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Australia’s devastating and deadly bushfires crisis will come at an unprecedented cost, experts have revealed, dwarfing every other natural disaster.
It’s not simple to estimate the eventual economic cost of Australia’s 2019-20 megafires, partly because they are still underway and partly because it’s hard to know the cost to attribute to deaths and the decimation of species and habitats.
But it’s easy to get an idea of its significance – and the cost will be unprecedented.
The deadliest bushfires in the past 200 years took place in 1851, then 1939, then 1983, 2009, now 2019-20. The years between them are shrinking rapidly.
Only a remote grassfire in central Australia in 1974-75 rivalled them in terms of size, although not in terms of material burnt or loss of life.
The term “megafire” is a new one, defined in the early 2000s to help describe disturbing new wildfires emerging in the United States – massive blazes, usually above 400,000 hectares, often joining up, that create more than usual destruction to life and property.
Australia’s current fires dwarf the US fires that inspired the term.
Burning embers cover the ground as firefighters battle against bushfires around the town of Nowra in New South Wales on December 31. Picture: AFPSource: AFP
Vanessa Williams stands on the remains of Mogo Pottery, the business she ran with her husband. Picture: AAPSource:AAP
They are 25 times the size of Australia’s deadliest bushfires, the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria that directly killed 173 people, and are so large and intense that they create their own weather in which winds throw embers 30 kilometres or more ahead of the front and pyro-cumulus clouds produce dry lightning that ignites new fires.
The Black Saturday fires burnt 430,000 hectares. The current fires have killed fewer people but have so far burnt 10.7 million hectares – an area the size of South Korea, or Scotland and Wales combined.
We can offer a preliminary calculation of the mammoth cost of the ongoing bushfires crisis.
Evacuees from Mallacoota are transported by landing craft to MV Sycamore by the navy. Source:News Regional Media
THERE ARE EASY-TO-MEASURE COSTS …
The government has promised to put at least $2 billion into a National Bushfire Recovery Fund, which is roughly the size of the first estimate of the cost of the fires calculated by Terry Rawnsley of SGS Economics and Planning.
He put the cost at somewhere between $1.5 and $2.5 billion, using his firm’s modelling of the cost of the NSW Tathra fires in March 2018 as a base.
It’s the total of the lost income from farm production, tourism and the like.
It is possible to get an idea of wider costs using the findings of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission.
Final Report, 2019 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. Source:Supplied
… AND HARDER-TO-MEASURE COSTS
Tangible costs are those easily measured including the cost of replacing things such as destroyed homes, contents and vehicles.
They also include the human lives lost, which were valued at $3.7 million per life (2009 dollars) in accordance with a Commonwealth standard.
The measure didn’t include the effect of injuries and shortened lives due to smoke-related stroke and cardiovascular and lung diseases, or damage to species and habitats, the loss of livestock, grain and feed, crops, orchards and national and local parks.
Also excluded were “intangibles”, among them the social costs of mental health problems and unemployment and increases in suicide, substance abuse, relationship breakdowns and domestic violence.
Since August 2019, Australia's unprecedented bushfire emergency has burned more than 16 million hectares, left more than 25 people dead, killed up to one billion animals, and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. And it is not over ...
https://www.news.com.au/finance/eco...r/news-story/3c5fd4f7dabacc896cecd0167095d4b8
It’s not simple to estimate the eventual economic cost of Australia’s 2019-20 megafires, partly because they are still underway and partly because it’s hard to know the cost to attribute to deaths and the decimation of species and habitats.
But it’s easy to get an idea of its significance – and the cost will be unprecedented.
The deadliest bushfires in the past 200 years took place in 1851, then 1939, then 1983, 2009, now 2019-20. The years between them are shrinking rapidly.
Only a remote grassfire in central Australia in 1974-75 rivalled them in terms of size, although not in terms of material burnt or loss of life.
The term “megafire” is a new one, defined in the early 2000s to help describe disturbing new wildfires emerging in the United States – massive blazes, usually above 400,000 hectares, often joining up, that create more than usual destruction to life and property.
Australia’s current fires dwarf the US fires that inspired the term.
Burning embers cover the ground as firefighters battle against bushfires around the town of Nowra in New South Wales on December 31. Picture: AFPSource: AFP
Vanessa Williams stands on the remains of Mogo Pottery, the business she ran with her husband. Picture: AAPSource:AAP
They are 25 times the size of Australia’s deadliest bushfires, the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria that directly killed 173 people, and are so large and intense that they create their own weather in which winds throw embers 30 kilometres or more ahead of the front and pyro-cumulus clouds produce dry lightning that ignites new fires.
The Black Saturday fires burnt 430,000 hectares. The current fires have killed fewer people but have so far burnt 10.7 million hectares – an area the size of South Korea, or Scotland and Wales combined.
We can offer a preliminary calculation of the mammoth cost of the ongoing bushfires crisis.
Evacuees from Mallacoota are transported by landing craft to MV Sycamore by the navy. Source:News Regional Media
THERE ARE EASY-TO-MEASURE COSTS …
The government has promised to put at least $2 billion into a National Bushfire Recovery Fund, which is roughly the size of the first estimate of the cost of the fires calculated by Terry Rawnsley of SGS Economics and Planning.
He put the cost at somewhere between $1.5 and $2.5 billion, using his firm’s modelling of the cost of the NSW Tathra fires in March 2018 as a base.
It’s the total of the lost income from farm production, tourism and the like.
It is possible to get an idea of wider costs using the findings of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission.
Final Report, 2019 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. Source:Supplied
… AND HARDER-TO-MEASURE COSTS
Tangible costs are those easily measured including the cost of replacing things such as destroyed homes, contents and vehicles.
They also include the human lives lost, which were valued at $3.7 million per life (2009 dollars) in accordance with a Commonwealth standard.
The measure didn’t include the effect of injuries and shortened lives due to smoke-related stroke and cardiovascular and lung diseases, or damage to species and habitats, the loss of livestock, grain and feed, crops, orchards and national and local parks.
Also excluded were “intangibles”, among them the social costs of mental health problems and unemployment and increases in suicide, substance abuse, relationship breakdowns and domestic violence.
Since August 2019, Australia's unprecedented bushfire emergency has burned more than 16 million hectares, left more than 25 people dead, killed up to one billion animals, and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. And it is not over ...
https://www.news.com.au/finance/eco...r/news-story/3c5fd4f7dabacc896cecd0167095d4b8
