Old Tumbarumba Road Bush Fire Damage video, started by the Dunn’s Road bush fire December 2019.
Eucalyptus & Fire hazard According to Tim Flannery (The Future Eaters), fire is one of the most important forces at work in the Australian environment. Aboriginal people used fire-stick farming to burn vegetation to facilitate hunting and promote the growth of bush potatoes and other edible ground-level plants. In central Australia, they used fire in this way to manage their country for thousands of years. Flannery writes that
“The use of fire by Aboriginal people was so widespread and constant that virtually every early explorer in Australia makes mention of it. It was an Aboriginal fire that prompted James Cook to call Australia ‘This continent of smoke’.”……………..
“Economic impact Economic damage from 2009’s Black Saturday fires, the costliest in Australia’s history, reached an estimated $4.4 billion. Moody’s Analytics says the cost of the 2019–2020 bushfires is likely to exceed even that figure and will cripple consumer confidence and harm industries such as farming and tourism. …………………….
Riverina On 30 December, the Green Valley fire burning east of Albury near Talmalmo (which had started the day prior) developed into an unprecedented fire event for the Snowy Valleys[116] as a result of extreme local conditions. The smoke plume rose to an estimated 8,000 metres (26,000 ft) and developed a pyro-cumulonimbus cloud, becoming a firestorm.
The result was extreme, the wind was described by crews on the ground as in excess of 100 km/h (62 mph), with spot fires starting over 5 km (3.1 mi) ahead of the main fire front.[citation needed] Firefighters described what they believed to be a tornado generated by the fire storm, which began flattening trees and flipped a small fire vehicle.
The tornado then impacted a crew of firefighters working to protect a property, flipping their tanker over and trapping the crew inside, who were then overrun by fire. One firefighter was killed with multiple others injured, with one airlifted to Melbourne and two to Sydney.
Snowy Mountains The Dunns Road fire was believed to have been started by a lightning strike on 28 December in a private pine plantation near Adelong. In the Snowy Valleys local government area, by 2 January 2020 the Dunns Road fire had burnt south of the Snowy Mountains Highway in the Ellerslie Range near Kunama. Over 130,000 hectares (320,000 acres) was burnt and the fire was out of control. The NSWRFS issued an evacuation order to residents in the Batlow and Wondalga areas. Residents and visitors to the Kosciuszko National Park were evacuated and the national park was closed. 155 inmates from the Mannus Correctional Centre near Tumbarumba were evacuated”……………………… -Wikipedia.