Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has warned of a “difficult” summer bushfire season, as more than 70 bushfires tore through New South Wales.
The most destructive part of the blaze destroyed 16 homes at Koolewong and killed a firefighter.
There were also fires in Tasmania, which destroyed 19 homes in Dolphin Sands.
“So this summer of course, like all summers that would appear in recent times, is going to be a difficult one,” Albanese said on ABC Insiders on Sunday after visiting the Emergency Management Australia headquarters.
“But New South Wales in particular has a range of preconditions if you like for being quite a difficult one.”
Areas that were levelled by the Black Summer bushfires in 2019-20, which cost the country farmers between A$4 billion and A$5 billion and the tourism industry around A$2.6 billion, are among the areas of NSW that are vulnerable to another hazardous season.
While NSW Fire Service Deputy Commissioner Ben Millington won’t reach the level of Black Summer fires, this month has already generated the first “catastrophic” fire conditions since 2023.
“We do expect to see the increased risk of bushfires and grass fires going into summer,” he told the Australian Financial Review.
“We will see fires. Some of those areas that did burn in 2019-20, both bush and grasslands, have regrown, and that is now drying out rapidly. That’s what’s contributing to some of these fires.”
Australia’s national annual temperature has risen around 1.5°C since 1910, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Earlier this year, the treasury estimated that natural disasters in Australia cost the country A$2.2 billion in the first six months.
