Australian weather forecasts may finally herald hope for relief to exhausted first responders and residents who have witnessed raging bushfires since September 2019.
Some of the most significantly fire-devastated areas of Victoria and New South Wales (NSW) welcomed measurable rainfall for the first time in months on Jan. 15, 2020, and the relief is expected to continue.
“It’s the most positive forecast the RFS has had in months,” NSW Rural Fire Service Inspector Ben Shepherd commented, as per the Daily Mail, “and will give crews a chance to regroup and work on containment lines.”
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has predicted between 30 and 80 millimeters of rainfall in the eastern regions of NSW before Jan. 19. On the eve of Jan. 14, the city of Melbourne in Victoria welcomed its own relief in the form of 77 millimeters of rain—a month’s worth—in the space of just 30 minutes.
The rain also helped clear the thick blanket of smoke that had delayed a number of flights out of Melbourne Airport.
According to The Telegraph, Australia’s capital city, Canberra, surpassed an Air Quality Index of 4,500 in early January. For context, a reading over 200 is considered dangerous.
NASA later stated that, as of Jan. 14, the smoke from the Australian bushfires has fully circumnavigated the earth. More rainfall could further subdue the spreading smoke.
However, despite myriad benefits, the heavy rains are bringing with them peripheral dangers in the form of thunderstorms, hail, strong winds, and potential flooding. Some people fear that the relief will be short-lived, and the wild weather will herald yet more casualties.
As per the Daily Mail, while the rain suppressed some fires, lightning ignited others in Victoria’s Great Otway National Park. “Thunderstorms; a bit of a two-edged sword,” the Bureau of Meteorology’s senior meteorologist Kevin Parkyn said.
“While they can bring some much useful rain, it can also come down in pretty fast, high quantities,” he continued. “There’s high concentrations of ash, very vulnerable landscape when it comes to short bursts of heavy rainfall, which could see—very quickly—mudslides developing.”
“While the rain is welcomed, heavy rainfall and storms in fire affected areas can lead to dangerous conditions such as a higher risk of flash flooding, falling trees, and landslips,” reiterated Paul Bailey, assistant commissioner for the NSW State Emergency Services, as per The Canberra Times.
“In areas impacted by fires where vegetation has been destroyed, water from heavy rainfall can flow into riverbeds and we could see run-off in areas we wouldn’t normally,” Bailey continued, “resulting in flash flooding.”
Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin Authority also warned of the potentially catastrophic effect that heavy rains could have upon the freshwater fish population. “We would not be surprised to see fish deaths in streams that are picking up ash and sediments from the rainfall,” Andrew Reynolds, the authority’s executive director of river operations, told Guardian Australia.
First responders, despite collective exhaustion and the cumulative scale of the crisis, however, are not giving up. The NSW Rural Fire Service alone reported to The Canberra Times that 25,000 people had applied to join the relief effort since November 2019, exceeding the usual annual application quota by a factor of five.
Superintendent Mark Williams of the NSW Rural Fire Service’s Shoalhaven branch speculated, speaking to The Telegraph, that beyond relief efforts and despite the peripheral dangers, rainfall is the only answer.
“There is no end in sight in the absence of significant rain,” he said.
