Australia’s hottest towns hit 120F in a grueling heat wave: ‘It’s just damn hot’

(CNN) — Vast swaths of southeastern Australia are sweltering in a heat wave that’s pushed temperatures to close to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) and forced some residents to protect their properties as wildfires race through parts of rural Victoria.

Karlee Smith jumped on a quad bike to help herd sheep away from the fast-moving flames on a farm in the town of Gellibrand, a small rural town, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) southwest of Melbourne.

“We actually had to ride through where the fire was burning,” Smith said. “Grass fire, it’s patchy, it’s hot and it’s on fire.”

As her dad and brother battled the flames with a water tanker hitched onto the back of a tractor, they spied a male koala on the ground that had emerged from the burned bushland, tired and in shock.

The current heat wave is the most severe in 16 years, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Victoria saw its hottest day on record Tuesday, with the towns of Hopetoun and Walpeup reaching 48.9 C (120F), while the state capital Melbourne passed 45 C (113 F).

Temperature records have been smashed in the neighboring states of New South Wales and South Australia, with several towns hovering around 50 C this week, close to the Australian all-time record of 50.7 C last set in 2022 on the West Australian coast.

Heat is the deadliest type of extreme weather, and the human-caused climate crisis is making heat waves more severe and prolonged. Add humidity into the mix, and conditions can approach the limits of human survivability — the point at which our bodies simply cannot adapt.

Smith said conditions had been dry, but they had experienced dry years before.

“I had been thinking, every time summer comes around, I do think, is it Gellibrand’s turn to burn?” she said.

The state’s hottest towns

Steve Mccullough runs the local hotel in Hopetoun, where, along with the nearby town of Walpeup, temperatures hit a state record this week of 48.9 C (120 F).

He said locals in the rural farming community, home to just 700 people, are used to extreme heat. As the temperature rose, Mccullough said some workers clocked off at lunchtime, and other businesses closed early.

He kept the pub open this week to give residents refuge – especially those who feared sky-high power bills from cranking up their aircon.

“We opened our doors and made it known that anyone who was hot could come in here and just sit with no obligation to buy anything,” he said.

The menu was altered to spare his staff extra radiant heat from the grill. As always, cold beers were on tap in a place where 40 C temperatures are not unusual, he said.

“Once you cross 40 C, it doesn’t matter whether it’s 42 or 49 C, it’s just damn hot,” Mccullough told CNN. “You gotta work with it.”

Australian health authorities have urged people to stay hydrated and check in on the elderly, children and those with compromised immune systems who are more vulnerable to the worst impacts of the heat.

“Signs of heatstroke are loss of consciousness, confusion, seizures,” said Michael Georgiou, executive director of regional operations at Ambulance Victoria, who stressed that these are “life threatening emergencies.”

In Victoria’s hottest town, Mccullough said residents were looking out for each other.

“Everyone will tell you a story about knocking on someone’s door to make sure their neighbors are all right,” he said.

Extreme heat fuels out of control bushfires

Bushfires, fueled by the soaring temperatures, have menaced towns in the state of Victoria, prompting evacuations as volunteer firefighters attempted to douse flames around homes. A state of disaster remains in place as firefighters battle at least five major blazes.

Earlier this week, more than 100,000 homes lost access to electricity due to fire damage and a heat-stressed power grid, forcing some residents to struggle through the heat without air conditioners.

Gellibrand resident Kyla Beale said fires had been looming over the community for about two weeks following a previous heatwave earlier in January, and most of the town evacuated on Saturday.

Beale left with her 15-year-old son and dog, while her husband stayed to defend their house. “It was terrifying leaving my husband at the mercy of the winds and fire,” she told CNN.

Safe drinking water completely dried up in the town after the fire jumped containment lines and damaged the treatment plant that supplies Gellibrand’s potable water.

Climate experts have warned that the extreme conditions gripping southeastern Australia are a public health emergency driven by the burning of fossil fuels.

“Heat is a silent killer. It has killed more Australians than all other extreme weather events combined – with more than 1,000 lives taken during heatwaves between 2016 and 2019,” Dr Kate Charlesworth, a public health physician in Sydney and counsellor with the Australian Climate Council, said in a statement.

Scientists at the World Weather Attribution found the intense heat wave that hit southeastern Australia in early January was made five times more likely to occur because of the human-caused climate crisis.

The extreme heat, monitored over a three-day period from January 7-9, was made 1.6 C hotter because of climate change, the analysis found.

Smith, the other Gellibrand resident, said the koala her family found was checked over, fed eucalyptus and released into an unburnt gumtree.

It survived but Smith estimates about 90% of the 2,000-acre farm was burned and she doesn’t know exactly how many sheep and cattle were lost to the flames.

It’s still too dangerous to get a proper count or remove the surviving animals from the farm – and with fire warnings still in place on Friday, Smith says they’re not out of the woods yet.

“I think everyone’s feeling scared. It’s really quite horrible, but you can’t help but notice how everyone is just sticking together,” she said.

‘“This is Gellibrand community… everyone is just really wanting to support each other.”

The-CNN-Wire
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