Devastating Bushfire in Australia

Bushfire in New South Wales

Rashid Hussain

Bushfires that have devastated Australia, have crept closed in, on the country’s capital, Canberra, on Friday state of emergency was declared. In June 2019, Bushfire Season 2019-20 commenced with upsetting, uncontrolled violent fires across the Australia’s most populous states of New South Wales and Victoria then spread to Kangaroo Island and many other states that have destroyed more than 18 million hectares of wooded land and national park, more than 5 thousand buildings (including about 3000 homes) have been burnt, 34 people and millions of animals have died. Eventually, the whole country is going to suffer from a massive economic hit. The Climate change, hottest temperatures, lightning, and prolonged droughts are said to be the main cause of fire eruption but there are some other controversial reports about arson and conspiracy theories of using laser weapons.

Despite rains and thunderstorms in most parts of the fire-ravaged areas of Australia, the bushfire continues to cause damage to wildlife and properties of the residents, the Federal and State authorities have been struggling to grapple the fire crisis, fueled by hot temperatures, strong winds, and prolonged droughts. Although the bushfires in Australia are common in hot season, but this summer the blazes have remained the worst in the recorded history; according to recent report of NASA, as of 2 January 2020, estimated 306 million tons of CO2 had been emitted and till 7 January 2020, the smoke stemming from the fires, had moved approximately 11,000 kilometres (6,800 mi) across the South Pacific Ocean to Chile and Argentina, worsening the air quality of the whole region. Australia’s big cities like Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne have experienced the hazard of bad air quality, these cities were declared, in World ranking, among the cities bearing poorest air quality, the severe air pollution also affected the production of coal in New South Wales state.

Thousands of fireys have been doing their best to extinguish the wildfire, along with firefighters, came from the US, Canada, Singapore, and New Zealand, they have managed somehow to curtail the fire spread; besides Army, Navy and Air force of Australia have also been taking part in putting out fires, evacuation work, providing manpower and other logistic support. Over $300 million donations have been collected from Red Cross, Commonwealth, various private Organizations, Institutions, and NGOs. Other millions of dollars have been collected by kind-hearted celebrities of Australia, the US, and some other countries; Tennis players also raised handsome funds through an auction of their Tennis accessories in Australia. The government has also allocated amount for Bush Fire Repair Bill but probably the loss is too high to be compensated by such amount.

Everyone around the globe contributed voluntarily in different ways, Muslims of Australia also did not lag behind and participated uniquely; hundreds of Muslims gathered at local park of Adelaide and offered a special prayer (Salat ul Istaska), that was followed by downpour the next day, in fire-ravaged areas and many fire grounds were almost dried out, multiple fires were dramatically reduced. This prayer is offered only on special occasions to ask for rain when there has remained a long dry spell of weather. Amazingly the Christian community also joined the prayer, they wanted to convey the message of unity of all communities, across the country; after the prayer, professor Abdullah delivered a sermon emphasizing repentance.

Although most of the massive blazes have subsided, but at some locations fires again flared up, engulfed long areas, weather conditions are getting more extreme - owing to persistent heat and drought - fires grow rapidly in size, so the situation gets aggravated. There were some reports that most of the fires were deliberately started by arsonists, the fire authorities could not deny such claims straightaway; in the past, human involvement had been observed, many times the flames were ignited deliberately in Amazon rainforests and California forests also. On the contrary, Australian authorities call the long unprecedented bushfires the result of climate change, which does not make sense, the usual rise in temperature was forecasted by the country’s Bureau of Metrology.

Another reason of bushfire is reported to be the firing of laser weapons, initially, the fire was created by using advanced laser weapons - called Directed Energy Weapons – that produce concentrated electromagnetic energy and cause a fire after targeting specific target. An American conspiracy theorist Matt Procella, said that due to Direct Energy Weapon fire, a huge catastrophic fire had erupted in California that resulted in the death of over 74 people and destruction of thousands of land hectares and buildings, all other buildings remained intact other than targeted stores and restaurants. The question arises here if the fire eruption was indeed caused by such weapons, who could be the beneficiary and what could be the motives behind all such nefarious designs!

The most horrifying situation created after the disastrous incident of bushfire and long severe drought was dealing with feral camels which, wandering miles away in search of water, were overrunning communities, damaging properties of residents and contaminating local water supplies; the government decided to take firm decision and started culling thousands of camels by aerial shooting of snipers. It is an unexpected calamity Australians are coping with, but mass slaughter of animals can not be justified; people from around the world got infuriated about the cull, one petition to “Save Australia’s Camels” was signed by over 100,000 people online.

Serious impacts Australians are going to experience in the future, wildlife has been affected badly, millions of animals, insects are killed, in this way biodiversity will decline, thousands of species are facing the threat of extinction. Smoke from bushfires has drifted across the Pacific and may have reached the Antarctic, according to the World Meteorological Organization, affecting the health of people across the regions. Infrastructure has been damaged and that impacts farming and tourism in the country and emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will increase Australia’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global warming, and amplify the probability of recurring mega fires that will release further emissions.