Wildfires

Wildfires - Australia

Bushfires could travel underground across parched parts of Queensland in coming days, the Rural Fire Service has warned. The dire warning comes as most of Queensland faces a very high fire danger over the next two days and a total fire ban across the state's south-east.

Soils throughout much of the state are extremely dry and that can help the spread of what is called "subterranean fires". A subterranean fire burns through a tree stump or a tree and it burns what you can see, but what you're not seeing is that it is burning underground through the root system. These sort of fires can then "pop out" of the ground days or even weeks later. The root systems of these trees can go for many, many metres into unburnt country and pop out three days later, five days later, three weeks later and start another fire.