Burn to avoid uncontrollable fires. This is the strategy adopted by Australian firefighters who started forest fires before the fire season which promises to be intense. Sydney then found itself under a cloud of smoke on Wednesday morning. Result: air pollution in certain parts of the city was comparable to that of Beijing or New Delhi. Residents were asked to close their windows and stay at home as much as possible.
NSW Rural Fire Service Inspector Ben Shepherd said about 30,000 hectares of undergrowth had been burned in the state since the start of July. “It’s fair to say that after two or three very wet years, the risk of wildfires has returned to New South Wales,” he told AFP.
A season that promises to be complicated
Authorities have predicted the fire season will be the most intense in Australia since the “black summer” of 2019-2020, when huge out-of-control fires raged on the east coast of the huge island continent.
Since then, conditions have been unusually wet, which has helped make trees grow faster, increasing the amount of potential fuel to fuel fires. According to the Australian National Weather Bureau, the southern summer is expected to be “hotter and drier than average”. He recently confirmed that the country had experienced the warmest winter on record.