Australia is engulfed in a ring of fire. This is how we got here...

A Brief Timeline of Australia’s 2019/2020 Fire Crisis

October 2019: The biggest forest fire in Australia’s history

After multiple years of severe drought, the country's 2019 fire season started off with Australia’s biggest forest fire in history, when a single ignition point set the Gospers Mountain ablaze in October.

November 2019: A few sparks engulf 300,000 hectares

By November, multiple fires burned in the north-west and near the coast of rural Victoria. As a result of unfavourable weather conditions, impenetrable bushland and limited accessibility to remote fire areas the blaze spread to 300,000-hectare area within the month.

December 2019: A ring of fire

Image source: BSV/DEVS

In early December, smoke from around the state of New South Wales accumulated around Sydney, causing its air quality to plummet to the worst of any major city on the planet. Towns and bushland bordering Sydney’s metropolitan area were ravaged, with lives and homes lost to the blaze.

By 8 December, the first Canadian firefighters arrived to help Australia with the bushfire crisis - volunteers willingly giving up Christmas celebrations with their families. Hundreds more volunteer firefighters would join from the USA and Canada, with New Zealand officially deploying its troops to support Australia.

The worst was yet to come for the states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria when lightning strikes sparked 30 other fires, and the country’s hottest day in history fuelled the conditions.

January 2020: No end in sight

By New Year, more than 100 fires burned across NSW and a multitude of fires formed a ring of fire around the continent. With manifold towns destroyed and hundred of kilometres declared "leave zones", thousands of people have been left homeless, others stranded without power, internet or road access.

Australia’s firefighters, international volunteers, and Australian 3000 army reservists are working with communities in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.

And yet, the fires are spreading, threatening to merge into a massive furnace.

Donate Bitcoin SV with 100% Assurance

As the Australian wildfires continue to blaze, people from across the world have shown their support for the nation by initiating fundraising campaigns to put a stop to the destruction and provide immediate humanitarian relief to the victims.

One of the campaigns which caught our attention is the BSV/DEVS Fire Crisis campaign initiated and managed by two Australians, Brendan Lee of Bitcoin Association and Faia, and Eli Afram, CTO of Layer2 Technologies.

The campaign’s plea is addressed to the Bitcoin SV community directly :

With over half a billion dead animals, countless houses burned, dozens dead people... The country of Australia is engulfed in flames across every state. We can sit here and show you thousands of images of the destruction, but the news is very much international already. Our firemen are struggling to contain it, our leaders have failed to do what is necessary. We are reaching out to the Bitcoin SV community, to do what you can, and offer what you can to our fire fighters who are battling fires every hour. No amount is too small and every little donation helps.

Why Donating with Bitcoin SV is Unique

Many fundraising campaigns leave unanswered the question of

How many people actually donate? What is the total sum of funds raised? How much of the money is actually used for the cause we’re contributing to, and how much is spent on admin and other costs?

In the case of the BSV/DEVS’s Fire Crisis Campaign, payment channels are set up so you can donate to the specific fire service you wish to support: NSW Rural Fire Service, Victorian CFA, South Australian CFS, Queensland RFBAQ.

Due to the Bitcoin SV blockchain’s fully transparent nature, it requires no more than a quick search on a blockchain explorer to verify the amount of funds raised for the wallet addresses attributed to each of the fire services. Just like with Bitstocks’ own 2017 fundraiser for Caribbean hurricane victims, the donations will forever be logged into the immutable Bitcoin ledger, to review even many years later.

What's more is that Bitcoin SV's unique ability to process micro-transactions cheaply and almost instantaneously means that every donation, no matter how small, will arrive without delay, at minor cost.

P.s. While the campaign’s fund manager, Brendan Lee told Bitstocks that they are still working out how to best transfer the funds to its recipients in the local currency, he confirmed that the process will be as transparent as possible. Stay tuned for more info!

20 January 2020 Update