|
When I awoke in the NSW south coast town of Bermagui on the last day of 2019, I should have twigged straight away. At 8am the sky was a gruesome orange-black, the surrounding bush freakishly quiet. Our mobile phones had no signal. Outside, my car was coated in soot.
We knew fires were burning more than 100km up the coast at Batemans Bay, but Bermagui had seemed a safe distance away. Suddenly, it wasn’t.
Fire was bearing down on the seaside town, burning so fiercely it created its own thunderstorm. Residents evacuated to the beach after emergency text messages at 4am, but with our phone service down we’d slept on, oblivious. When my partner and I woke and worked out what was happening, we too bundled our bewildered young son into the car and fled.
With all roads out of Bermagui closed, we spent New Year’s Eve at a local club which had hastily been converted into an evacuation centre. Many evacuees were from the nearby fire-hit town of Cobargo. They watched, hands over their mouths, as the club’s giant plasma screens beamed images of their once-charming town, now a jumble of rubble and corrugated iron.
We lay our doonas down between rows of poker machines and lined up for dinner with hundreds of other evacuees. Food supplies in the town had already run short – the shelves of the local Woolworths were all but empty. To feed the hordes, volunteers began rationing dinner portions to just half a sausage and a slice of bread. They had no idea where tomorrow’s meals would come from.
When a road was finally opened, we escaped through blackened landscapes where sheep wandered paddocks with the wool burnt off their backs. My three-year-old son, sensing the mood, asked why his dad and I were so quiet.
All this raises inevitable questions. To what extent is climate change driving these fires, and how much of that is Australia’s fault? Do we need a permanent, paid rural fire-fighting force to deal with this “new normal”? Are our fuel, food and communications systems resilient enough to cope with these disasters? And how do we cope with the deep anxiety these fires provoke, on both a personal and societal level?
Over the coming days and weeks, The Conversation will examine the tough questions emerging from this crisis. Our authors, experts in the field, will cut through the political spin and barrage of information to help you understand this national disaster, and what it means for our future.
Today, the University of Tasmania’s David Bowman examines whether it’s time to ditch the traditional summer holiday, when thousands of people head to bushy areas in peak bushfire season. And while the fires absorb our attention, Monash University’s Neville Nicholls reminds us that cyclones, floods and heatwaves are also likely this summer.
When the immediate threat of these fires has passed, many bigger questions will remain. The Conversation will continue to bring you the responsible, evidence-based journalism you need to be properly informed. Thank you for your continued support.
|
