There are many ways a fire could start. The fires in Australia are becoming more and more of a wide spread issues and the ways that the bushfires are starting are becoming a larger concern. Australia has always experienced bushfires. However, this year they are a lot worse than usual. Fires can be caused naturally or artificially. Natural fires could be start by lightning, climate change, hot weathers and strong wins. Artificial fires are started by people throwing out still-burning cigarettes. Fires could be started by unattended fire places left over from camp. Both natural and artificial bushfires are dangerous and could be a danger for the animals and people of Australia.
Natural
Natural bushfires are the most common way that fires start. Fires, ironically, are usually caused by lightning strikes or accidentally by a spark. Although this is how the fire starts, the severity and deadliness of the fire depends on a few factors. The fire intensity and speed at which a bushfire spreads will depend on ambient temperature (air temperature of an environment), fuel load (amount of flammable material that surrounds a fire), fuel moisture (amount of water in fuel loads), wind speed and slope angle. All these factors can affect a bushfires severity and speed. If the land before the fire was dry, then the fire would be much more dangerous than if it were to have proper amounts of fuel moisture. An increase in wind speed would allow the fire to spread much more quickly than if the wind speeds were low.
Artificial
The majority of bushfires are started either intentionally or unintentionally by people instead of natural sources. There are many ways that a bushfire could be started artificially. They could be the result of a discarded cigarette, railway cause, campfires or arson. Recently there was a case of a fire in Binna Burra which had destroyed the Binna Burra Lodge, which was started by a carelessly discarded cigarette. However smoking, is not as common a source of bushfire ignition as people think, but arson is a behind a large number of bushfires both in Australia and internationally. Police are treating several blazes around New South Wales as suspicious.
Our Impact
Although there are many ways that fires are started, us normal everyday people could be a culprit of the many fires that are affecting the east of Australia. Because of climate change and global warming problems that the whole world are responsible for, we may be the reason that the bushfires are severe. Although we may not have started the fires ourselves, we may have increased the severity of the fires unknowingly as we may be helping the ever so increasing climate change and global warming problems. 2019 was Australia’s hottest and dryest year on record, this may have been a result of the climate change and global warming problems we are valiantly trying to slow down.
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