Widespread fire concern for majority of state after years of heavy rain
By Laura Chung
The NSW Rural Fire Service has identified the areas of the greatest concern ahead of the looming fire season, including areas that had already been burnt in the Black Summer bushfires, while it struggles to play catch-up in its mitigation efforts after years of heavy rain.
Three years ago, Australia had one of the most devastating bushfire events on record. In NSW, more than 5.5 million hectares were burnt. But large parts of the state remain untouched and at risk of burning, in particular parts in the west of the state which will most likely see increased risk of fire, this new map from the RFS shows.
These areas have had significant growth due to years of heavy rain, and will dry out quite rapidly if there is hot and windy weather.
Making matters worse are three years of La Nina, which have led to heavy rainfall over much of the east coast, severely hampering hazard reduction efforts. Just over 20 per cent of scheduled hazard reduction burns were completed in the past financial year. However, July has been fairly dry and the agency has managed to conduct mitigation works on about 10,000 hectares so far.
With a looming El Nino this year, RFS Commissioner Rob Rogers is worried.
“I am really concerned about several parts of the state,” he said. “The good thing is we’re not on the back of a drought like we were in 2019 and 2020. It’s not the same level of risk; it’s a different level of risk. But this is our most serious threat since that time.
NSW RFS crews conduct hazard reduction burns ahead of the summer.Credit: Nick Moir
“We ask people not to be complacent just because there have been some quiet times. People need to do simple things: clean out their gutters and get their bushfire survival plan ready.”
Rogers added that this year’s risk was spread across much of the state, whereas the areas of most concern during the Black Summer bushfires were mostly condensed, and areas that didn’t burn were just too dry for anything to grow. But after the past three years of rain, there is a lot of vegetation that could burn.
Hazard reduction burning is a delicate science: it requires looking at the type of vegetation you are burning, what flora and fauna live in the area and the weather conditions. That’s why fire agencies also rely on other mitigation efforts, including creating fire breaks, manually removing vegetation or using goats to chomp at the overgrown landscape.
Areas of concern
The images below show how dry NSW is, compared with two years ago (when a La Nina event was under way). The lack of moisture is represented by red and orange, with blue and green indicating more moisture.
What makes grass fires so dangerous is how quickly they can spread – at times travelling more than 25km/h. Grass fires are started in similar ways to bushfires, such as through lightning or by someone throwing a cigarette out of a window, while agricultural practices – including welding fences and sparks from machinery – can also ignite blazes.
The RFS map shows areas of the state that burnt in the 2019-20 season are unlikely to see fire this year. However, years of heavy rain have promoted strong vegetation regrowth, which means fires could still pop up on hot and windy days, Rogers said. This is of particular concern along the South Coast.
Parts of the Greater Sydney region, including parts of the Blue Mountains, and the Northern Rivers region are less likely to see fire this year. Increased fire risk will return to these parts in a few years’ time.
Greg Mullins, former NSW fire commissioner and councillor with the Climate Council, said as climate change worsened the swings from extreme wet seasons to dry would get more frequent. For example, bushfire weather used to occur in Sydney and the Blue Mountains every decade, but was now occurring every five or six years, he said.
“The fire seasons are longer and we are getting squeezed when we can do hazard reductions,” he said.
Mullins, also a group officer with the RFS said about 100 burns need to occur along the northern beaches of Sydney ahead of the season, but most weekends they have to cancel because of rain or wind.
“I don’t think we’re looking at a Black Summer, but who would know these days,” he said. “If we don’t get big fires this coming summer on the east coast of NSW, it will be the first time ever. We had big bushfire seasons immediately following La Nina in 1959, 1977 and in 2001- 02.”
He added that it was key for communities to do their own preparation work, rather than just relying on fire agencies. This included ensuring homes are not built in bushfire-prone areas, are retrofitted to comply with new building codes, communities have access to shelter and, in some cases, have access to firefighting tools.
The NSW government is investing a further $10 million to help develop a statewide mobile workforce to accelerate this critical work ahead of the coming fire season. This will include employing an additional 100 mitigation crew members to carry out vital hazard reduction and mitigation works in identified high risk areas of the state.
How does El Nino impact our fire season?
It’s one of the most important drivers of unusual weather over the entire globe. For most of Australia, El Nino brings dry weather, increasing bushfire risk. But in other parts of the world, an El Nino event leads to wetter conditions, such as in the southern US.
The Bureau of Meteorology is yet to formally declare an El Nino event, but is expected to do so in the coming weeks. The agency has different criteria than other international weather agencies. While El Nino doesn’t cause bad fire seasons, it can contribute to the hot and dry weather that makes blazes worse.
Natural weather phenomena will only get more intense as climate change worsens, Dr Simon Bradshaw, research director at the Climate Council, said.
“We are living in an age of consequences for our past inaction on climate change. Everything we see now is happening – our atmosphere warmer and more energetic – because we are still burning coal and gas,” he said. “We should be very concerned about the coming months, and we should be doing everything to carefully prepare.
“We should be doing everything possible to drive down our emissions now and through this make-or-break decade. How bad they get is in our hands and efforts today to drive down emissions will limit future harms and extreme heat.”
Climate change continues to shape Australian and global climates. In April 2023, the global sea surface temperature was the highest on record, according to weather bureau data, while Coral Sea surface temperatures were the second highest.
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