New Scientist - 21.09.2019

21 September 2019 | New Scientist | 5

IT IS only just spring in Australia,

but bush fire season has already

begun, raising concerns that

there may be worse to come.

At their height earlier this

month, around 140 wildfires were

raging across eastern Queensland

and north-east New South Wales.

They have destroyed dozens of

homes and forced thousands of

people to flee. Some of the blazes

spanned hundreds of kilometres.

While there are now fewer fires,

this could lull people into a false

sense of security, says Philip

Stewart at the University of

Queensland. The latest weather

forecasts say the chances of fire

are “high” and “very high” across

affected areas in the coming days.

A change in the wind direction

or its strength could stoke fires

or cause them to alter course,

says Stewart. “Until fires are

completely out, it is not really

good to say that it’s safe.”

A combination of very low

humidity, gusty winds and

abnormally warm weather led

to the conditions that allowed

the flames to take hold earlier

than usual. Some areas saw

temperatures soar 10°C higher

than average, while some regions

are also into a third year of record

low rainfall. The threat of bush

fires will be higher than normal in

most of the country this summer.

Additionally, several of the

recent fires appear to have been

started deliberately, says Paul Read

at the National Centre for Research

in Bushfire and Arson. Police are

questioning suspects.

To better manage the bush fire

risk, there needs to be greater

recognition that Australia is a

fire-prone continent and a return

to the controlled burning practised

by Indigenous Australians for

millennia, says Stewart. “They

didn’t just sit back and wait until

vegetation was so dry that you had

catastrophic fire events as you see

now,” he says. ❚

Blazes devastating the country’s east coast have arrived unusually early,

raising fears about what is to come. Ruby Prosser Scully reports

Sexual health

Force often part of

first sex experience

ONE in 16 US girls and

women were forced into

their first experience of sex,

either physically or through

other kinds of pressure.

The figure comes from

an analysis of a national

survey run by the US Centers

for Disease Control and

Prevention.

Laura Hawks of Harvard

Medical School and her

team analysed the responses

from 13,000 women aged

between 18 and 44 who

answered the survey in the

past eight years. The team

used the term “forced” for

those who said their first

experience of sex with a

man was “not voluntary”.

About half of those who

responded this way said they

had been held down. About

a quarter were physically

harmed and a quarter

physically threatened – with

overlap between the groups.

About half reported being

verbally pressured, such as

being told the relationship

would end unless they had

sex, and a fifth said they had

been given alcohol or drugs.

Even when no physical

coercion was used, the

average age of women

forced into sex was 15 and

the average age of men was

27, says Hawks. “You’re

automatically getting a

picture of a huge power

imbalance,” she says.

There was less of an age

difference for those who

first had sex voluntarily:

the average age was 17 for

the women and 21 for the

male partner (JAMA Internal

Medicine, doi.org/dbk6). ❚

Clare Wilson

Spring fires in Australia

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