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Wildfires - Australia
Volcanic eruption - Congo
Torrential rainfall and flood - Indonesia
Earthquake - Turkey
Torrential rains and ensuing flood -
Ecuador
Earthquake - Afghanistan (March 3rd)
Earthquake - Afghanistan March 25th)
Earthquake - Taiwan
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Catastrophe Report 1
January 1 – March 31, 2002
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Wildfires - Australia
| Territory: |
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Australia |
| Region: |
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New South Wales (Blue Mountains,
Central Coast, Central Tablelands, Central-Western, Hunter Valley,
North Coast, South Coast, Southern Highlands, South-Western,
Sydney and Environs) |
| Date: |
|
December 12th, 2001 to January 13th, 2002 (period
of continuous bushfire emergency) |
| Event: |
|
Wildfires |
| Impact: |
|
50 injured; ~200 buildings destroyed or seriously
damaged; 360 homeless; 10,000 evacuated; 230,000 affected; 650,000
hectares burnt; 5,000 livestock killed. Provisional loss data:
economic – US$105 million; insured – US$ 40 million |
| Summary: |
|
Severe wildfires, many apparently started deliberately,
raged across much of New South Wales from mid-December 2001
to mid-January 2002, destroying an area twice the size of Greater
London. Rapid fire spread resulted from sustained heatwave conditions,
the extreme dryness of vegetation, and variable winds. Rainfall
and rain days for December were well below average, while winds
in the Sydney area gusted up to 100km h. At the height of the
crisis, over 100 fires burnt simultaneously in different parts
of the state. The worst affected areas, in terms of property
damage, were Hawkesbury, Silverdale - Warragamba, Helensburgh
and the Shoalhaven, In 1983, 72 people died in bushfires in
Victoria and Southern Australia |
| Data sources: |
|
Emergency Management Australia (http://www.ema.gov.au/) |
| Additional sources: |
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For satellite imagery of the fires go to NASA Earth Observatory
(Natural Hazards) at:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/
To find out more about the history of Australian bushfires
and building performance4 during fires go to: http://life.csu.edu.au/bushfire99/papers/leonard/ |
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