Australian Bushfires - January 2020

Massive wildfires have burned over 15 million acres of land across Australia in the current fire season. Two dozen people have been killed. Tens of thousands have been displaced. Hundreds of millions of animals from across Australia's unique ecosystems have lost their lives. The smoke plume from the fires in southeastern Australia has darkened skies as far away as New Zealand, across an area wider than Europe.

As of January 6th, 2020 the fires show little signs of abating, due to extremely hot, dry and windy conditions which provide exceptionally opportune circumstances for rapidly spreading wildfires.

Evacuations have moved quickly in many areas, both towards the coast as fires have raged down to the shoreline, and away from heavily populated areas which are in many cases surrounded by forests and national park lands.

Direct Relief is working with Quantas Airlines to ship 500,000 N95 masks to partners in eastern Australia working to protect communities from the impact of wildfire smoke, including the Australian Red Cross and the Department of Health and Human Services of Victoria.

Using Facebook's Disaster Maps data we can tell the rate at which population densities have decreased and increased in certain areas throughout New South Wales, particularly in the dense coastal zone from Wollongong to Bega. Each map below shows a snapshot of the relative density of Facebook users with location services enabled at 4pm local time that day.

Data from Facebook Disaster Maps has proven extremely useful during many wildfire events in determining the areas most at risk from fires and smoke in order to optimize distribution plans for masks and other health supplies.

Data from December 29th and 30th demonstrate high relative population densities all along the coastal area south of Sydney.

On December 31st and January 1st severe wildfires spread to the Bateman's Bay area. Rapid evacuations can be detected, with many residents moving both south and north along the coast, as well as inland towards Canberra.

By January 3rd evacuation areas along the coast have spread up to Nowra, with Canberra seeing very significant rates of increase throughout most of the city.

As of the afternoon of January 6th there is some evidence of returnees in areas to the south and north of Bateman's Bay, although evacuations persist.

As additional information becomes available with daily updates to Facebook Disaster Maps, more maps will be posted to this ongoing story.