Fairfax - Peter Hannam
"The worst disaster in Australia's history," and "Terrible climax to
heat wave," were just two of the screaming headlines greeting readers of
The Age and the
Sydney Morning Herald 80 years ago this week.
The Black Friday bushfires of 1939 devoured some 4 million hectares of Victoria, as much of the state ignited on January 13.
For
NSW, the fury was mainly endured as a spell of heat so extreme that it
set records in some places that are yet to be toppled. Still, the state
was scorched too, as the
Herald reported: "From Palm Beach to
Port Hacking, and as far up the Blue Mountains as Mt Victoria, a
complete ring of bushfires surrounded Sydney."
 |
| Locals and swimmers assist exhausted firemen in Sylvania in Sydney on
January 14, 1939. At the time it was the hottest day on record in NSW. Credit: Beau Leonard/SMH |
Eight decades on, the fires still fascinate not just in tales of tragedy
and heroism but also in some of the changes they prompted in a nation
soon to be at war.
They also help illustrate how
technology has advanced to improve fire readiness and suppression, but
also how some approaches have remained fundamentally the same, even as
climate change is making a repeat of 1939's fire storms more likely.
The
Black Friday death toll was shocking enough (at least 71) to prompt a
royal commission in Victoria led by Judge Leonard Stretton. The
commission's report ran to 35 pages and was completed in less than four
months – rather more concise and speedy that its recent counterparts.
'Shadow of dread'
Today
the report appeals as much for its lyricism as the sober judgements
that would lead to the creation of Victoria's Country Fire Authority by
1945, when the war's end turned attention back to local priorities.
"The
soft carpet of the forest floor was gone; the bone-dry litter crackled
underfoot; dry heat and hot dry winds worked upon a land already dry, to
suck from it the last, least drop of moisture," the report's
introduction reads.
“Men
who had lived their lives in the bush went their ways in the shadow of
dread expectancy," it said before detailing the impacts of the
"devastating confluence of flame” that had been "lit by the hand of
man".
The results included whole townships "obliterated in a few
minutes", while the monstrous winds accompanying the flames uprooted
huge trees that were consumed by fire. "[F]ormer forest monarchs were
laid in confusion ... piled one upon another as if strewn by a giant
hand,” Stretton wrote.
 |
| Norm Goldings used his trusty DeSoto to rescue nearly 100 people near
Noojee in Gippsland during the 1939 Black Friday bushfires. |
"In
my view, Black Friday remains Australia's largest fire in terms of its
size – especially in Victoria, ACT and South Australia – and its impact
on the population, proportionally," says Tom Griffiths, emeritus
professor of history at the Australian National University.
"Most
of the deaths were people living and working in the bush at remote
sawmills, for the interwar years were a period of intensive milling of
mountain ash in the rugged Victorian ranges," he says. "Stretton
recommended that sawmills be moved out of the bush and into the towns."
But
moving the mills out of the forests only took them so far from harm's
way. Narbethong was one such town destroyed in 1939. Fast forward to
Victoria's Black Saturday fires in 2009 (which has its 10th anniversary
next month) and the town was again among those hardest hit, with its
sawmill torched.
Killer heatwaves
Just as in the 2009
fires – perhaps the closest analogue to 1939 – the death toll in the
accompanying heatwave easily exceeded that of those who burned to death.
Lucinda
Coates, a senior risk scientist at Risk Frontiers and a researcher at
the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Co-operative Research Centre, estimates
at least 420 people died in the 1939 event across Australia. More than
three in four of those were in NSW
"The series of heatwaves were accompanied by strong northerly winds, and followed a very dry six months," Coates says.
“The January 1939 event was notable for its longevity and record daily temperature maxima."
While
Melbourne hit 45.6 degrees and Adelaide 46.1, Bourke in north-western
NSW sweltered through 37 consecutive days above 38 degrees. Menindee,
site of this week's huge fish kill due to stagnant Darling River flows
and extreme heat, reached 49.7 degrees on January 10, 1939 – a statewide
record that stands to this day.
“Home
refrigerators were rare and air-conditioned buildings were unknown,"
Coates says. "Relief was sought at the beaches and baths; there were by
then no inhibitions about mixed bathing.”
 |
| Workers leaving the Noojee area in Gippsland after the 1939 Black Friday bushfires. |
Record-setting heat and drought
Linden
Ashcroft, a researcher of climate history at the Bureau of Meteorology,
says the weather in early 1939 was notably severe.
Four of the
five hottest days on record for New South Wales as a whole were in
January 1939, and two of the five hottest days in Victoria, she says.
Victoria's hottest day is now February 7, 2009, just before the Black
Saturday blazes. Melbourne hit a record high of 46.4 degrees in the late
afternoon.
"The
second week in January [1939] is generally regarded as the most extreme
heatwave to affect south-eastern Australia during the 20th century,"
Ashcroft says.
Dry conditions played an important role, too, with
the fires coming at the end of two dry years that would later be known
as the World War II drought, one of the worst on record for
south-eastern Australia.
"January 1937 to December 1938 were much
drier than average across almost all of Victoria and NSW, and remain the
driest two-year period on record for much of Victoria's eastern ranges
where the Black Friday bushfires caused so much destruction," Ashcroft
says.
"December
1938, in particular, was very dry across almost all of eastern
Australia, which would have helped to really crisp up any fuel.
"Things
were so dry that the topsoil blew up into dust storms easily, and did
so for much of the summer until much-needed rain fell in February 1939."
 |
| Scorched trees line Black Spur Road between Healesville and Marysville after Black Friday in January 1939. Credit: Department of Primary Industries |
Lighting up
With
a hot air mass forming over the continent, the missing ingredient was a
strong cold front from a low-pressure system off the south-west coast
of Victoria.
With
forest workers, graziers and even campers busy lighting fires as normal
– the latter "burning to facilitate passage through the bush”,
according to Stretton – the flames were ready to be fanned into an
inferno.
Even without sophisticated weather modelling or satellite
imagery to guide forecasters and the public alike, the "shadow of
dread" Stretton reported was real, ANU's Griffiths says.
"The
whole week leading into Black Friday was terrifying in the bush," he
says. "No one living in the bush at that time thought their homes were
safe – they fled to rivers, creeks, dugouts, mining tunnels and public
buildings where they existed."
Stretton notes the calamity that
befell those who were unable to flee, in particular one mill where all
but one of the workers died “while trying to bury [themselves] in the
imagined safety of the sawdust heap”.
Making progress
Some long-standing good would come out of the inquiry, as Joelle Gergis, climate scientist, notes in her book,
Sunburnt Country.
Apart
from the CFA's creation, recommendations acted upon included
"construction of a network of access trails, towers for early detection
of fires, the implementation of controlled burns during spring and
autumn to reduce fuel loads, and improved fire prevention education",
she writes.
Those gains were important, not just for humans, given the impact fires had the environment.
"Large
tree hollows and other important habitats for mammals and birds, such
as the Leadbeater's possum and powerful owl, were destroyed when the
mature mountain ash forests burned," Gergis writes, noting that reports
state the ash from the burning forests fell as far away as New Zealand.
"Local
soils took decades to recover from the damage, and in some areas, water
supplies were contaminated for years afterwards due to ash and debris
washing into catchment areas."
Travellers
up the Maroondah Highway beyond Healesville on Melbourne's
north-eastern edge can see some of the evidence of the 1939 fires to
this day. The battalion-like formations of towering mountain ash trees
of similar shining white girth bear witness to their common vintage, all
circa 1939.
Scientific leaps
Richard Thornton, chief
executive of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, said Stretton's
report "was the first real attempt to gain a deep understanding of the
causes and consequences of a major bushfire".
"This approach continues today as we study fires to learn how to better keep people and property safe in future fires,” he says.
Scientific
advances means technology available now and in 1939 are almost
incomparable. "Not just in firefighting equipment like more protective
clothing and vehicles, but in analysing the weather and the land with
satellites and aircraft, before, during and after bushfires," Thornton
says.
"Today
we have a much better understanding of extreme bushfire behaviour, and
how large bushfires interact with the atmosphere and create their own
weather," he says.
"There is software to predict the path of a
bushfire, and more experts trained to provide more accurate warnings to
threatened communities."
Human factors
Researchers
also provide expert advice on building standards to ensure that new
buildings are safer and more likely to survive a bushfire, provided
human psychology is taken into account.
"That’s one thing that
hasn’t changed since 1939," Thornton says, noting that people will
continue to want to build on ridges and at the end of one-way roads deep
in the bush even with the attendant risks.
Griffiths agrees, adding that in terms of research gaps about fire, "they are overwhelmingly cultural".
"We
know a lot about the physical behaviour of fire, less about the
ecological effects of fire, and least of all about the cultural, human
dimensions of fire," he says, citing international fire historian,
Stephen Pyne: "The cultural paradigm is both the most obvious and the
least developed [in fire research]".
'Beyond our imagination'
Thornton
from the bushfire research centre adds that studying events like the
1939 and 2009 conflagrations, or the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires in South
Australia and Victoria, also have their limitations because historical
precedents are only so helpful.
“At the time, the 1939 conditions
were beyond the imagination of everyone, even those who had lived their
whole lives in the bush," he says.
"What does the next bushfire that is beyond our imagination look like? What will its impacts be?
"Climate
change is causing more severe weather more frequently, but demographic
changes are having an equal impact and deserve just as much of our
attention," Thornton says.
"Since
1939, our population has grown from around 7 million to more than 24
million, with more people living, working and playing in at-risk areas."
Climate signals
The
Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO biennial State of the Climate report,
released late last year, singled out extreme bushfire conditions as
among the clearest changes under way as the country's (and world's)
climate warms.
The
most extreme 10 per cent of fire weather days – based on temperature,
rainfall, humidity and wind speed – has increased in recent decades
across many regions of Australia, especially in southern and eastern
Australia, the report said.
One consequence is an associated
increase in the length of the fire weather season, a view supported by
2018's late-season fires in March and late winter in NSW and Victoria.
The trend is particularly notable in spring.
"The
1939 heatwave remains a very significant event, but observations show
that extreme heat events, from hot days to heatwaves to a
warmer-than-average month, are happening more often," Ashcroft says.
She
cites the example of 86 extreme hot days (when the Australia-wide
maximum temperature was in the top 1 per cent of temperatures
recorded) observed during the five-year period from 2013 to 2017.
"This is more than double the number of extreme heat days recorded during the 50-year period from 1911 to 1960," she says.
One degree headstart
Unlike
1939, when Stretton concluded that much of the evidence put to him was
"quite false" and "little of it was wholly truthful", researchers have a
wealth of data open to scrutiny and cross-checking (even by deniers of
climate change).
That means they can compare how sea-breezes eased
the 1939 heatwave but were largely missing in the belter that swept
across south-eastern Australia ahead of Black Saturday.
"Black
Friday was the culmination of several dry years plus the perfect
synoptic set-up for a heatwave and then catastrophic fire conditions,"
Ashcroft says. Conditions would need to be "just right" for a similar
event to repeat.
"But if it did, the average temperatures across
Australia have increased by around a degree since 1939," Ashcroft says.
"If and when these ingredients do come together, they would occur
against a warmer backdrop than that of 80 years ago."
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