GEOGRAPHY YEAR 7
STUDENT NAME: Kieran Phipson CLASS: 71C

Black Saturday Bushfires
The Black Saturday Bushfires is the name given to the bushfires that started on the 7th of February 2009 in Victoria. Approximately 400 fires started on the day of the Black Saturday. They were part of the bushfires that started on Wednesday the 28th of January 2009 and ended on Wednesday the 4th of March.
The Black Saturday bushfires killed 173 people and millions of animals, injured 414 people, destroyed 2,100 homes and displaced 7,562 people. People died trapped in houses or outside their homes, in their cars, in their sheds, garages, nature reserves and in hospitals after the fires.
The fires cost over 1 billion dollars’ worth of damage. In total 1,100,000 …show more content…
The temperatures reached 46 degrees Celsius with winds of 100km per hour.
At that time Victoria was suffering two months of extremely low rainfall and very hot dry conditions. A week before the fire a heat wave affected southeastern Australia. Melbourne broke records for three days and on the 30th of January it was the third hottest day in history.
In the evening of the Black Saturday a south west wind came, blowing in excess of 120km per hour, which increased the strength of the fires.
The average speed of the Black Saturday Bushfires was 12km per hour, sometimes the fires travelled up to 600m per 30 seconds. The heat produced was capable of killing people 400 meters away. Spot fires, which are fires that start ahead of the main fire front from burning embers, were recorded 35 km ahead of the main fire fronts during the Black Saturday Bushfires.
On the morning of 7th of Feb, 3,582 firefighters were put ready for the predicted weather conditions, and over 5,000 firefighters were used to fight the fires. These firefighters came from over Australia, New Zealand and the United States. One Australian firefighter was killed when a burnt out tree fell on him.
Fire preparation