According to reports, climate change and increased land development is leading to longer, and more intense wildfire conditions around the globe. Satellite imagery from the DMC constellation allows us to monitor fire damage and assist planning for wildfire management.
In Australia, with temperatures hitting 35°C and winds gusting 100km/h, this year’s wildfires have been the worst in New South Wales in two-decades. Fires have erupted across as many as 90 different sites, with 20 deemed as ‘out of control’.
The Australian government has used DMC satellite imagery from UK-DMC2, supplied by DMCii through the Charter, to help to inform their responses. The images, as seen below, mark out the various evacuation centres and show where the fires are active.
New South Wales declared a state emergency on the 20th October, as fire fighters battled bushfires that had already destroyed more than 200 homes.
The below satellite image of Australia was captured by DMCii’s UK-DMC2 22m multispectral, 650km wide swath satellite imaging device on the 19th October 2013. Burn scars can be seen in the charcoaled land to the right of the blaze. Agricultural land can be seen towards the middle of the image, while smoke marks the skies above Newcastle, just north of Sydney.
Elsewhere, in Dul’durga, Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia, UK-DMC2 captured the below satellite image. The image shows towns and villages surrounded by blazing fires together with the vast burn scars marking the land.
Our satellite imagery is also used to assess the effects on the land once the fires have ceased, as we discussed in our previous blog ‘Satellite imagery captures Wildfire damage in Palm Springs’.
Wildfires devastate communities across the world. DMCii respects the incredible efforts of fire fighters in preventing the destruction caused by these major disasters and we are pleased whenever and wherever our satellite imagery is used to help.