Australia's largest city of Sydney was clouded with smoke when more
than 80 wildfires raged across the state of New South Wales. These
images were captured on the morning of December 30, 2001, by the
Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard NASA's
Terra spacecraft. The left-hand image is from the instrument's
26-degree forward-viewing camera, and the right-hand image is from the
60-degree forward-viewing camera. The vast extent of smoke from
numerous fires is visible, particularly in the more oblique view.
Sydney is located just above image center.
Dubbed the "black Christmas" fires, the blazes destroyed more than 150
homes and blackened over 5000 square kilometers (about 1.24 million
acres) of farmland and wilderness between December 23, 2001 and
January 3, 2002. Many of the fires are believed to have been caused
by arsonists, with only one fire linked to natural causes. The
fires were aggravated by gusty winds and hot dry weather conditions.
Approximately 20,000 people have worked to contain the blazes. No
people have lost their lives or been seriously injured. Nevertheless,
the fires are considered to be the most prolonged and destructive of
any in Australia since the Ash Wednesday conflagration of 1983
that claimed 72 lives.
The images represent an area 322 kilometers x 374 kilometers and were
captured during Terra orbit 10829.
Image credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team.
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