NFPA Journal - September/October 2020 - 21

koalas flooded the news,
experts at the Australian Koala Foundation
declared the marsupials
"functionally extinct"
after the blazes decimated their primary food
source, eucalyptus trees.
Although the report's
findings are technically
not yet final, researchers
say the figure of 3 billion
is unlikely to change.
Wildlife's relationship
with wildfire can be
precarious. While the
WWF report paints a
grim picture for many
of the species calling
Australia's bushland
home, some species
have been documented
to thrive in the wake of
wildfire-most notably
the black-backed woodpecker. "For decades,
it has been held up as
a prime example of a
species that requires
burned areas to survive,"
National Geographic
wrote in 2019. "It mainly
feeds on the larvae of
beetles that colonize
dying and dead trees
after wildfires, and it
excavates cavities in
dead trees for its nests."
The Australian wildfires burned primarily
from September 2019
through March 2020,
killing 34 people,
destroying nearly
6,000 buildings, and
inflicting over $4 billion
in damage, according to multiple media
sources. In January,
Paul Read, co-director
of the National Center for Research in
Bushfire and Arson at Monash University in Melbourne, told the New York
Times that the fires were the country's
"worst peacetime catastrophe" ever
and blamed them largely on the earth's
warming climate.
Read the full WWF report by visiting
nfpa.org/dispatches and selecting
"International News."

REUTERS

Alexandria, Egypt
Egyptian hospital fire kills 7 patients
Seven patients being treated for COVID19 in the intensive care unit at Badrawy
Hospital in Alexandria, Egypt, died in June
when a fire swept through the facility.

Officials blamed the blaze on an electrical short-circuit in an air-conditioning
unit. "In just seconds, there was a massive
fire and none of the workers were able to
control the situation because of the rapid
spread," Badrawy Hospital said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.
AP reported that the incident highlights Egypt's struggles to fight the
coronavirus pandemic and also noted
that "safety standards and fire regulations
are poorly enforced in Egypt and have
been linked to many deaths."
Fires in hospitals around the world,
especially in developing nations, are
a frequent occurrence. "Hospitals in
low- and middle-income countries often
lack strict building codes, certification
processes, and regulatory oversight,"
Robyn Gershon, a researcher at New
York University's College of Global Public
Health, told NFPA Journal in its January/
February 2020 article on the international
hospital fire problem. "Everything from
poor construction to a lack of emergency preparedness within the hospitals
can lead to adverse outcomes in staff,
visitors, and the most vulnerable population-patients-during fires or other
emergencies."
Read the full article at nfpa.org/
burntreatment.

Siberia, Russia
Russian wildfires on pace to
make history
In late July, wildfires burning vast swaths
of land across Russia's Siberia region were
on pace to become the country's largest
on record after burning an area the size of
Greece.
"Russia's sprawling Siberia region
became a climate hotspot, heating up
much faster than the rest of the planet.
This summer has already brought extreme
heat waves, oil spills caused by thawing
permafrost, and raging forest fires," said
Greenpeace Russia Wildfire Unit Head
Grigory Kuksin, according to CBS News.
"Russian authorities must work fast to stop
cities [from] being filled with toxic smoke."
By July 21, the fires had burned some
47 million acres of land, part of a larger
trend of wildfires burning throughout the
Arctic since April. Some of the smoke
from the Russian fires had even made its
way to Alaska, where skies have become
hazy as a result.
"I wouldn't be surprised if it continued well into the month of August and
perhaps even early September," Patrick
Doll of the National Weather Service's
Anchorage office told the Anchorage
Daily News.

RUSSIAN WILDFIRES
Forestry workers in Russia at the site of a wildfire in
the Omsk Region of Siberia in August. The fires are
on pace to become the nation's largest in history,
with smoke from the blazes traveling east across
the Bering Sea and darkening skies over Alaska.

N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

Dispatches_09.20 V3 DCS.indd 21

| 21

8/27/20 12:24 PM
http://www.nfpa.org/burntreatment http://www.nfpa.org/burntreatment http://www.nfpa.org/dispatches http://NFPA.ORG/JOURNAL
NFPA Journal - September/October 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - September/October 2020
