This season’s bushfires in south-eastern Australia have killed at least 32 people and destroyed almost 2,000 homes in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
The scale of the area burned by the fires is immense, with at least 4.9m hectares burned or currently burning in NSW alone, based on the most recent figures available.
We have updated this map to include figures for the fires burning in Victoria, South Australia, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia. It’s worth pointing out that Australia’s northern savannah regions frequently experience large fires, and these fires are very different in scale to the bushfires in the southern regions.
The total area burned, excluding tropical savannah, stands at more than 7.7m hectares as at 24 January.
Previously, we showed how quickly individual fires could spread by animating hotspot data, but we have since had many requests to show the overall scale of the fires.
While there is data available for burned areas generated from satellite imagery, it is not yet available for the current fires.
Instead, we have constructed a simple square that matches the area of each fire or fires selected, with the ability to overlay it on different capital cities for scale.
You can reposition the square by clicking on the map, and we have added a larger number of cities and towns for comparison.
Note: we have split out the bushfires affecting southern Australia from the bushfires that have occurred in Australia’s northern savannah because the current bushfire crisis is notable for the loss of a record amount of forested areas in the more densely populated areas in southern Australia. In comparison, the tropical savannah in Australia’s north burns frequently, and covers very large, very remote areas.
Data sources: RFS, CFA, QFES, TFS, DFES, and NAFI
