INTERNATIONAL WILDFIRES (21ST CENTURY)

2009

ECOCIDE
noun
destruction of the natural environment,
especially when deliberate.

INTERNATIONAL WILDFIRES

(Largest Fires of the 21st Century)

Australian Black Saturday
Bushfires (2009)

(Affected Areas & Casualties Map)

(Original Image)

#5

LARGEST FIRE OF THE 21ST CENTURY

The Official Story

BLACK SATURDAY BUSHFIRES
(5th Largest Fire of the 21st Century)

The Black Saturday bushfires were a series of bushfires that either ignited or were already burning across the Australian state of Victoria on and around Saturday, 7 February 2009, and were one of Australia’s all-time worst bushfire disasters. The fires occurred during extreme bushfire weather conditions and resulted in Australia’s highest-ever loss of human life from a bushfire, with 173 fatalities. Many people were left homeless as a result.

As many as 400 individual fires were recorded on Saturday 7 February; the day has become widely referred to in Australia as Black Saturday.

The 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, headed by Justice Bernard Teague, was held in response to the bushfires.

Casualties

A total of 173 people were confirmed to have died as a result of the fires. The figure was originally estimated at 14 on the night of 7 February, and steadily increased over the following two weeks to 210. It was feared that it could rise as high as 240–280, but these figures were later revised down to 173 after further forensic examinations of remains, and after several missing people were located.

A temporary morgue was established at the Coronial Services Centre at Southbank, capable of holding up to three hundred bodies. The Victorian Coroner compared this to a similar facility established after the July 2005 London bombings. By the morning of 10 February 101 bodies had been transported to the temporary morgue. The Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine stated that it could be impossible to positively identify many of the remains.

On 11 February, fire authorities estimated that as many as 100 of Marysville’s 519 residents could have perished. By 16 February, over 150 forensic investigators were engaged in searching the ruins of Marysville. A senior lecturer in fire ecology from the University of Melbourne estimated that the fires may have been burning at temperatures of 1,200 °C (2,190 °F), and concluded that, as a result, the remains of some people caught in the fires may have been obliterated. The final death toll for Marysville was later downgraded to 34 after a large group of residents who remained unaccounted for were officially located.

Among the dead in the Kinglake West area were former Seven Network and Nine Network television personality Brian Naylor, and his wife Moiree. Actor Reg Evans and his partner, artist Angela Brunton, residing on a small farm in the St Andrews area, also died in the Kinglake area fire. Ornithologist Richard Zann perished in the Kinglake fire, together with his wife Eileen and daughter Eva.

Fatalities (General statistics)

164 people died in the fires themselves, 12 died later in hospital, and 4 died from other causes including car crashes

Out of the 173 deaths, 100 were male, 73 were female.

There were 164 Australians, 9 foreign nationals, killed in the bushfires. The foreign nationals comprised citizens of: Greece (2), Indonesia (2), Philippines (2), Chile (1), New Zealand (1), United Kingdom (1)

7 of the deaths occurred in bunkers of both fire-specific and non-fire- specific design.

1 firefighter, David Balfour, 47, from Gilmore, ACT, was killed near Cambarville on the night of 17 February, when a burnt-out tree fell on him as he attached a hose to a fire tanker.

Source: Wikipedia

2009 Black Saturday Bushfires Statistics

Dates(s):	7 February – 14 March 2009
Burned Area:	450,000 hectares (1,100,000 acres)
Cause:	Various confirmed sources including: Power lines, Arson, Lightning, Machinery
Buildings Destroyed:	3,500+ (2,029 houses)
Deaths:	173
Non-fatal injuries:	414