From December 1938 to January 1939, peaked on Friday 13 January – Black Friday. The fires burned 1.5 to 2 million hectares, including 800,000 hectares of protected forest, 600,000 hectares of reserved forest and 4,000 hectares of plantations. They killed 71 people and destroyed more than 650 buildings and the township of Narbethong. The fires affected almost every section of Victoria. Areas hardest hit included Noojee, Woods Point, Omeo, Warrandyte and Yarra Glen. Other areas affected included Warburton, Erica, Rubicon, Dromana, Mansfield, the Otway Ranges and the Grampian Ranges. The findings of the Royal Commission held after the fires were significant in increasing fire awareness and prevention throughout Australia.
Source of graphic
Trends in Bushfire Activity
The following plot shows the major Australia bushfires over the same period of time (100 years) as the five-fold increase in the population of Australia. The data come from Wikipedia’s Bushfires in Australia.
FROM THE COMMENTS SECTION:
C.S.A. Bakker 11. January 2020 at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Reply
Stephan Pyne, a US professor wrote a book called “Burning Bush; a fire history of Australia”. On the fires of 1974/75 he says that the season was the worst in 30 years. He not only touches on the state of Victoria that saw the worst fires,
and where 4,5 million hectares were lost which was 1/5 of the state.
However, he also claims that overall
about 117 million hectares were burnt, predominantly in the interior
where there were few communities and it was therefore less noticed. He added that the scale of the area affected was largely detected by satellite after the fact .
The total area represented 15 % of the Australian landmass.
I don’t see this raised anywhere yet. However, wouldn’t mind seeing this searched.
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117 MILLION HECTARES WERE BURNT AND NOBODY NOTICED?