Around 50,000 citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina live in Australia, and none of them were injured or killed in fires raging across the continent, but there is no information if some property belonging to BiH’s citizens have been destroyed, BiH Ambassador to Australia Mirza Hajric confirmed for Fena news agency.
Still, he expressed concern about the wildfires that have been raging for months and destroying other BiH citizens’ homeland.
“Our communities are very engaged in collecting and distributing supplies for Australia’s most deprived areas. There are many of our people who have volunteered and put themselves in the position of defending the country from this natural disaster,” added Ambassador Hajric.
He particularly praised the work of the Bosnian Business Club of Sydney and Mirso Garibovic, Kasim Salagic, Murat Ljukovac and Enko Hot, as well as Mile and Nikola Rajic, who have also arrived in the most dangerous places with their trucks to deliver essential food, water, medicines and equipment for extinguishing fires.
Unseasonably high temperatures and drought over the last three months have contributed to the conditions that have allowed the fires to proliferate.
“One of the key drivers of fire intensity, fire spread rates and fire area is temperature. And in Australia we’ve just experienced record high temperatures,” Mark Howden, director of the Climate Change Institute at Australian National University, told Reuters.
A report by the Australian Government’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said that last Spring, there was the highest fire weather danger with record high values right across the country.
“The dangerous fire weather conditions during spring 2019 is consistent with the increasingly severe fire weather seen in many areas of the country, owing to increasing temperatures and reduced cool season rainfall,” the report said, Newsweek reports.
