Black saturday how many people died

Much of the vegetation in Australia has evolved to survive, thrive in and even promote frequent exposure to fire. The seeds of many native species require smoke or intense heat to germinate. In southern Australia, hot, dry summers and bush dominated by oil-bearing eucalypts create an ongoing bushfire hazard. Aboriginal people have used fire as a complex land-management tool for tens of thousands of years.

Across country they adapt the heat and intensity of fire to individual environments to burn off grass and bush, to keep trails clear, promote new growth that will attract kangaroos and other prey, and to drive animals towards waiting hunters. From those fire practices began to change. European settlers, who were afraid of bushfires, brought their own ways of using fire.

At first they used fire to clear land but as they put up fences and buildings, raised crops and increased their herds, uncontrolled burning became a threat to life and property. The first bushfires in the colony were reported in As Aboriginal people were driven off their land, their regime of low-intensity fire management went with them, and bushfires became more prevalent. From then, the government sought to limit Aboriginal and settler use of fire as an agricultural tool.

To remedy so alarming an evil it will be proper to oblige all persons holding farms adjoining waste and uncultivated land to keep plowed up so much … as shall be adjudged sufficient to stop the progress of the fire. As Australia became more urbanised, the fringes of cities encroached farther into the bush and it is here in the frontier zone between bush and city that bushfires do much of their damage. Devastating, large-scale fires have increased in size and frequency over the past years.

It was in this edge environment that the Black Saturday bushfires inflicted the damage that made them some of the most destructive in Australian history. A heatwave struck south-eastern Australia in the weeks before 7 February , building on two months of hot, dry conditions.

Melbourne endured three days above 43 degrees and the temperature peaked on 30 January at These temperatures combined with extremely low levels of humidity to create tinder-dry conditions in the Victorian bush. On the morning of 7 February north westerly winds in excess of kilometres per hour scoured the state, bringing hot, dry air from Central Australia. People: 0 Area ha : Houses: 1. People: 0 Area ha : Houses: 0.

The fire started at about 1. People: 11 Area ha : 25, Houses: The fire was reported at 3. People: 0 Area ha : 7, Houses: People: 0 Area ha : Houses: 7. People: 1 Area ha : Houses: People: 2 Area ha 33, Houses: Bunyip - high resolution PDF 6. Churchill - high resolution PDF 7. Delburn - low resolution PDF It is a day that has redefined the way we consider living alongside fire. But it is also a tale of our wretched electricity system.

On 7 February , of the people who died, perished in fires ignited by a poorly maintained power grid. The Kilmore East Fire, north of Melbourne, which burned through , hectares and killed people, began when an electricity line or conductor fell.

This inferno joined with the Murrindindi Fire — also caused by a fallen power line —which went on to kill 40 people. In north-eastern Victoria, in the Beechworth-Mudgegonga Fire, two people died after a tree fell onto a power line. In Horsham, a pole cap on a line constructed in or came loose and started another. The electricity in those failed lines most likely came from Hazelwood or one of the other power stations in the Latrobe Valley. After the privatisation, lax regulation left us vulnerable to accidental electrical fires.

Recovery cost more than a billion dollars. Victoria had been enduring an unusual heat wave , with temperatures as high as 48 degrees Celsius degrees Fahrenheit and almost no rain. In addition, winds were recorded at more than kilometers 62 miles per hour. The government imposed a total fire ban across the state. Most of the bushfires were the result of arson , collapsed power line s, and natural events such as lightning strikes. The fires were not fully contained or extinguish ed until March More Dates in History January.

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