Black saturday when was it

But when the sun rose the next morning, it was eerily quiet. The lush landscape was gone. Kinglake suffered the heaviest toll, with perishing.

In Marysville, 39 people died - 34 of them locals - and the town was effectively obliterated. After the final embers were doused the Black Saturday fires continued to 14 March , the true scale of the fires was revealed. About blazes had burned, most sparked by faulty power lines and lightning, but there were also cases of arson. A total of people died - Australia's deadliest ever bushfire event.

It left several hundreds more injured, more than 2, homes destroyed, and more than 7, people displaced. It was unprecedented - even for a country long used to bushfires. Over the years, Australia has been hit with several deadly blazes. But the Black Saturday fires of were singular in their ferocity - equal to 1, atomic bombs. In Melbourne, the temperature reached No firefighting force stood a chance, especially when the blazes hit Australia's highly flammable eucalypt forests, he says.

Spot fires sprang up kilometres downwind of the main front. The result was intense temperatures capable of melting metal: "It was almost like a living, breathing beast. Did climate change play a role? Mr Parkyn refers to his scientific training: he says it would be hard to say there's no link given the record temperatures now being experienced in Australia in particular, and the frequency of extreme weather disasters internationally.

He points to last year's California fires, the US state's deadliest, as one example. The damage from Black Saturday was also exacerbated by urbanisation, he says. Risk Frontiers, a research centre, has estimated that nearly a million addresses in Australia are located less than m from bushland.

In the aftermath, a royal commission inquiry was announced, resulting in widespread changes in bushfire preparation and protocols.

But this didn't account for the invisible toll. The Beyond Bushfires report , which surveyed more than 1, people affected by the fires, found evidence of significant mental health issues including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD and severe psychological distress.

The rates were significantly higher than what would be expected in the general population, it found. Lead researcher Prof Lisa Gibbs, from the University of Melbourne, likens the disaster to a fractured window: the cracks spread far and wide, magnified by the small rural populations. She has seen a measurable increase in domestic violence along with mental health issues. Home publication Documents and publications Ten years after the Black Saturday fires, what have we learnt from post-fire research?

Documents and publications. Author s. Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience. Publication Year. Number of pages. Share this. Ten years after the Black Saturday fires, what have we learnt from post-fire research? European settlers, who were afraid of bushfires, brought their own ways of using fire. At first they used fire to clear land but as they put up fences and buildings, raised crops and increased their herds, uncontrolled burning became a threat to life and property.

The first bushfires in the colony were reported in As Aboriginal people were driven off their land, their regime of low-intensity fire management went with them, and bushfires became more prevalent. From then, the government sought to limit Aboriginal and settler use of fire as an agricultural tool. To remedy so alarming an evil it will be proper to oblige all persons holding farms adjoining waste and uncultivated land to keep plowed up so much … as shall be adjudged sufficient to stop the progress of the fire.

As Australia became more urbanised, the fringes of cities encroached farther into the bush and it is here in the frontier zone between bush and city that bushfires do much of their damage. Devastating, large-scale fires have increased in size and frequency over the past years. It was in this edge environment that the Black Saturday bushfires inflicted the damage that made them some of the most destructive in Australian history. A heatwave struck south-eastern Australia in the weeks before 7 February , building on two months of hot, dry conditions.

Melbourne endured three days above 43 degrees and the temperature peaked on 30 January at These temperatures combined with extremely low levels of humidity to create tinder-dry conditions in the Victorian bush.

On the morning of 7 February north westerly winds in excess of kilometres per hour scoured the state, bringing hot, dry air from Central Australia. The storm helped create almost perfect fire conditions and when the winds brought down powerlines at The Kilmore East fire spread quickly and crossed the Hume Freeway at pm.

It burnt through Wandong and arrived at Mount Disappointment at 3pm. The fire was then blown towards Humevale and Kinglake. It reached Narbethong at pm and Marysville at pm before burning through Buxton and Taggerty.

The Kinglake Fire Complex was the most significant fire which evolved from the merging of the Kilmore East and Murrindindi fires on 8 February. It swept through state forests and national parks with flames recorded at 30 metres in height. By evening almost individual fires were burning and Victoria Police had announced the first fatalities.

The following day, 8 February, the Kilmore East fire and the Murrindindi Mill fire around Marysville merged to create the massive Kinglake fire complex. Hot, dry conditions continued and despite the concerted efforts of more than 19, Country Fire Authority members, the fires continued to blaze. It would take weeks before weather changes, reduction of fuel loads and human intervention extinguished the fires. The Black Saturday bushfires killed people, in the Kinglake area alone.

Another people were injured. More than , hectares had burned and buildings including more than houses destroyed.