Our fire-prone new normal

‘Phew! What a scorcher!’’ That mythical British tabloid headline stemmed from the sweltering 1976 summer temperatures. Nowadays those words carry more fearsome connotations.

High temperatures, strong winds and dry vegetation create blowtorch conditions and the threat of not just scorched, but hideously charred, landscapes. Such is the risk, and now frequently the reality, for ever-increasing tracts of New Zealand as we track alongside so many other countries in recording increased wildfire volatility.

In recent days it’s been Canterbury feeling the furnace. What must the firefighters who have been working feverishly to pull off spectacular saves around Christchurch have made of health officials’ quite valid advice to people throughout the east coast of the

South Island to avoid extreme physical exertion?

For the past five or six years, spectacularly intense and expansive fires have arisen with alarming frequency and intensity.

Last year Lake O¯ hau was swept by one searing through more than 550ha and destroying 46 homes, and a 3000ha fire near Lake Pukaki forced the evacuation of Mt Cook village.

The 2019 Nelson-Tasman fires spanned 2300 hectares and led to evacuations of more than 1000 people.

Even so, our Australian and Californian friends might respond to that little lot with a sardonic ‘‘cry me a river’’, given the infernos that assail their societies with mounting regularity.

Our country doesn’t have the same extent of highly flammable vegetation types that inflame the risks overseas, but our own tussock, grassland and shrublands, and weeds like gorse, marram grass, pines and hakea are more and more acting as efficient firestarters.

Fresh causes for concern are also presenting themselves, such as the charming scientific paper from the United States which late last year warned that wildfire smoke has the potential to carry and spread infectious bacteria and fungi over hundreds of kilometres.

This adds that extra helping of toxicity to the previously identified particulate matters carried in the smoke and already themselves identified as bad for lung, heart and immune system functions.

So here we are. As George Gershwin would certainly have written had he been around nowadays, it’s summertime and the livin’s uneasy. And it’s not even February.

The calls from Canterbury officials for ‘‘hypervigilance’’ in the face of fire risks are utterly justified and timely.

The challenge, in some ways, is to resist receiving such exhortations as a worthy piece of background information; part of an ambient chorus of daily chanting about what’s required to negotiate responsibly the challenges of climate change, pandemic, modern-age misinformation and more.

Clearly these are all towering, and mightily unforgiving matters requiring more than individuals’ responses.

The fire risk raises social and governmental responsibilities ranging from how we plan community developments, to what we plant (fireresistant natives have champions among academics and traditionalists alike) to the small matter of our persisting climate-impacting emissions.

There’s plenty in that little lot to occupy our attention. At the same time, there remains that up-close-and-personal need we have to be on the lookout for those little sparks, any one of which may turn thousands of hectares of our homeland into something truly hellish.

As George Gershwin would certainly have written ... it’s summertime and the livin’s uneasy.