Mourning a disappearing world as Australia burns GlobeDebate
Fire personnel use a hose in an effort to extinguish a bushfire as it burns near homes on the outskirts of the town of Bilpin, Australia on Dec. 19, 2019.Jessica Friedmann is a writer and editor living in Australia. She is the author ofA month ago, scorched leaves began to fall from the sky. All week the light had been vividly orange, as dust from the northern fires travelled down the coast, diffusing through the air over our small town in New South Wales, Australia.
“I haven’t seen one as bad as this since ’53,” one man told me, head craning up from his wheelchair, “but don’t worry, love, nothing’s ever come into town proper before.” There is no doubt that the fires are growing more ferocious. Even without the changing climate, it would be inevitable; 250 years of land mismanagement have changed the way in which Australia’s bushland reacts to a spark., sometimes called fire-stick farming, which prevented vegetation build-up, germinated seed pods and regenerated the trees and grasses that need fire to grow new shoots. These burns rotated through a mosaic pattern, staggering the growth of eucalyptus and enriching the soil.
It’s as though every bushfire since is in the blood; the fear of fire runs so deeply. I can’t think of Ash Wednesday without thinking of the; every Easter the ghost of all that burning comes around. In one of those horrible ironies, the 2019 fire surrounding our town began on the U.S. sales day known as Black Friday, which dominated social-media advertising as I checked in for local news.
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