Just One NSW/Victoria Fire Now At 2,300 Square Miles; 3X Larger Than Any Fire In CA History

A pair of massive bushfires in southeastern Australia has merged into a "megafire" engulfing some 2,300 square miles — a single blaze more than three times as large as any known fire in California.

The merged fire, which straddles the country's most populous states of New South Wales and Victoria, measures nearly 1.5 million acres, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. It is just one of some 135 bushfires in Australia's southeast that have claimed the lives of at least 26 people, killed more than a billion animals and damaged or destroyed nearly 3,000 homes.

Since September, the unprecedented bushfires have swept through an area larger than Massachusetts and New Hampshire combined. NASA has released an animation showing how smoke from the fires has reached the lower stratosphere and traveled as far away as Chile.

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The conservation group WWF-Australia estimates that 1.25 billion animals have been killed in the fires and says it fears that some species, such as the glossy black-cockatoo and the knee-high kangaroo, face local extinctions. Meanwhile, the government says the loss of livestock from the fires will exceed 100,000 animals.

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https://www.npr.org/2020/01/10/795169417/enormous-mega-fire-in-australia-engulfs-1-5-million-acres