Instead of a bright sunny day to enjoy before the night’s New Year’s celebrations, Mallacoota, a small beach town in Australia, awoke to darkness.

The black sky was soon replaced with a bright orange blaze as flames approached. At least 4 000 people were told to jump into the ocean to avoid being burnt alive, because evacuation via land was no longer a possibility.

That was six days ago, and things aren’t improving.

If you think this sounds like something out of an ‘end times’ film, you wouldn’t be far off. The raging bushfires that have swept through the country have reduced parts of it to what many are calling an ‘apocalyptic’ state.

2019 was Australia’s warmest year on record, reports Mashable. This has contributed to dried out vegetation that, when combined with high-speed winds and lightning strikes, has led to massive areas being consumed by out-of-control fire.

Like most of the planet, Australia has warmed significantly over the last century. So more extreme, if not unprecedented, bushfires are expected.

In 2018, Australia’s Department of Home Affairs published a report on current and future disaster risk, noting that with a “driver of a changing climate there is growing potential for some natural hazards to occur at unimagined scales, in unprecedented combinations and in unexpected locations.”

For more on how the fires started and some stats on the damage, watch this:

Mallacoota has been severely affected. The Australian Navy’s HMAS Choules was deployed to rescue Australian citizens from the small coastal town on New Year’s Eve. Scenes from the rescue show the town engulfed in smoke and flames.

Sky News took to the skies to get a better look at the situation:

According to Business Insider, the fires are so bad that satellites are able to spot the flames and smoke from space.

Current estimates suggest eastern Australia’s bushfire crisis has scorched more than 14 million acres of land, killed about half a billion animals, and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

You might remember Ellenborough Lewis, a koala rescued from a burning forest. Sadly, Ellenborough didn’t survive his injuries.

The Himawari-8 satellite overlooks the Western Hemisphere and photographs this side of Earth once every 10 minutes. Australia, its bushfires, and smoke plumes are very visible.

The European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite captured this while passing over Bateman Bay on New Year’s Eve.

Other parts of the country ravaged by the bushfires include Goongerah in Victoria:

More from the New York Times:

The past week’s images from Australia have been nightmarish: walls of flame, blood-red skies, residents huddled on beaches as they try to escape the inferno. The bush fires have been so intense that they have generated “fire tornadoes” powerful enough to flip over heavy trucks.

…The thing is, Australia’s summer of fire is only the latest in a string of catastrophic weather events over the past year: unprecedented flooding in the Midwest, a heat wave in India that sent temperatures to 123 degrees, another heat wave that brought unheard-of temperatures to much of Europe.

And all of these catastrophes were related to climate change.

The bushfires have also created entirely new weather conditions.

The fires are still burning and firefighters are working tirelessly to try and stem the blaze.

It might be time to start listening to Greta Thunberg.

[source:mashable]&businessinsider&newyorktimes]