Grass Fire in South Australia

By: Elijah Mt. Castle

There was a wildfire in the Northeast edge of Southern Australia that grew to over 65,000 hectares (161,000 acres). The wildfire started on the 19th of September and burned for 10 days. Due to its location in remote APY land (An indigenous protected zone) fire suppression efforts was hampered. Fortunately, the communities of Kalka and Pipalyatjara were not threatened by the fire. Firebreaks were created to protect the endangered species of warru that live in the area. No damage was reported from the fire. Pictured is a rough extent of the fire with an estimated area of 51,000 hectares (126,000 acres). This was estimated by placing a 2km buffer around valid VNF detection points. The official measured area of the fire was 65,000 hectares, so the method of using a 2km buffer range around VNF detections was a decent approximation of the extent of the fire with an error of 21.5%. Due to the nature of VNF, flaming activity is only detected at night. The discrepancy in burn area may be due to missing data from the fire expanding during the day. The VNF data used was from September 19th – 29th, 2022.

October 28, 2022