Bushfires (wildfires in the U.S.) are a normal occurrence in Australia, but something has changed. Four years ago in early January, a fire started with two lightning strikes in a state forest 54 miles southwest of Perth, Western Australia. Within a day, the blazes merged and turned into a pyro cumulonimbus. I had never heard of such a term for a fire creating a cloud reaching 9 miles up into the stratosphere. Here in Houston we are familiar with the summer afternoon clouds that boil up like a witch’s brew, and if we’re lucky, bring us a dose of cooler air and rain. But this pyro cumulonimbus was the fire’s own weather system built of smoke and fire and wind that razed 95 homes and the small town of Yarloop within minutes, killing two and then racing all the way to the coast where fleeing residents had to be rescued by boat. Ash and embers rained down creating further fires over the next two weeks, and my brother‘s town of Harvey was ordered to evacuate, too.
What is currently happening on the east coast of Australia is the above multiplied by 200. The first fires that were started by lightning strikes in mid-November and fueled by drought and record breaking temperatures have spread, creating dozens of pyro cumulonimbus which have not only spewed ash and embers but have also caused their own lightning strikes to create further fires. Since the fires began, 10 million acres have burned, 2,000 homes have been destroyed, 25 lives lost and up to one billion animals have perished.
Although fire is part of the natural world, the ferocity of these fires is different. In the case of the Yarloop fire, the fire began in a region that had the warmest year in 75 years and lowest rainfall in over 40 years. With climate change, the summers all over Australia are becoming hotter, but Australia still receives 86 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels and 73 percent from coal. Another contributor to the intensity of the Yarloop blaze was fire suppression because of mining interests and poor forest management, as some areas had not been burned in more than 20 years. We have much to learn from the Aboriginal Australian who practiced cool burns, a small patch work of fires lit during the cool season to open up woodlands, germinate native grasses and improve biodiversity. Adopting European agricultural practices have not helped either as the clearing of bush land, over grazing and monoculture have exacerbated drought and depleted the soil, not only of nutrients, but also scarce moisture.
A year after the Yarloop fire, I stood among the charred remains of a forest just off the Old Coast Road where the fire had roared through. The gray green forest of my youth was gone, and blackened trunks stood in a sea of ash. My beloved banksias and wild flowers were gone. Even though Australian plants rely on fire to germinate, banksias included, this fire had been so hot their seeds had incinerated. The grass trees, however, had withstood the inferno and now sprouted fountains of green, and among their blackened trunks floated lilac flowers the size of pin cushions. I’d never seen them before in this bush and learned they were Rottnest Island Daisies. Had they blown in, or were the seeds already there, deep in the soil?
My heart goes out to the suffering caused by the ongoing fires in Australia but maybe Mother Nature is telling us we can’t continue business as usual.
Just as we learned in Houston after so many devastating floods — Memorial Day to Imelda — the fires in Australia reveal how climate change exacerbates bad management of land and water. One heartening story to come out of so much destruction is how one Australian owner of a 2,000-acre equestrian center prepared so extensively years in advance for a fire that not only did his property withstand the Currowan fire but his intricate plan is also credited with helping save the nearby town of Bawley Point from burning.
Cutting carbon emissions is urgently needed and designing with nature for resilience is possible. If Hurricane Harvey was not enough of a wakeup call for the world then let the bushfires in Australia shake us out of inaction.
Talianchich, a resident of Houston, grew up in Perth, Western Australia.