Black Saturday bushfires
| Black Saturday Bushfires | |
|---|---|
MODIS Aqua satellite image of smoke plumes and a pyrocumulus cloud northeast of Melbourne during the morning of 7 February 2009. | |
| Date(s) | 7 February – 14 March 2009 |
| Location | Victoria, Australia |
| Statistics | |
| Burned area | 450,000 hectares (1,100,000 acres) |
| Land use | Urban/Rural Fringe Areas, Farmland, and Forest Reserves/National Parks |
| Impacts | |
| Deaths | 173 |
| Non-fatal injuries | 414 |
| Structures destroyed | 3,500+ (2,029 houses) |
| Ignition | |
| Cause | Various confirmed sources including: |
The Black Saturday bushfires were a series of bushfires that either ignited or were already burning across the Australian state of Victoria. Saturday, 7 February 2009 was one of Australia's all-time worst bushfire disasters. The fires occurred during extreme bushfire weather conditions and resulted in Australia's highest-ever loss of human life from a bushfire, with 173 fatalities. Many people were left homeless and family-less as a result.
As many as 400 individual fires were recorded on Saturday 7 February; the day has become widely referred to in Australia as Black Saturday.
Then Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard described Black Saturday as "a tragedy beyond belief, beyond precedent and beyond words … one of the darkest days in Australia’s peacetime history."
The 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, headed by Justice Bernard Teague, was held in response to the bushfires.