Ring of Fire

Australia is paying the cost of the worst drought on record, writes Godfrey Grima in a new report for this blog just sent in from South Australia:

If you’ve been waiting all your life to understand better what come hell and hellfire means, South Australia in December is the place to be. For people living in this corner of Australia - particularly those on farms and around forests - this is a weekend of creeping apocalyptic inferno.

Bushfires - some of which have been burning since October - are raging at increasing menace. Fifty fires, originally started by lighting strikes, have joined into thirteen walls of blazes of horror. These now threaten to join up into one supra 150 kilometer fire front. If that happens it will be an unstoppable hell on earth racing east and south until it engulfs the entire area from the Alpine National Park down to the coast. The toll, in death and destruction, would be unthinkable. With temperatures soaring past 40 degrees c, people in all of South Australia - but more so in the east - fear dry windy conditions will turn all of 600,000 hectares into a rampant firestorm.

In little over a week more than 189,000 hectares ( 440,000 acres) of farmland and forest have been destroyed. Soldiers are helping an army of some 3,000 local firefighter, mostly volunteers. A squad of specialists has flown in from New Zealand. Aircraft are water bombing the fires but the smoke makes it difficult for pilots to target the fire edge.

Comparisons are being made with the 1939 Black Friday massive fires tragedy which killed 71 people. People twenty towns across south eastern Australia may have to be evacuated. So far there have been no deaths but scores of people have been rushed to hospital suffering from dehydration.

Heavy smoke drifting into Melbourne has cut down visibility to a few kilometers and is disrupting flights. Qantas had two incoming flights diverted on Saturday.

Victoria premier Steve Bracks has defended his policy of not ordering widespread evacuation. People should either leave early or not at all, he said.

Australia is paying the cost of the worst drought on record, a major catastrophe for market garden and cattle farmers. In Victoria eight farmers are known to have taken their own life in despair.

Despite being an early advocate of better climate control Australia’s Liberal government of John Howard has refused to sign the Kyoto protocol, an issue which constantly earns him bitter attacks from the environmental lobby.

Godfrey Grima in Australia - Part 1 and Part 2