Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Bush fire headlines

The idea that 'We live in apocalyptic times' might be misguided.

Questioning the idea might equally be challenged.

To satisfy my own curiosity I searched 'bush fires' in Papers Past.

1915

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1936

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1946

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You might like some earlier ones as well

1900
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/LT19001221.2.40

1894
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS18941129.2.45.16

1886
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/MEX18860106.2.11

1872
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NOT18720213.2.22

1865
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP18650419.2.6

1857
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NENZC18570211.2.10

It looks like major bush fires happened in Australia about once a decade - though this year would be amongst the worst.

The interesting thing is how often major bush fires in New Zealand were in the headlines. That is something we don't see today with the same frequency.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

Thank you, The great thing about digitised instantly-accessible information is we can all easily equip ourselves with historical fact. There is certainly no excuse for ignorance of the past which can lead to extravagant claims about the present. As you say though this lot of bush fires seems particularly bad and it was not my intention to in any way denigrate the suffering they have caused.