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It’s New Year’s Eve in Australia! Today on the 31 December 2019 in Australian news:

4,000 people forced to shelter on the beach during midday daylight hours as the fires surround them in Victoria. The fire has since passed the beach but many homes were lost and they are still stuck on that beach.

Some families took boats to the water for safety:

The near entirety of east gippsland was evacuated on Monday and many areas remain inaccessible. That’s 30,000+ locals and assorted tourists

and again at Bateman’s Bay…and again and again across the country.

The extent of the fires is creating dry thunderstorms - all the risks of lightning and none of the benefits of rain.

Sixty fires started today, adding to the two hundred that started on Monday. This is a map of all NEW fires in the past 24 hours

The Mogo zoo had to evacuate - thankfully the animals survived the immediate fire. People fleeing Mogo were cut off by the fires from the evacuation centres

Even those not directly in the path of the fires are experiencing the effects of the smoke as it drifts across town and effects health.

All these photos and snippets are from 31 December 2019, one day on Australia. There are more, but I’m getting depressed looking at them, trying to decide what tumblr would find interesting to share and raise awareness versus what won’t. Not a judgement call I like making.

It’s currently 6:30pm, so there’s still 5.5 hours left of this day for more to come. These fires are still going and the people in these photos are still not safe.

You can see before/after photos here.

Australia is only four weeks into summer (”fire season”) but the bushfires began 16 weeks ago - in the second week of spring.

This year’s season of extreme bushfires is not normal.

kurokeiko

Not only that, it has burned over 11. MILLION. HECTARES.

ELEVEN MILLION.

For comparison, the Amazon fires, which were a GLOBAL EMERGENCY, burned 2 million.

Not only that, but over 480 million animals have died. Koalas in the wild are extinct, and those that have been rescued no longer have a home. I won’t show photos of them, but it’s not fun.

The smoke here is so bad that people can barely be outside, and people with asthma, lung and heart conditions cannot leave their buildings or are currently living in hospital. People have died. Firefighters have died. Our families are stuck, without ability to be rescued, on beaches and IN THE WATER because it’s the only place left where they won’t catch on fire.

It started in SPRING, the second week of spring, and TOMORROW they’re declaring it a statewide emergency for NSW.

Not a national or international crisis or emergency. Just for one state.

I know it’s miserable, but my god imagine being one of the people on that beach right now, wearing nothing but your clothes and your dust mask, knowing everything you own is gone and that your country’s leader is only just now declaring an emergency (only statewide) because he physically has to.

I know we’re not great on money- I know a lot of us don’t have a cent to spare. But if you do, please, please donate to bushfireappeal.com.au . And if you aren’t able to donate, PLEASE RAISE AWARENESS. Because if the world can find out and make a big deal over it, maybe the people who run our country will.

Please.

We are desperate, we are hot, and we are burning.