New South Wales Wildfires Contained

The Rural Fire Service reported that fires have been contained in New South Wales. (Wikimedia Commons)

The devastating wildfires that have swept through Australia over the past few months have been successfully contained in New South Wales, the country’s most populous state, officials told BBC.

“After what’s been a truly devastating fire season for both firefighters and residents, who’ve suffered so much this season, all fires are now contained in New South Wales,” said Rob Rogers, assistant commissioner of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (RFS), a volunteer-based government agency that handles most of the state’s fires, on February 12. “It has taken a lot of work by firefighters, emergency services and communities to get to this point.”

The work of Australia’s largely volunteer fire brigades has been helped by the heavy rains that have swept the state since early February. Sydney experienced its heaviest rainfall in 30 years, according to EcoWatch.

The inclement weather has also caused flash floods, however, as well as baseball-sized hailstones in Sydney and the capital, Canberra. One man died as a result of the flash floods in the state of Queensland.

The rain has been welcomed despite its extreme effects. Two blazes centered around the Currowan and Gospers mountains that each burned around 500,000 hectares were declared over due to the downpour, along with dozens of smaller fires.

Australia’s current wildfire crisis began in September 2019 when the seasonal bushfires first spread from the central areas of the country to the eastern states of New South Wales, Victoria, and the Australian Capital Territory.

While bushfires are common in Australia due to its dry climate, the fires from the 2019-2020 season have been particularly destructive, sparking international conversations about how climate change has contributed to the severity of the fires. 

Thirty-four people have died (including 11 firefighters), more than 2,500 homes have been destroyed, and scientists estimate that as many as 800 million animals have perished from the blazes. More than a billion animals have been directly affected, including many endangered species of plants and animals, according to Professor Chris Dickman of the University of Sydney.

The work against the fires is not yet finished. The fires continue to burn in Victoria and across the country, and scientists wonder if Australia’s forests, which have largely adapted to withstand frequent bushfires, will even be able to regrow from the sheer intensity of the recent blazes.

The way the environment recovers from fire is a complex process with many variables. We can’t always predict exactly what will happen and when,” said Mark Antos, manager of science and management effectiveness in Parks Victoria, the government agency that is responsible for the management of the natural terrain of Australia’s second-most-populous state. “Some will provide spectacular displays, whereas other species may never recover.”