The afternoon sky glows red from bushfires in the area around the town of Nowra in the Australian state of New South Wales on 31 December 2019. Photo: Saeed Khan / AFP / Getty Images
The afternoon sky glows red from bushfires in the area around the town of Nowra in the Australian state of New South Wales on 31 December 2019. Photo: Saeed Khan / AFP / Getty Images

4 January 2019 (The Guardian) – The Premier of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, gets very real here, as she talks about exactly what the state is facing:

“We can’t pretend our state is in charted territory.

“The extent of this bushfire season in living memory, and many experts have been around much longer,than I have, who fought fires and observed circumstances, all agree – we’re in uncharted territory.

“How people interpret that is to them.

“As the Premier of this state, our state is facing a difficult time ahead. I’m absolutely confident we’ll get through it.

“But we can’t pretend that this is something that we have experienced before. It’s not.

“It’s the concurrence of events. Normally you have one or two big fires to worry about.

“We have several of them at the one time, several townships who never ever experienced a threat of bushfire were at threat of being completely wiped out.

That’s why through the night many people were monitoring the system. We had townships completely under threat which never happened before.”

“We can’t pretend this is something we have experienced before. It’s not”