Why this year’s fire season is different to Black Summer

Three years of La Nina events have fuelled vegetation growth across much of NSW, but this has dried out rapidly over the past few months due to record-breaking dry conditions and warmer-than-average temperatures.

But how does this fire season stack up to Black Summer?

With this year’s fire season well underway, how does it compare to the 2019 and 2020 season?Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

This time three years ago, bushfires were raging, covering cities and the sky in a sea of smoke. From July 1 until December 6, 2019 there were 7766 fires and a total burnt area of just over 2 million hectares burnt.

In comparison, between July 1 and December 6 this year, there were 8491 fires and a total burnt area just over 350,000 hectares. While there have been 725 more incidents this season, during 2019-20 an additional 1.7 million hectares had burnt by this point, or about 6 per cent more land.

NSW Rural Fire Service boss Rob Rogers said while he was concerned about this year’s fire season, the state had not experienced back-to-back drought conditions such as we had in 2019-20.

Instead, heavy rain triggered by three years of La Nina events had fuelled grass growth in the centre of the state which would burn.

He added what was interesting about this fire season was that previously burnt areas that were ravaged in the Black Summer season were burning again, such as Kempsey and Tenterfield.

Regeneration of these areas has occurred much faster than would be expected, with lower plants flourishing, increasing the fire risk.

Thankfully, since 2019, technology has changed how we tackle fires, with things like drones or new fire modelling systems propelled by AI now at our fingertips.

One of those projects is a collaboration between Sydney drone startup Carbonix and ANU’s Bushfire Centre of Excellence, which will help create predictive models that establish areas most likely to burn after an electrical storm, and mapping areas that are at high risk of blazes.

Carbonix founder Dario Valenza (left) and chief executive officer Philip van der Burg (left) are working with ANU to improve how drones can be used in firefighting.Credit: Jane Dempster

Carbonix chief executive officer Philip van der Burg said the use of drones was a game-changer for bushfire management as it would not only remove the risk to people near blazes, but also allow for aerial data capture.

“If emergency services have a very accurate understanding of what’s happening, at all times, on the ground, they can make better decisions and act more quickly,” he said.

He added that since the Black Summer fires, there had been a political push to explore better ways to manage and prevent bushfires, with technology at the forefront of that. But progress was slow.

“The technology is proven; it’s not yet being implemented, and it’s difficult to know why. Commercial viability is still dependent on multiple stakeholders - including federal and local government, funding and budgets - which are coming more on board but we’re still not there.”

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