That’s part of the advice the NSW Rural Fire Service delivered to Batlow residents and visitors yesterday. “If you are in this area, particularly in the general area from Batlow north to Wondalga and west of Blowering Dam, you need to leave before tomorrow.”
A number of areas where residents and locals are urged to leave were identified around southeast NSW and eastern Victoria.
More generally, emergency authorities in both states have highlighted the seriousness of the situation in their frequent media appearances.
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There remains a number of uncontained fires raging all over those states and tomorrow weather conditions are expected to take a turn for the worse. The forecasts are for temperature away from the coast reaching into their low- to mid-forties with strong northerly and northwesterly winds during the day. Given the severe and generalised drought, fire conditions are expected to worsen:
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A cool change is expected for late afternoon and early evening, which, however, may paradoxically make fire expansion harder to predict.
It’s impossible for me to advance an estimate of the total population affected, beyond saying it could easily reach into the hundreds of thousands. Traffic conditions, telecommunications, and power supply apparently improved; food, water and fuel arrived, so evacuation was possible.
Media coverage suggests that most visitors left the affected areas; it’s a lot harder to say anything about residents. Hopefully the township of Mallacoota is no indication of the general trend: out of the population trapped there (initially said to be about 4 thousand, later revised upwards to about 5 thousand), only some 1,200 (apparently tourists) left on board one of two ships the Navy dispatched.
Those choosing to stay explain their attitude in different ways when asked by reporters. Commitment to their communities seem to be one. Some, even among those who chose to leave, appear to doubt things will get that bad.
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I went through those details because I want readers to realise that emergency authorities did not sugarcoat the situation. They did not shy away from expressing their beliefs, based on their professional experience. Their language was blunt, fitting a potential catastrophe brewing. I am sure readers will agree.
I don’t mean what I am going to write as a criticism to a very large number of climate change scientists. I know they meant well. I am only a low-income worker, so I can only imagine the pressures they faced to sound reasonable, measured, cautious. I know what they say about hindsight. But the truth is that climate change scientists have been pulling their punches in a misguided attempt to avoid alarm. I wish they had used the same language emergency authorities used.
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Professor Chris Dickman, from the University of Sydney, estimates that 480 million animals have been killed since last September, in NSW alone (so far, the fires have also affected Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania, and Queensland).
That figure underestimates the damage done to the environment. For one because it excludes insects, bats and amphibians.For another, because it says nothing about vegetation.
However, another previous estimate -- from December -- now painfully dated, puts the CO2 emission of NSW result of the bushfires in 195 million tonnes (Queensland added another 55 million).
Given that most of those emissions comes from vegetation, it does suggest how much vegetation biomass was lost, although it says little about the number of individuals lost.
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2019 was Australia’s hottest and driest year on record, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
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The false prophet (Revelation 19:20) who runs this country apparently called the National Security Committee of Cabinet for early next week to deal with the bushfire crisis. I doubt anything good will come of that.
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