Some 5.3 million Sydneysiders awoke on Thursday morning to find their city swaddled in some of the world’s most heavily polluted air.
Authorities insisted there was a good reason: with temperatures forecast to hit 30C over the weekend, the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) was rushing to complete hazard reduction burn-offs in Sydney’s north, west, and south.
A fearsome bushfire season is setting in fast, and this could be one of the last opportunities to reduce the fuel load.
What are hazard reduction burns, and are they effective?
Hazard reduction burns, often referred to as “prescribed burns”, are a method of mitigating the danger of large bushfires by intentionally starting smaller, controlled fires and reducing the amount of flammable vegetation.
Firefighting agencies across the country have relied on this approach for decades.
In the past few weeks alone, RFS crews have conducted burns across thousands of hectares of land, making up for lost time after only managing to complete about 24 per cent of planned hazard reduction burns since June.
(SBS)
