Australia declared a week of state of emergency yesterday, as tens of thousands of people try to escape the more than 170 fires that devastate the southeastern states of Victoria and New South Wales. It is considered one of the largest evacuations in the country’s history, comparable only to the 60,000 people who had to flee from Tracy Cyclone in 1974. Temperatures of over 40 ° C and high winds after one of the driest, hottest springs in the world. which left much of the country under threat of forest fires. At least 17 people have died since October, and dozens are missing.
The effects are already being felt across the Tasman Sea, over 2,000 kilometers away in New Zealand, where glaciers have gone from white to brown due to the smoke and ashes of the Australian fires. One fear is that one of the consequences is that they melt faster because they absorb more light.
“The whiteness of an object reflects radiation, affecting the temperature,” explained Michael Guy, a meteorologist at CNN. “As such, areas of the planet that are covered with ice and snow do not absorb radiation as fast.” That is, if the increase in the scale of forest fires in Australia has been linked to climate change, they also risk accelerating these changes, not only by CO2 emissions but by accelerating glacier loss.
On the ground If melting glaciers will have global impacts on the ground in Australia, a situation of complete humanitarian emergency is being experienced. In the state of Vitória alone, 20 coastal towns, with between three and four thousand people, have been isolated since Tuesday, facing food and water shortages as they wait to be evacuated by the sea. “We have no ability to contain these fires … they will continue and people have to leave this area,” said number two of the forest services, Rob Rogers.
“It’s like a war zone. Or something out of a movie, ”he told the Australian newspaper. Daily Telegraph Paul Murphy, resident of Lake Conjola, a popular New South Wales coast destination, whose inhabitants were ordered to evacuate by land – hampered by fuel shortages in the region.
Many were arrested for ten hours as a result of traffic and roadblocks by fire as they tried to reach Sydney or the capital, Canberra. The queues were over 30 kilometers long, and some people eventually abandoned their vehicles and took refuge in nearby locations, according to the Guardian.
“I know there may be children in the car, that there is anxiety and stress, that traffic is not moving,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison acknowledged, calling for calm. However, many are out of patience, as the inhabitants of Cobargo showed on Thursday when the prime minister visited the fire-ravaged locality.
“Not welcome,” shouted Morrison, who was accused of “letting the country burn,” while a woman refused to shake hands with the chief executive unless he promised to increase funding for forest services. Many resent the recent Morrison family Christmas holidays in Hawaii, which were shortened after the death of two firefighters.
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