Bushfires one day, floods the next: why Australia can expect more ‘compound events’

‘It’s the first time the Victorian emergency map showed flood warnings and fire warnings for the same area on the same day’: flood water outside the general store in Tinamba. Photograph: James Ross/AAP

As unseasonably early bushfires tore through Gippsland in Victoria on Tuesday, residents of the same region were told to prepare for major flooding.

“It’s the first time the Victorian emergency map showed flood warnings and fire warnings for the same area on the same day,” says the Wellington shire mayor, Ian Bye.