Eastern seaboard fires, January 1994

The year 1993 was very dry along Australia’s eastern seaboard, leading to generally dry vegetation. In late December and early January, a series of depressions moving south of southeastern Australia brought hot, windy weather to the east coast, causing extensive bushfires to flare up along the coast and adjacent ranges of NSW. On 3 January, the onset of severe fire weather conditions allowed fires previously more or less contained in forested areas to break away. Fires entered Newcastle suburbs, burning six houses and forcing hundreds of evacuations. By Wednesday the 5th, 80 separate fires were burning between the Clarence Valley and Batemans Bay. Fire fighting reinforcements from other states poured into NSW in anticipation of continuing extreme conditions.

The next three days were indeed extreme. Temperatures reached the high 30s in Sydney, and over 40°C on the far north coast; relative humidity fell to nearly 10 percent; and winds of 40-50km/h blew, with gusts to double that speed. Fires became unstoppable, and penetrated into suburban Sydney. On the 7th and 8th, scores of suburban houses burned. Australia’s most populous city almost became isolated by road and rail, with only the Hume Highway to the southwest allowing a way out. In the Grose Valley, raging fires caused evacuations in some towns. Relief finally came late on the 8th. Cooler and calmer conditions on succeeding days allowed suppression of the blazes; rain on the 14th finally extinguished them. During this episode three people died, and 205 houses (plus factories and warehouses) were lost, along with over 800,000 hectares of bush. Yet this was much lower than in many other Australian fire disasters.

A computer-enhanced satellite view of the fires on 8 January 1994, showing the “hot spots” ( bright red and yellow), burnt areas (brown), and the extension of smoke-plumes for hundreds of kilometres over the Tasman Sea.

The remarkable spell of westerlies which fanned and maintained the fires brought record high temperatures to many places along the Queensland and NSW coasts. Townsville broke a 60-year record with 44.3°C on the 7th, and temperatures in the wet coastal tropics exceeded 35°C - a value rarely reached - on six successive days. Rockhampton suffered five successive days over 40°C. Ironically, the same westerlies brought cold, showery conditions to Victoria and Tasmania, and even snow on the Alps.

As a post-script, dry conditions for the remainder of 1994, an El Niño year, led to a very early start to the fire season in Queensland and NSW. By late September, major outbreaks occurred north of Sydney, and in Queensland, from the Atherton Tableland to south coastal districts. Losses to crops, forests and pastures ran into millions of dollars, before November rains eased the situation.

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