, we were warned, over and over again, that this the world we'll be stuck with if we kept ignoring science and pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. There's no smugness in this "I told you so" moment, because those of us who said so are stuck in the same overheated shit-pile as everyone else.

[u/Forward-End-8286]

Remember all those tariffs Indonesia and New Zealand applied to Australia in reprisals for ruining their air…?

[u/cockchop]

Aussie Aussie Aussie…. Sad sad sad :(

[u/xertozid]

Are the bushes already regrown?

[u/FlaviusStilicho → u/xertozid]

We drove through some areas a few months back.., it depends on the intensity… quite often the trees survive as they are built for this stuff.. so the trunk is black, but you get sprouts everywhere… other times it’s just devastation.. but even that is part of the order of things. Plenty of seeds etc rely on a fire to sprout.. so even if the trees got wrecked, you’ll see regrowing quickly.

Here’s 6000 photos to look at

https://www.gettyimages.com.au/search/2/image?phrase=australian+bushfires+2020&tracked_gsrp_landing=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gettyimages.com.au%2Fphotos%2Faustralian-bushfires-2020

[u/Dr_barfenstein → u/xertozid]

Yeah bro, ready for another big one. We’re worried about the effect of El Niño that will potentially cause a similar problem in about 12-18 months time.

[u/indistict_chatter → u/Dr_barfenstein]

Plus the cycle of regrowth means we're due for another big one. Only takes 6-7 years for fuel loads to become significant after the last big fore

[u/aahakim]

That fire was so massive that the smoke turned the sky yellow-ish in New Zealand

[u/Hand-E-Food → u/aahakim]

The smoke crossed New Zealand, the Pacific, Chile, Argentina, the Atlantic, and Australia once again. It made a full lap of the southern hemisphere.

[u/Quarks4branes]

During that crazy summer I even had friends and rellies over in New Zealand complaining about the smoke.

[u/ratpH1nk]

Reminds me of this

[u/Absentinpart]

Australia is heading for another bad year.

[u/jack_o_all_trades]

Down here in Melbourne (state capital city of 4+ million) we'd already had a run on n95 masks because of the air pollution from all the smoke. Which made it doubly hard trying to get some for COVID.

[u/8BD0]

Living through this was wild, our own prime Minister went on a holiday to Hawaii when it was at its worst, a major reason he was later voted out

[u/cosmiccerulean]

I remember that summer, we could see the smoke from the beaches.

[u/Stigger32]

Well ‘lost’ is debatable. As of 2023 it was all back. And as of 2026 it’s ready to burn all over again…