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On Saturday night, around 60-100 hectares of mountainside burned down in Peck’s Valley above Muizenberg.

And so begins this year’s fire season in the Western Cape. The alarming thing is that while these occurrences are to be expected, officials are warning that this year will be the most extreme since 2015.

The 2023-24 fire season is expected to be wild, thanks to human negligence, increased temperatures, and hot, dry and windy summer conditions that will see bigger, more intense fires rage, more frequently, and in areas that do not normally burn, according to The Daily Maverick.

We already saw unprecedented heat occurrences take on the global North in their summer season, and so it makes sense that 2023 is shaping up to be the hottest year recorded.

Canada lost 18.5 million hectares to wildfires (that’s an area larger than the entire Western Cape, by the way), Algeria’s government reported 34 deaths in July, Maui in Hawaii had 97 deaths recorded in August, and Greece saw 28 deaths recorded in July.

Trevor Abrahams, the managing director of Working on Fire, told Daily Maverick that South Africa had already dealt with unprecedented winter fires and that this fire season was set to be the most severe in eight years.

“This year, we’ve already had a record fire season in the northern part of the country during winter, where provinces like the North West, which typically burns about 200,000 hectares, burnt about 1.2 million hectares, and there have been four fire-related deaths in that province. Agri SA says they lost about 400,000 hectares of grazing land and more than R1-billion worth of cattle.

“Those are huge knocks on our economy and our breadbasket; that’s what we see here in South Africa, more and more the fires are spreading into our breadbasket area. Typically, these fires used to be in the forest areas up in the north and in the Cape Fynbos zones, but now they are going into Free State, North West and Northern Cape,” he said.

Abrahams also mentioned that fires have been popping up in areas that don’t typically burn, and the fires were more intense and more frequent.

He said that 2023 was “the year of the planet burning, both figuratively and literally”.

The heat is compounded by human negligence. The fire manager at Table Mountain National Park (TMNP) said the cause of the recent Muizenberg fire was still undetermined but was possibly caused by a church group that had gone up the mountain and started a fire for warmth.

Anton Bredell, the Western Cape MEC for local government, environmental affairs and development planning, said about 97% of fires in the region were caused by human influence, either intentionally or through negligence.

The good news is that the recent wet winter in the Western Cape would reduce the risk of extreme wildfire for at least the start of the coming season, said Stefaan Conradie, a PhD student in climatology at the Climate Systems Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town.

Looking ahead, Conradie said, “As temperatures increase globally, the increasing risk of hot, dry and windy conditions over the fynbos biome is expected to lead to more frequent weather conditions that could support extreme wildfire behaviour. But vegetation conditions, social factors and fire preparedness determine how future fires evolve.”

The Western Cape government and its municipalities say they are prepared for the province’s fire season, having budgeted R16 million for wildfire responses this year, an increase on the R14.5 million spent last year.

“Approximately 2,300 firefighters, both professional and those on contract, will be available this season,” Bredell said. Aerial and ground support tenders were also in place. This included four helicopters and access to another four if needed, and four fire-bombing planes and eight spotter aircraft.

TMNP’s Buchman added, “We have staff strategically based throughout [Table Mountain National Park], on standby 24/7 throughout the year. We ramp that up significantly during the summer.”

If you’re on the outskirts or in risk-prone areas, it might be worth taking some fire-prevention measures. Cape Nature advises keeping grass and fine vegetation around the house trimmed, ensuring gas bottles are stored in a secure environment away from heat sources, and keeping a fire extinguisher in a place that is easily accessible.

[source:dailymaverick]