page_title: 2019–20 Australian bushfire season
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: 2019–20 Australian bushfire season / Overview
caption_attribution_description: English: Bushfire smoke over the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge
context_page_description: The 2019–20 Australian bushfire season, colloquially known as the Black Summer, was a period of unusually intense bushfires throughout Australia.
  In June 2019 the Queensland Fire and Emergency Service acting director warned of the potential for an early start to the bushfire season which normally starts in August. The warning was based on the Northern Australia bushfire seasonal outlook noting exceptional dry conditions and a lack of soil moisture, combined with early fires in central Queensland. Throughout the summer, hundreds of fires burnt, mainly in the southeast of the country. The major fires peaked during December–January.
  As of 9 March 2020, the fires burnt an estimated 18.6 million hectares, destroyed over 5,900 buildings and killed at least 34 people. Nearly three billion terrestrial vertebrates alone – the vast majority being reptiles – were affected and some endangered species were believed to be driven to extinction. At its peak, air quality dropped to hazardous levels in all southern and eastern states.
context_section_description: Starting from September 2019, fires heavily impacted various regions of the state of New South Wales, such as the North Coast, Mid North Coast, the Hunter Region, the Hawkesbury and the Wollondilly in Sydney's far west, the Blue Mountains, Illawarra and the South Coast, Riverina and Snowy Mountains with more than 100 fires burnt across the state. In eastern and north-eastern Victoria, large areas of forest burnt out of control for four weeks before the fires emerged from the forests in late December, taking lives, threatening many towns and isolating Corryong and Mallacoota. A state of disaster was declared for East Gippsland. Significant fires occurred in the Adelaide Hills and Kangaroo Island in South Australia and parts of the ACT. Moderately affected areas were south-eastern Queensland and areas of south-western Western Australia, with a few areas in Tasmania being mildly impacted.
  On 12 November 2019, catastrophic fire danger was declared in the Greater Sydney region for the first time since the introduction of this level in 2009 and a total fire ban was in place for seven regions of New South Wales, including Greater Sydney. The Illawarra and Greater Hunter areas also experienced catastrophic fire dangers, and so did other parts of the state, including the already fire ravaged parts of northern New South Wales. The political ramifications of the fire season have been significant. A decision by the New South Wales Government to cut funding to fire services based on budget estimates, as well as a holiday taken by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, during a period in which two volunteer firefighters died, and his perceived apathy towards the situation, resulted in controversy.
  As of 14 January 2020, 18.626 million hectares (46.03 million acres) was burnt or is burning across all Australian states and territories. Ecologists from The University of Sydney estimated 480 million mammals, birds, and reptiles were lost since September with concerns that entire species of plants and animals may have been wiped out by bushfire, later expanded to more than a billion.
  In February 2020 it was reported that researchers from Charles Sturt University found that the deaths of nine smoky mice were from "severe lung disease" caused by smoke haze that contained PM2.5 particles coming from bushfires 50 kilometres away.
  By the time the fires had been extinguished there, they destroyed 2,448 homes, as well as 284 facilities and more than 5,000 outbuildings in New South Wales alone. Twenty-six people were confirmed to have been killed in New South Wales since October. The last fatality reported was on 23 January 2020 following the death of a man near Moruya.
  In New South Wales, the fires burnt through more land than any other blazes in the past 25 years, in addition to being the state's worst bushfire season on record. NSW also experienced the longest continuously burning bushfire complex in Australia's history, having burnt more than 4 million hectares (9,900,000 acres), with 70-metre-high (230 ft) flames being reported. In comparison, the 2018 California wildfires consumed 800,000 hectares (2,000,000 acres) and the 2019 Amazon rainforest wildfires burnt 900,000 hectares (2,200,000 acres) of land.
  Whereas these bushfires are regarded by the NSW Rural Fire Service as the worst bushfire season in memory for that state, the 1974–75 bushfires were nationally much larger consuming 117 million hectares (290 million acres; 1,170,000 square kilometres; 450,000 square miles). However, due to their lower intensity and remote location, the 1974 fires caused around A$5 million (approximately A$36.5 million in 2020) in damages. In December 2019 the New South Wales Government declared a state of emergency after record-breaking temperatures and prolonged drought exacerbated the bushfires.
  Due to safety concerns and significant public pressure, New Year's Eve fireworks displays were cancelled across New South Wales including highly popular events at Campbelltown, Liverpool, Parramatta, and across Sydney's Northern Beaches, and as well in the natio
caption: Bushfire smoke over the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge on 29 December
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