Returning from a morning feeding his sheep, Jeff McCole, a 70-year-old farmer, p...
BUCHAN, Australia - Returning from a morning feeding his sheep, Jeff McCole, a 70-year-old farmer, paused to take in the bittersweet scene – a few droplets of rain falling onto the remains of his fire-ravaged home.
Seasonal bushfires have struck Australia in a way like never before, making for months of monster blazes and toxic haze, and fuelling a polarizing debate over climate change. Before rains slowed their spread in recent days, the fires had burned through almost 12 million hectares, destroyed more than 2,800 homes, and claimed the lives of 33 people. An estimated one billion native animals are also believed to have died.
Polling by the Australia Institute, a Canberra think tank, in January found that 79% of Australians said they were concerned about climate change, up five percentage points from last July, with 47% “very concerned”, a jump of 10 points. Climate scientists say that the bigger problem for Australia are longer droughts and increasingly hot summers.
When the bushfires hit the town on Dec. 30, they roared in on three fronts with a ferocity that no locals had ever seen. The town of Buchan is a single main street with a general store and a pub - the kind of place where locals have time to discuss the pressing issues of the day with a stranger. Walking through their property overlooking the Snowy River National Park, Coates and his wife Janice shook their heads at the destruction – bald, blackened hills and the devastated gorge below, once filled with ferns, lyrebirds and platypus in the creek.
Chris Hardman, the chief fire officer for Forest Fire Management Victoria, said in a statement to Reuters that his agency had planned to burn 246,396 hectares of the state’s public land last year, but was “unable to do so because it would have been unsafe”.
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