In the late summer of 2009, a massive firestorm swept through more than one million acres of dense bush in the southeast corner of Australia, killing 173 people and leaving more than 7,000 homeless. In the aftermath of the disaster, commentators almost universally described the blaze as “unprecedented.” This essay examines that claim in the light of contextualizing environmental histories and finds that although such firestorms are rare, they are far from unprecedented; they are in fact a necessary part of the cycle of regeneration in certain types of eucalypt forest. The idea that a never-before-witnessed event is unprecedented calls into question the shallow temporal frames through which deep time environmental phenomena are understood in Australian settler culture and offers an insight into often unnoticed ways in which contemporary society struggles with the colonial legacy. This struggle sits next to the ambition of land management authorities to adopt traditional Indigenous mosaicpatterned cool-burning techniques as part of a fire mitigation strategy, without directly addressing the colonial history inscribed on the land they are commissioned to manage.

中文翻译：

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深度灾难

2009年夏末，一场大火席卷了澳大利亚东南角超过100万英亩的茂密灌木丛，造成173人死亡，超过7,000人无家可归。灾难发生后，评论员几乎普遍将这场大火描述为“史无前例的”。本文根据环境历史背景对这一主张进行了研究，发现尽管这种暴风雪很少见，但远非史无前例。在某些类型的桉树林中，它们实际上是再生循环的必要部分。从来没有人见证过的事件是空前的想法，这使人们对浅薄的时间框架提出了质疑，通过这些时间框架，人们可以了解澳大利亚移民文化中的深层环境现象，并且可以洞悉当代社会常常与殖民地遗产抗争的方式。这场斗争毗邻土地管理当局的雄心壮志，他们将采用传统的土著马赛克图案冷烧技术作为减火策略的一部分，而没有直接解决委托他们管理的土地上刻有的殖民历史。