South Australia Fires

[patto_15]

thought i might start a topic about the fires going on in south australia and how heaps of people have died and lost homes and land. well, discuss

[wombat]

It's not nice at all; unfortunately though, the territory that has been hit has meant that the majority of fires have been grass fires, and the sheer speed of them is hard to comprehend unless you've seen them; people are just getting caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, completely unprepared.

To everyone on the east coast though, don't rest easy yet, like big Phil has been saying, we're in for a hard time over the next few weeks. Go clean your gutters, and try and clear as much dead plant matter from around your houses as possible.

Stay sharp and stay safe.

[No_Style]

It's not nice at all; unfortunately though, the territory that has been hit has meant that the majority of fires have been grass fires, and the sheer speed of them is hard to comprehend unless you've seen them; people are just getting caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, completely unprepared.

To everyone on the east coast though, don't rest easy yet, like big Phil has been saying, we're in for a hard time over the next few weeks. Go clean your gutters, and try and clear as much dead plant matter from around your houses as possible.

Stay sharp and stay safe.

When are they thinking the weather will break? I ask cause we are going away at the begining of Feb and live in a bushfire prone area...

Cheers

[patto_15]

i dont like fires at all. when i posted this that day we had a fire go through the back of my place. it was the derrinallum fire. we had 80 trucks and 8 helicopters helping out and if the change didnt come through it would have taken out our whole property and many more. sooo close. fire season should stop in about 5 weeks.

[wombat]

No style: sorry, I haven't seen a recent long term forecast; we're just taking it day at a time at the moment.

fire season should stop in about 5 weeks.
I don't know about that, if we have a dry March there's the possibility of problems for a fait bit longer.

[patto_15]

true. it was just off the top of my head.

[GordonG]

Up here in Cairns our bush fire season is the opposite of everyone else's - it's currently the Wet Season, and you couldn't start a bushfire with an oxy torch. My sister lives in the lower Blue Mountains back of Sydney, and they dread this time of year. They've had so many near-misses it isn't funny.

I really feel sorry for those who get caught by fires. It's not getting anywhere near the attention it should in the media because of the Asian tsunami, but they should remember that for the people involved it's just as big a disaster, especially for those who have lost a loved one in the fires.

Of course, if the bloody authorities or whoever it is wouldn't be so dead set against burning, there wouldn't be all this firewood lying around waiting to go up in a cloud of smoke and taking everything else with it. I mean, c'mon, trees die, leaves die and they let them lay on the ground and do nothing about them, then wonder why they've got a fire like SA had on their hands...

[wombat]

My sister lives in the lower Blue Mountains back of Sydney, and they dread this time of year. They've had so many near-misses it isn't funny....Of course, if the bloody authorities or whoever it is wouldn't be so dead set against burning, there wouldn't be all this firewood lying around waiting to go up in a cloud of smoke and taking everything else with it. I mean, c'mon, trees die, leaves die and they let them lay on the ground and do nothing about them, then wonder why they've got a fire like SA had on their hands...
A couple of years ago, a list was compiled of the top 5 wild fire danger spots in the world, our suburb was one of them, at least we're good at something..... :confused:

As for harzard reductions; I have no idea what the situation is in SA, but I do know that in NSW there is quite a lot of red tape these days surrounding HR operations, and quite often poor conditions on the chosen date can result in the operation not being carried out at all, as a reschedule isn't possible. From the green perspective, it's not really the issue of burning trees that is a problem as most of our native species cope with that quite happily, it's the fauna that suffers. Burning large areas of bush can leave lots of animals which rely on the flora for food and shelter in big trouble, something which we really don't want to do, this is the reason for the patchwork theory (reducing the fuel load in areas, but leaving adjacent areas undistrubed).

There's always a limit to what can be done though, and we're rarely affected by earthquake's or tornados, so I guess we have to cop the fires.

[No_Style]

Of course, if the bloody authorities or whoever it is wouldn't be so dead set against burning, there wouldn't be all this firewood lying around waiting to go up in a cloud of smoke and taking everything else with it. I mean, c'mon, trees die, leaves die and they let them lay on the ground and do nothing about them, then wonder why they've got a fire like SA had on their hands...

Unfortunately this ain't quite true. There was some fuckwits in the Blue Mountains in the last set of major fires, i.e. last year that has a fire tearing towards there place, so they called the fire brigade. With little hope of otherwise stopping the fire, they ploughed a fire break behind the properties with a bulldozer, hoping that combined with water bombing they could save the properties. The fire ended up not quite reaching the houses, the wind changed when the fire was a few hundred meters off. Then these people turned around a few weeks later and sued the fire service for damage to property.. :mad: :mad: Some people deserve whats coming to them i say.

We had our house burnt in the 1994 Sydney Bushfires, It burnt about 1/2 the house, and smoke damaged the rest...

Patto: Glad to hear your house is okay :) , sounds like a really near run thing :eek: