Black Saturday bushfires

The Black Saturday bushfires were a series of bushfires that either ignited or were already burning across the Australian state of Victoria on Saturday, 7 February 2009, and 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 without families 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.

Background

A week before the fires, a significant heatwave affected southeastern Australia. From 28 to 30 January, Melbourne broke temperature records by experiencing three consecutive days above 43 °C (109 °F), with the temperature peaking at 45.1 °C (113.2 °F) on 30 January, the third hottest day in the city's history.

The wave of heat was caused by a slow-moving high-pressure system that settled over the Tasman Sea, with a combination of an intense tropical low located off the North West Australian coast and a monsoon trough over northern Australia, which produced ideal conditions for hot tropical air to be directed down over southeastern Australia.

The February fires commenced on a day when several localities across the state, including Melbourne, recorded their highest temperatures since records began in 1859. On 6 February 2009—the day before the fires started—the Country Fire Authority chief Russell Rees warned "We are in almost uncharted territory" in terms of bushfire conditions.