France will send five experts to Australia to help fight the gigantic forest fires ravaging the country. They must offer support to the Australian authorities "on aerial control strategies, on struggles against forest fires in crisis management and on other specialties," Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said on Tuesday. National Assembly, recalling the experience acquired by firefighters in recent years because of recurrent fires "in the south of France".
A support mission is leaving this evening in #Australia to share with the local #secours forces its expertise in #fires, aerial control and prescribed burns. # NSWfires #NSWRFS pic.twitter.com/t3T9iq9ezm
- Sécurité Civile Fr (@SecCivileFrance) January 7, 2020This team "will be tomorrow (Wednesday) on the spot in Australia", that is Wednesday, and "will be able to determine with the Australian authorities how [...] to further strengthen the human resources" provided by France. Paris could send a hundred people according to the needs expressed by Australia, in accordance with the interview held on Sunday by Emmanuel Macron and the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Australian firefighters took advantage, on Tuesday, of a lull in hot temperatures to strengthen the containment lines around the huge forest fires that continue to burn.
Images published online by the Japanese satellite Himawari 8 and the NASA Earth Observatory have shown plumes of smoke from fires reaching South America. After Argentina and Chile, it is now southern Brazil which is reached by smoke, and the State of Rio Grande do Sul, according to the Brazilian Institute for Space Research. The plume therefore traveled 12,000 km to the east.
The private meteorological company MetSul, a regional reference in the matter, also reported on Twitter the arrival of this smoke in Porto Alegre, capital of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, stating however that this presence of smoke was "Imperceptible" since the cloud is at an altitude of 6000 m.
TEMPO | Tempo abriu em Porto Alegre, mas presença de fumaça da Austrália no céu é quase imperceptível, a despeito do satélite mostrar that há fumaça na atmosfera sobre in Grande Porto Alegre. Parte da pluma que está aqui tem menor densidade. No pôr do sol, talvez, se veja melhor. pic.twitter.com/6zGuDj9Pde
- MetSul.com (@metsul) January 7, 2020IMAGEM | Fim de tarde com presença de fumaça em suspensão na atmosfera em Livramento, na fronteira com o Uruguai. A photo by Fabian Ribeiro. pic.twitter.com/X4nUFwxsYM
- MetSul.com (@metsul) January 7, 2020According to the latest data, more than 25.5 million acres of land - an area equivalent to South Korea - have been destroyed by bush fires across the country since September. In recent weeks, the balance sheet has increased considerably. 24 people have died so far, tens of thousands have been evacuated from the southeast coast.
Ecological balance worsens
According to a recent WWF study and Professor Chris Dickman of the Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney, the bill for wildlife now stands at 1.25 billion mammals, including the symbolic koalas, birds, reptiles and including insects, amphibians and bats that have perished in flames across the country or no longer have enough to live on. Ten days ago, it was 500 million.
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“I don't think there is anything like the devastation that occurs over such a large area so quickly. This is a monstrous event in terms of geography and the number of individual animals affected, "the professor said on Kosu public radio on Tuesday.
He added: "We know that Australia's biodiversity has declined in recent decades, and it is probably fairly well known that Australia has the highest extinction rate in the world for mammals."