TRANSCRIPT Dec 12 2025
Over 50 fires are burning across Australia. The ground is baking at 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Winds are howling at 62 mph. And in the past 24 hours, 19 homes have been reduced to ash in a single blaze. One firefighter is dead. Hundreds more are racing against time to contain an inferno that experts are calling unprecedented.
This isn't a warning anymore. Australia is burning again.
December 8th, 2025. A 700 hectare fire, that's 1,030 acres, tears through Dolphin Sands, Tasmania, 150 km northeast of Hobart. In hours, 19 homes are gone, 40 more damaged, 122 assets destroyed. Sheds, water tanks, garages, entire livelihoods wiped out.
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Corroboration https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/12/weather-tracker-australia-bushfires-most-dangerous-since-black-summer
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The speed is terrifying. Residents barely have time to flee.
Rochelle Duce watches her partner scramble barefoot onto their roof, desperately fighting flames with a garden hose. He's up there trying and trying, and I'm screaming at him to come down, she later tells reporters, her voice breaking. Everything's in it. His grandmother's stuff, his mother's stuff, all my stuff. Everything. It's all gone. The whole lot.
1.15
Meanwhile, across New South Wales, more than 50 active bushfires rage simultaneously. The central coast is under siege. 16 homes destroyed in a matter of hours. Four more lost in Buladela. Over 300 firefighters are battling blazes that meteorologists describe as fastm moving. Fire service code for unstoppable. Then comes the news that stops everyone cold. A firefighter, a man who ran toward the flames to save others, is struck by a falling tree and killed instantly. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's words cut through the chaos. This terrible news is a somber reminder of the dangers faced by emergency services personnel as they work to protect homes and families.
Natural disaster declarations are activated. Emergency funds flow. But money can't stop what's happening underground in the atmosphere, in the very physics of fire itself. The numbers tell a story of a continent at war with itself.
Temperatures are spiking to 40° C. That's 104° F across vast stretches of New South Wales. Winds are screaming at 100 kmph or 62 mph, turning every ember into a missile, every spark into an explosion. But here's what makes this truly terrifying. Australia's baseline temperature has already risen 1.5° C since 1910. That's 2.7° F of permanent warming baked into the system. Fire seasons that once lasted three months now stretch for seven months or longer. Scientists are using phrases like almost year round occurrence when describing fire danger.
2.58
The physics of these fires defies comprehension. Flames reach 30 to 40 m high. That's 100 to 130 ft of pure destruction, taller than a 10-story building. The heat generates its own weather systems called pyro-cumulaninous nimbus clouds. fire thunderstorms that spawn lightning and create new fires kilometers away. The sound is described as a freight train or jet engine with constant explosions as trees literally detonate from superheated sap.
Tasmania's fire services commissioner Jeremy Smith captures the impossible conditions. We had well over a 100 km winds and fires under those conditions are extremely difficult to control, combat, and extinguish. These aren't just fires. They're atmospheric monsters feeding on drought, heat, and eucalyptus forests evolved to burn. Satellite data shows something unprecedented. During the 2019 to 2020 Black Summer fires, smoke traveled 11,000 km. That's 6,835 m detected over South America.
The fires burned so hot and so vast they altered weather patterns across the Pacific Ocean. Behind every statistic is a human life hanging in the balance. Right now, tens of thousands of Australians are living within evacuation zones. Their cars packed, their phones charged, waiting for the call that could come at any moment.
It's too late to leave.
The central coast of New South Wales, home to over 330,000 people, sits directly in the path of multiple active fires. Families are watching smoke columns rise from their bedroom windows. Children are asking their parents why the sky is orange at noon. Elderly residents, many with limited mobility, are being warned they may need to shelter in place if evacuation becomes impossible.
5.00
In Tasmania, entire communities have been cut off. Dolphin Sands residents have been told not to return home. There may not be homes to return to. Emergency centers are filled with families clutching photo albums and family pets. Everything else reduced to memory.
One Kulawong resident standing in the ashes of what was once his life tells reporters, "We start again. We've lost everything. What we've got left is what we're wearing." His voice doesn't break. There's no emotion left, just hollow acceptance.
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RECENT RELEVANT https://cityofangels25.blogspot.com/2025/12/australia-heat-fires-as-summer-2026.html
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Federal MP Gordon Reed puts it simply, "That's people's lives. That's people's livelihoods." But the numbers make it real. During the Black Summer Fires of 2019 2020, 65,000 people were displaced in New South Wales alone. Thousands were evacuated by naval ships from beaches where they sheltered for days as fires raged behind them and ocean stretched endlessly ahead.
The experts are choosing their words carefully, but their alarm is unmistakable. Emergency Management Minister Christy McBain speaks with quiet reverence about firefighters. WH run towards bushfires to protect not only property but livestock and livelihoods. There's something in her tone the way she emphasizes run towards that suggests she knows what they're truly running into.
Climate scientists are no longer hedging their warnings. Associate Professor Paul Ridd issues a direct alert. The fires burning in the WA Kimberly and central NS dollar's coast should be watched carefully as a signal to the rest of Australia as we head into the peak danger period over January. When scientists use words like signal and peak danger period, they're not talking about seasonal variations. They're talking about systemic collapse.
7.00
NSW recovery minister Janelle Saffin frames the current crisis with careful precision. While we continue to contain the fires that have impacted communities across NS dollars, our priority is also to support those people whose homes and livelihoods have been impacted. Notice the word continue. This isn't an emergency response. It's an ongoing war. One volunteer firefighter with 20 years of experience told reporters during the Black Summer Fires, "I've never seen fires this fierce. They create their own storms."
When veterans describe conditions as unprecedented, it's not hyperbole. It's a professional assessment of forces beyond human control. The pattern is unmistakable and accelerating.
3 years ago, fire seasons followed predictable patterns. 2 years ago, those patterns began breaking down. Last year, fires burned in months when the landscape should have been wet. This year, December fires are raging with summer intensity, while spring hasn't even ended. The data shows a terrifying trend.
In October 2023, Anistales recorded 87 fires in a single day. Emergency declarations that once marked rare extreme events are becoming routine administrative procedures. Fire danger ratings that were once reserved for the worst days of summer now flash across screens in what should be the cooler months.
The window for safe prescribed burning, the controlled fires used to reduce fuel loads, is shrinking rapidly. Traditional burnoff periods are now interrupted by extended danger periods where any spark could trigger disaster. Fire services describe seasonal patterns as increasingly ignored by outofse severe fires.
8.40
Weather systems are becoming more volatile. El Nino conditions are driving early heat waves and elevated fire risk months ahead of the traditional danger period. The Bureau of Meteorology reports extreme fire weather days are becoming more frequent and intense across the continent. What's happening now isn't seasonal variation. It's systematic breakdown of the climate patterns that made Australia predictable for thousands of years.
The last time Australia faced fires this devastating was Black Summer 2019 to 2020. 7 months of continuous burning. 33 people dead. Over 3,000 homes destroyed. An area the size of the entire United Kingdom consumed by flames. 19 to 24.3 million hectares burned across the continent. Those fires redefined what was possible.
NASA satellites tracked smoke plumes circling the globe. Naval vessels evacuated thousands from beaches as entire towns disappeared behind walls of flame. The insurance industry paid out $2.4 billion Australian dollars. That's $1.6 billion US. And experts estimate the total economic damage exceeded 10 billion.
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Black Summer was described as a once in many decades event, the kind of disaster that comes once in a lifetime, maybe twice. That was 5 years ago. Official alert levels remain carefully measured, but the response tells a different story. Natural disaster declarations are active across multiple regions. Over 300 firefighters are deployed on the central coast alone. Numbers typically reserved for the height of summer emergencies. The NS Adidal's Rural Fire Service maintains 70,000 volunteers on standby. A peacetime army waiting for orders. Emergency management centers are operating around the clock. Evacuation centers remain open, their parking lots filled with cars packed with possessions and pets.
Behind the measured language of official statements, the preparation is telling. Federal disaster assistance funding has been activated. Military assets are positioned for rapid deployment. International firefighting resources are on alert. The same networks that responded during Black Summer are quietly mobilizing. Weather forecasts show damaging winds continuing across Tasmania with some NS. Towns expected to exceed 40° C. That's 104° F. These aren't seasonal peaks. These are December temperatures that would be extreme in the height of summer.
Fire services describe current conditions as extremely challenging. When professionals WH fight fires for a living, call conditions extremely challenging, citizens should be afraid. The scenarios range from manageable to catastrophic, and no one can predict which path these fires will take. Best case, weather patterns shift, temperatures drop, and current fires are contained without further loss of life or property. Communities begin the long process of recovery and rebuilding.
But the worst case scenarios keep fire chiefs awake at night. If winds strengthen and temperatures continue rising, the current fires could merge into mega blazes, covering thousands of square kilometers. Pyroucumulan nimbus storms could spawn lightning strikes that ignite new fires faster than crews can respond.
Tasmania faces particular vulnerability. The island's unique alpine ecosystems and fires sensitive rainforests have evolved without regular fire exposure. If current blazes spread into these areas, entire ecological systems could face permanent change, not recovery, but transformation into something entirely different. NS Hollywood's central coast sits between ocean and wilderness, a geographic trap that limits evacuation routes.
If multiple fires converge, hundreds of thousands of people could face the same impossible choice that Black Summer survivors remember. Flee to the beaches and hope naval rescue arrives in time.
Climate scientists warn that Australia has entered an era where extreme fire seasons are becoming normal. What's happening now may not be an emergency. It may be the new baseline. This story has no ending because the threat never stops. As of this recording, over 50 fires continue burning. Weather conditions remain extreme. Evacuation warnings stay active across multiple regions. Emergency crews work in shifts because the danger doesn't sleep. The deeper truth is even more unsettling.
Australia's fire problem isn't seasonal anymore. It's permanent. The 1.5° temperature increase since 1910 has fundamentally altered the continent's fire behavior. Eucalyptus forests designed to burn now burn too hot and too often for their own survival. Fire services openly discuss almost year round occurrence of significant fire danger. The traditional fire season in December to March has stretched into a fire year that pauses briefly for winter before resuming its assault. Recovery periods between major fires are shrinking while fire intensity continues growing.
Every day these fires burn, they pump more carbon into the atmosphere, accelerating the warming that makes the next fire season more deadly. And it's a feedback loop without a clear exit. Fires causing climate change, causing more fires, causing more climate change. The question facing Australia isn't when these fires will end. It's whether they'll ever truly end again. Right now, smoke is rising across Australia. Families are evacuating. Firefighters are dying. And the conditions that created this disaster are getting worse, not better. This isn't over. It's just beginning. Stay alert. Keep watching because Australia is still burning. END
