Bushfires in Victoria and South Australia in 1983

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The bushfires in South Australia 1983 , in Australia Ash Wednesday bushfires (German: Ash Wednesday bushfires ) or Ash Wednesday II , were a series of bushfires that culminated in a disaster in southeast Australia on February 16, 1983. Within 12 hours, more than 180 bushfires ignited at a wind speed of 110 km / h, burning large areas of Victoria and South Australia . Years of persistent drought in eastern Australia from 1979 to 1983 and extreme weather conditions created one of the largest Australian bushfires of the past century.

This fire killed 75 people and this was the largest number of deaths at the time, topped by the Victoria bushfire in 2009 with 173 deaths. In 1983, 47 people died in Victoria and 28 in South Australia as a result of the fire. These included 14 people from the Country Fire Authority (CFA) and 3 members of the Country Fire Service (CFS), a volunteer fire brigade. Many of these deaths resulted from the firestorm that resulted from the sudden and violent evening wind change that changed both the direction and size of the fire front. The speed and ferocity of the flames, supported by abundant fire material and a smoke-shrouded landscape, made targeted fire fighting and containment impossible. In many cases, residents had to protect themselves when the fire disrupted communications, cut off escape routes and cut off water and electricity. At the height of the crisis, more than 8,000 people had to be evacuated and, for the first time in history, a state of emergency was declared across the entire state of South Australia. 1983 saw the largest emergency volunteer operation in Australian history, involving approximately 130,000 firefighters, civil defense personnel, relief personnel and support teams hired from across Australia.

This bushfire wiped out the largest volume of assets in Australia to date. Over 3,700 buildings were destroyed or badly damaged, and 2,545 people and families lost their homes. The loss of livestock amounted to 340,000 sheep, 18,000 cattle and numerous local animals were burned or died as a result of the fire. The fire insurance was claimed in 4,540 cases with a volume of AUD 176 million, at an estimated cost of AUD 400 million in 1983 values. The damage in both states amounted to AUD 1.3 billion on the basis of 2007 calculations.

background

1980s bush fire in South Australia

As early as 1980, bushfires in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia destroyed 51 houses. This bushfire was known throughout Australia as Ash Wednesday Bushfires until 1983 .

El Niño

In 1982 the prolonged drought devastated large areas of eastern Australia caused by the El Niño climate cycle . In many places, the lowest rainfall fell in winter and spring since meteorological measurements began, and in November 1982 water consumption in Melbourne had to be restricted. On November 24th, the Victorian government proclaimed the earliest fire ban in Victoria's history. Around February 1983, Victoria had 75% less rainfall than in previous years. In the first weeks of February there was a few intense heat with the highest temperatures on February 1st and 8th. This combination further destabilized the already existing explosive fire situation in the forests of the highlands in the area around the capitals Melbourne and Adelaide .

Early bushfire season

The Victoria Government Fire Service Agencies hired additional staff and equipment and aircraft prior to the disaster to prepare for fire fighting in the summer of 1982/83. The first major bush fire occurred on November 25, 1982 and further major fires on December 3 and 13, 1982. Before February 16, fires were devastating areas of Victoria. A fire on the Cann River in the east of the state had been burning for a month. Prior to that, a large brush fire north of Bacchus Marsh in Wombat State Forest on January 8th had killed two Forest Commission workers on the Greendale Fire Department . On February 1st, the north side of Mount Macedon and areas of the state forest burned . 50 houses were destroyed. These fires were already claiming the reserves of the fire services at this point in time. In the 1982/1983 fire season, the CFA reported 3,500 individual bushfires in Victoria alone.

storm

The gigantic storm on the afternoon of February 8th was a omen of the things that are yet to happen. The storm clouds were 300 m high and 500 km long and laden with thousands of tons of soil from the devastated Wimmera and Mallee area in northwest Victoria. This phenomenon led to a dry change in weather, increased temperatures, reduced visibility to 100 m and created almost complete darkness for a period of one hour in Melbourne. On February 16, the day of the bushfire, there was also a storm in Adelaide.

Events of February 16

Map of the disaster areas affected in Victoria
Map of the disaster areas affected in South Australia

The Ash Wednesday , February 16, 1983, was a relentlessly hot and dry day. The weather situation in the morning was complex and not significant for the development of that day. A weather front separated hot, dry air from the land mass in the north from the cool air coming east from the southern ocean. A hot, turbulent and powerful northern storm blew in front of this front . The temperatures around Melbourne and Adelaide then rose quickly to over 43 ° C, accompanied by winds with a wind speed of more than 100 km / h and a relative humidity below 6%. In the middle of the morning the McArthur's Fire Danger Index rose to a value of> 100 in various locations in Victoria and South Australia. It turned out to be one of the worst fire weather days in southeast Australia since the Black Friday bushfires of 1939.

The first bushfire reported at 11:30 a.m. on the McLaren Flat in south Adelaide. Within hours, numerous reports were received of outbreaks of fires that flooded the emergency services of Victoria and South Australia. In Victoria alone, 180 fires were reported, 8 of which became main fires. At this stage, the entire city of Melbourne was surrounded by an arc of fires. In the early afternoon the first buildings had to be abandoned, partly in the Adelaide Hills , east of Adelaide and in the Dandenong Ranges , east of Melbourne.

Murray Nicoll, a 5DN radio journalist and resident of the Adelaide Hills, reported directly from his home area that five people died:

“At the moment, I'm watching my house burn down. I'm sitting out on the road in front of my own house where I've lived for 13 or 14 years and it's going down in front of me. And the flames are in the roof and - Oh, God damn it. It's just beyond belief - my own house. And everything around it is black. There are fires burning all around me. All around me. And the front section of my house is blazing. The roof has fallen in. My water tanks are useless. There is absolutely nothing I can do about it. "

“Right now I see my house burning down. I'm sitting on the street in front of my own house, where I've lived for 13 or 14 years, and it's going down in front of me. And the flames are reaching the roof - Oh, damn it. It's amazing - my own house. And everything around me is black. It's flames that burn everything around me. Everything about me And the front of the house is on fire. The roof collapses. My water tanks are useless. There is nothing I can do. "

Change of wind

The most devastating factor in these bushfires came just before nightfall: a heavy and dry wind came over South Australia and Victoria. This abrupt change of direction caused a dramatic intensification of the fires. The long fire corridor, which had been moving northward for the entire day, was suddenly fired by stormy northwest winds and an enormous fire front developed, which advanced faster than 110 km / h.

The almost cyclonic power of the wind created an unstoppable firestorm that generated tornado-like vortices of fire and fireballs from escaping gases from the eucalyptus with flames over three meters high. Survivors reported that the roar of the fire front ranged from fifty to a hundred times the volume of a jet plane. The change in temperature and air pressure was so strong that houses exploded before the fires reached them. A resident of Aireys Inlet on the west coast of Victoria reported:

“It was just this bloody great force. It wasn't fire by itself. It wasn't just the wind. It was something different to that ... a monster. "

“It was that damn great force. It wasn't the fire itself. It wasn't the wind. It was something else ... a monster. "

The unpredictable conditions created unique phenomena: a car had to be towed 90 meters on a road with the handbrake on while burning mattresses flew overhead, steaks could be fried on the surface of freezers, road surfaces blistered and caught fire, and sand melted Glass.

CSIRO experts later reported that the metal was melting because the heat from the fire reached 2,000 ° C after the wind change, a temperature that was reached when Dresden was bombed in World War II . In fact, the heat reached an energy of 60,000  kilowatts per m². These were comparable values ​​that arose after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki .

Entire cities were wiped out in minutes. In the Dandenongs, Cockatoo and Beaconsfield Upper were devastated, 12 firefighters lost their lives when the wind changed and they were hit by a roller of fire, while parts of Belgrave Heights (where the fire broke out), Belgrave South and other buildings burned down.

Most of the structures in the Macedon area and many of the historic areas of Mount Macedon in northwest Melbourne have been wiped out, including many 19th century listed sites such as mansions and gardens. The morning after the bushfire, well-known coastal towns along the Great Ocean Road , such as Aireys Inlet , Anglesea and Lorne, had turned into lunar landscapes. The fires on the coast were so intense that the fire departments were forced to let them burn uncontrollably all the way to the ocean, destroying everything in their way.

The area of ​​the burned area was approximately 2,100 km² in Victoria and 2,080 km² in South Australia. The bushfires in the summer of 1982/1983 destroyed a total of around 5,200 km² of land.

Review

It has been found that numerous bushfires in Victoria were caused by short circuits in the overhead lines and contacts between the lines and falling trees. A systematic review of fire safety was undertaken; Areas below the masts were cleared and local electrical lines that presented a risk were replaced with isolated three-phase power lines .

In South Australia an investigation came to the conclusion that the communication system used by the Country Fire Service did not meet the requirements. Therefore the Government Radio Network should be installed; however, it took another twenty years before it finally happened. The Bureau of Meteorology improved its weather forecasts with indications of wind changes and fronts. A disaster emergency plan has been drawn up and is legally effective, which has come to be known as the Displan. These findings led to houses being equipped with fire protection measures in mind and that Bush management and the efficiency of emergency reporting improved according to analyzes by the CSIRO. These measures helped save lives during the 1994 bushfires on Australia's east south coast and the 2003 Canberra bushfire .

An analysis of 32 deaths after the bushfire (excluding the firefighters killed) was conducted in Victoria, which found that 25 people lost their lives outside their homes, largely because they fled their homes shortly before the fire. The investigation found that last-minute escape was the most common fatal mistake to occur.

Long term consequences

As with the events surrounding Cyclone Tracy , this natural disaster bushfire had a major impact on the psyche of the Australian nation. For the next quarter of a century, the word was used to refer to all emergency response by fire departments, most commonly the 2003 Canberra bushfire , which occurred in similar weather conditions.

The 1983 disaster resulted in 75 deaths, the second highest death rate in Australia's bushfires. The 2009 bushfire in Victoria was a bushfire after Ash Wednesday in which 173 people died. This was Australia's largest fire natural disaster to date, while the 1983 bushfire caused the greatest financial damage and loss of property and land in Australian history.

Two decades after the disaster, those affected and their families are still suffering from the consequences of that day. This is evidenced by psychological studies carried out in the years and months after the 1983 bushfire. It was found that this event led to post-dramatic stress disorder (PTSD) in those affected .

The burdensome effect of Ash Wednesday was brought about again in 2008 because there was great public interest and extensive media coverage on the 25th anniversary. At that time, memorial services were held in the areas where the greatest fires had developed, and museums set up exhibits to which survivors were invited to speak about their experiences.

Affected areas in Victoria

Area / city Area (km²) Deaths destroyed buildings
Cudgee & Ballangeich 500 9 872
Otway Ranges 410 3 782
Warburton 400 0 57
East Trentham & Mount Macedon 295 7th 628
Belgrave Heights & Upper Beaconsfield 92 21st 238
Monivae 31.81 0 numerous (total number unknown)
Cockatoo 18th 6th 307
Branxholme 2 1 11
Source: Victorian Government Department of Sustainability and Environment

Web links

Commons : Bushfires in Victoria and South Australia 1983  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
  • dse.vic.gov.au : Further information from the Victorian Government Department of Sustainability and Environment
  • guides.slv.vic.au : State Library of Victoria's Bushfires in Vict.ria Research Guide: guides to books, government reports, websites, statistics, newspaper reports, and photos of the Ash Wednesday Fires .
  • theaustralian.news.com.au : 'Coming to grips with the price of flames' Newspaper article The Australian .
  • anglesea-online.com. on : Anglesea Online: Remembering Ash Wednesday.
  • users.ssc.net.au : Ash Wednesday in the Macedon Ranges.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cfs.sa.gov.au ( Memento from August 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ):
  2. ↑ About Ash Wednesday . Country Fire Authority Victoria, Australia. Archived from the original on March 23, 2008. Retrieved May 10, 2008.
  3. ↑ a b Australian Climate Extremes - Fire (English) , Australian Government - Bureau of Meteorology. Retrieved May 10, 2008. 
  4. ^ A b Paul Collins: Burn: The Epic Story of Bushfire in Australia . Allen and Unwin, Sydney 2006, ISBN 1-74175-053-9 .
  5. ↑ Memorials to Firefighters: Remembering Our Fallen . In: South Australian Country Fire Service Promotions Unit . CFS . Archived from the original on February 11, 2009. Retrieved May 16, 2008.
  6. ^ A b Robert Murray, Kate White: State of Fire: A History of Volunteer Firefighting and the Country Fire Authority in Victoria . Hargreen Publishing Company, Melbourne, Australia 1995, ISBN 0-949905-63-1 .
  7. ^ A b Joan Webster: The Complete Bushfire Safety Book . Random House Australia, Sydney, Australia 2000, ISBN 1-74051-034-8 .
  8. ^ SI Miller: Report of the Bushfire Review Committee: On Bushfire Disaster Preparedness and Response in Victoria, Australia Following The Ash Wednesday Fires 16 February 1983 . State Government of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia 1984, pp. 23-24.
  9. ↑ Stewart Smith: Bushfires. Briefing Paper No. 5/02 (PDF; 152 kB) NSW Parliamentary Research Library Research Service. 2002. Retrieved May 17, 2008.
  10. ↑ CFS Media Release: Ash Wednesday Memorial . CFS Public Affairs. February 15, 2006. Accessed on May 19, 2008.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.cfs.org.au
  11. ^ Economic Costs of Natural Disasters in Australia. (Report 103) (PDF) Bureau of Infrastructure Transport and Regional Economics, Australian Government. 2001. Archived from the original on May 28, 2008. Retrieved May 25, 2008.
  12. ↑ a b Hazards, Disasters, and Your Community ( PDF ) Emergency Management Australia . Archived from the original on October 16, 2007. Retrieved February 22, 2008.
  13. ^ Southern Victoria and SA: Bushfires . In: EMA Disasters Database . Emergency Management Australia, Australian Government. September 13, 2006. Archived from the original on February 12, 2009. Retrieved on May 25, 2008.
  14. ^ Insurance Council Catastrophe Information . Insurance Council of Australia. Archived from the original on May 10, 2008. Retrieved May 17, 2008.
  15. ↑ Ash Wednesday ( Memento October 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), Security and Emergency Management Office, Government of South Australia
  16. ↑ Ash Wednesday . Gisborne CFA. Archived from the original on October 8, 2007. Retrieved February 24, 2008.
  17. ^ The Melbourne dust-storm of February 1983 . Australian Bureau of Meteorology . Retrieved February 25, 2008.
  18. ^ Natural Hazards ( Memento February 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), Atlas of South Australia 1986.
  19. ^ McArthur's Fire Danger Index . CSIRO . Retrieved March 3, 2009.
  20. ↑ High Risk Weather pattersn - South Australia . Australian Bureau of Meteorology . Retrieved February 22, 2008.
  21. ↑ McGarry, Andrew: Ash Wednesday can happen again . The Australian . February 16, 2008. Archived from the original on February 13, 2009. Retrieved on February 23, 2008.
  22. ↑ Ash Wednesday . In: New Dimensions in Time . ABC. Archived from the original on April 18, 2008. Retrieved February 23, 2008.
  23. ↑ February 16th, 1983 . Fool Warren Fire Brigade. Archived from the original on February 20, 2008. Retrieved February 22, 2008.
  24. ↑ a b c d John Baxter: Who Burned Australia ?: The Ash Wednesday Fires . New English Library, Kent 1984, ISBN 0-450-05749-6 .
  25. ↑ Ash Wednesday archive footage, Channel 7 News report 1983 . MyTalk.com.au. Archived from the original on March 30, 2008. Retrieved February 22, 2008.
  26. ^ General Network Information . South Australian Government Radio Network page. Archived from the original on February 12, 2009. Retrieved February 22, 2008.
  27. ^ Understanding building infrastructure performance in bushfires . CSIRO . Retrieved March 9, 2008.
  28. ↑ Schauble, John: When making the right choice is a matter of life and death . The Age . January 13, 2005. Archived from the original on October 2, 2009. Retrieved on February 23, 2008.
  29. ↑ Ash Wednesday 1983 . Department of Sustainability and the Environment. Archived from the original on April 8, 2011. Retrieved February 22, 2008.
  30. ↑ Press release: Lessons learned from Ash Wednesday . University of Adelaide . February 16, 2003. Retrieved February 23, 2008.
  31. ^ Burgess, Matthew: Ash Wednesday scars remain 25 years on . The Age . February 16, 2008. Retrieved February 22, 2008.
  32. ^ Ashley Walsh: Ash Wednesday Exhibition at Prospect Hill. In: abc.net.au. ABC , February 16, 2008, accessed August 11, 2014 .