Australia bushfires

US2

mandrake04 wrote: »

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/extreme/records/national.pdf

There you go. Straight up lies from the media. Scaremongering.

Thelonious Monk

US2 wrote: »

There you go. Straight up lies from the media. Scaremongering.

Wtf are you on about? As I already said - the hottest day ever recorded in Australia was last week. That PDF is about maximum temperatures in different places.

mandrake04

Sheepdish1 wrote: »

Will there not be a lot of animals pushed to the point of being endangered in Australia? I under where you are coming from saying this happened throughout time but the difference is human use of energy and complete wastage of resources has caused the earth to heat up far quicker than it should.

I genuinely feel that this is the future if we don’t drastically change how much waste and energy we use. There will be climate refugees instead of war in years to come. People need to stop and wasting....I think people think that as long as they are not using plastic they think it is ok but wasting paper is also extremely bad for environment as it needs so much energy to be be recycled.

I’m not saying people need to live without paper etc but we need to stop wasting resources, look at the amount of food we waste. Some people I know have been to developing countries and are shocked at the amount of rubbish etc they see. In my opinion the only difference is we have the facilities to remove our rubbish through waste disposal. I feel mass consumerism in developed countries is a huge factor. It’s very sad to see, I hope they can control it soon. Must be terrifying being there.

There reports of this in the media but listening to experts on the Radio on Friday and they said it will take a while to recover but it’s not as if this hasn’t happened before it just hasn’t in living memory.

I think everyone thinks that the whole country is on fire, truth is it’s only tiny pockets here and there those pockets might be 1/2 size of an Irish county but compared to size of Australia really small current total area burnt in NSW, VIC, SA and QLD 6.2m Hectares over the last 6 weeks nearly size of Tasmania and in comparison Ireland is 8.4m Ha so it’s not really that big and it’s only frightening if you live in bush areas.

Panrich

US2 wrote: »

An error in judgement going on holidays but blaming the man for any of it is just plain stupid

He's a raving lunatic who believes in the rapture and thinks now is a good time to release a promotional video on how great his party is doing.

Sheepdish1

Panrich wrote: »

He's a raving lunatic who believes in the rapture and thinks now is a good time to release a promotional video on how great his party is doing.

The video was poor taste!

BorneTobyWilde

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7853137/American-Instagram-model-raises-100-000-trading-NAKED-selfies-bushfire-donations.html

She's over 1/2 million now. Fair play, even if it's a funny way to go about it .

AngryHippie

mandrake04 wrote: »

truth is it’s only tiny pockets here and there those pockets might be 1/2 size of an Irish county but compared to size of Australia really small current total area burnt in NSW, VIC, SA and QLD 6.2m Hectares over the last 6 weeks nearly size of Tasmania and in comparison Ireland is 8.4m Ha so it’s not really that big and it’s only frightening if you live in bush areas.

The "tiny" pockets are largely all that remains of national parks, bushland and pristine habitats however, that is the big issue here in my mind. They have also linked from loads of individual small fires to burn out large tracts of land all the way up the East cost, from Malacoota all the way to Fraser Island.
The normal Bushfire Season has only just begun, so the number of 6.2m Hectares is definitely not going to be the final extent.

The towns, houses and people impacted are far fewer (so far) than the previous bushfire emergencies of Black Saturday or Ash Wednesday. This is largely due to the hard work of the various fire services (mostly volunteers) putting themselves in harms way in order to save lives, buy time and save properties focusing on residential and infrastructure assets ahead of habitat.

The big cost will be the strain on native flora and fauna, while fire is a necessary part of the ecosystem, the extent and intensity of this fire season has made a major dent to food supplies, habitats and population of every species in a number of world heritage area habitats, and I can't see that scumbag Scott Morrison or his mining buddies pulling back from their current trajectories in order to help.

Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Wtf are you on about? As I already said - the hottest day ever recorded in Australia was last week. That PDF is about maximum temperatures in different places.

We don't have satellites that long

Roger_007

I saw a map on the news this morning that showed where all the bush fires have occurred or are occurring. Each fire was represented by a red dot on the map. There were literally hundreds of them. How are all these fires getting started? It surely cannot be some sort of spontaneous combustion caused by high temperatures, (or climate change), as the reporting would lead you to believe.
Bush fires are a normal and natural occurrence in Australia, but I wonder are many of the fires being started deliberately by people with an agenda?.

deceit

I was just wondering is their a rough percentage on what amount of this fire is caused by Arson?
The numbers arrested for purposely setting fires seems crazy to me
http://thedailychrenk.com/2020/01/03/australias-arson-crisis/

Wanderer78

Roger_007 wrote: »

I saw a map on the news this morning that showed where all the bush fires have occurred or are occurring. Each fire was represented by a red dot on the map. There were literally hundreds of them. How are all these fires getting started? It surely cannot be some sort of spontaneous combustion caused by high temperatures, (or climate change), as the reporting would lead you to believe.
Bush fires are a normal and natural occurrence in Australia, but I wonder are many of the fires being started deliberately by people with an agenda?.

apparently many are indeed started deliberately, ***** generally dont have an agenda

Harry Palmr

Roger_007 wrote: »

I saw a map on the news this morning that showed where all the bush fires have occurred or are occurring. Each fire was represented by a red dot on the map. There were literally hundreds of them. How are all these fires getting started? It surely cannot be some sort of spontaneous combustion caused by high temperatures, (or climate change), as the reporting would lead you to believe.
Bush fires are a normal and natural occurrence in Australia, but I wonder are many of the fires being started deliberately by people with an agenda?.

There are probably some ****, because pyromania is quite a powerful compulsion for people.

On the other hand it's probably good to know how fires start in such an environment - the air is full of what are basically mini fire bombs being carried by a high wind and lighting, which is created by the fire, have you seen those fire tornadoes? It's a whole environment of its own

jmayo

X111111111111 wrote: »

He's handling it fine it's just the usual outrage mob looking for something to moan about.

Ah the typical type of bullshyte pedaled by his puppet master, that old prick Murdoch.

Murdoch's tv station, his papers are attacking ABC for making too much out of the fires and trying to push the fires off the front page of their own papers.

Dakota Dan wrote: »

The greens are to blame, banning controlled burning and fire breaks.

When were they in government, remind me again?

Cody montana wrote: »

Erm, he went to holidays to Hawaii in the middle of it.
He’s being hounded by politicians, members of the public and victims.
They’re chanting “**** Scott Morrison” at music concerts.
Artworks of him in holiday clothing are popping up on walls and raising thousands.
He’s being described as the worst Australian PM ever.
He had to flee one town after forcing a woman to shake his hand, a firefighter also refused to shake his hand.

After the firefighter didn't shake his hand "Scott from Marketing" claimed he was just tired.
An official responded by saying he had just lost his house.

He grabbed the lady's hand to shake it and she said she would only do if he gave more money to help the Firies.
He just let go and walked away.
He is cretin with zero backbone and a typical modern politician only interested in photo-ops.

One guy called him a fookwit and told him fook off.

Scott from marketing (he was in charge of Australian tourism when they released the ads with "where the bloody hell are you" tag line.
A tagline that has come back to bite him in the ar**.

This is the PM that refused to offer something to the volunteer firefighters, over 60% of whom are self employed, at christmas time.
Some of them have been on the line for over a month.

Even worse he claimed they wanted to be there.
See retort from the wife of the one of the firefighters.

Ineedaname wrote: »

Not to mention he refused to compensate volunteer firefighters saying they wanted to be there. He only backtracked because of the backlash. Even then he offered them a pittance.

No first he offered state employees paid leave but nothing for the self employed.
He is a grade A fooking pillock and so is anyone that defends him.

Harry Palmr

The Murdoch we know is quite neutered to the one that infests his homeland.

jmayo

JJayoo wrote: »

These towns that have been hit by the fires are they situated in the middle of forests?

Irish people often don't have a concept of what some of these large countries are like.
The areas of forests are absolutely huge, the areas of scrub land are huge.
And then you have parched farmland surrounding towns that can carry the fire at breakneck speed.

Pauliedragon wrote: »

There's fire fighters from S. Africa, the U.S and NZ there.

Canada sent co-ordinators and planners.

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

Is that even an option? Presumably these things are not built to fly around the world? How long would it take to get them there?


EDIT. just realised there was a "not" missing in there changing the whole meaning

They already have the likes of Coulsen from Canada with C130, 737 and Erickson with their Skycranes.
They are fixtures every year AFAIK.

The USA could of course sent over the 747 and DC10s.
The likes of Airspray in Canada could send over L188 Electras, BAE 146 airtankers, but you might find they are in being overhauled over the winter.

An aircraft used a lot in firefighting in Canada and Europe would be the Canadair CL-215/CL-415, but it takes time to ferry them around the world as they would probably need long range tanks added.
Also they are ideal for operating of water bodies and I don't think Australia is blessed with them once you get away from the coast.
But they would hold twice the 800 gallon capacity of the Air Tractors that are used a lot in Australia.
Have seen a shot of a FireBoss Air Tractor collecting water from a river to fight one of the fires.

BTW the National Aerial Firefighting Centre in Australia in 2016 warned of hotter and more extended bushfire seasons in a call on governments and wanted to establish a major new capability in airtankers, etc.
It was ignored.
And AFAIK Morrison has not asked the likes of Canada, USA for help.

kildare lad

mandrake04 wrote: »

As bad as this is it’s purely the scale of human and property loss this is a disaster, when it comes to fauna and indigenous animals it’s it can recover... it’s actually beneficial Australia would be worse off without fire. Fire produces regeneration and diversity.



I took this picture today just off the PAC Hwy North of Yamba NSW this burned last month, I stopped of here about 6 months ago and you couldn’t see never mind walk through the bush as you can see the trees are burned but they have evolved to tolerate fire and will survive to be burned many times again. From an animal point of view a lot of animals have been lost but when the area regenerates the wildlife will backfill more quickly as the ground bush is more accessible this ensures diversity in the gene pool. This has been going on for 1000’s of years, bushfires used to happen ore frequently as Black fella would manage the land, as I said earlier in this thread some of the areas burned back in 2013 and before that 2002/2003 yet they burned again and will in the future.

Fires like this have been happening since before Black Fella set foot on this land, plants don’t evolve to weather fire in just 50,000 years.

A lot of the wildlife in Australia is under serious threat even before the fires , feral cats , foxes and cane toads, lose of habitat , etc , scientists reckon cats alone kill a billion native animals . Half of the chlamidya free koala bears have been killed in the fires. I'd say there'll be a lot more localised extinction of animals due to the fires


https://www.livescience.com/65915-australia-cats-wildlife-killers.html

jmayo

deceit wrote: »

I was just wondering is their a rough percentage on what amount of this fire is caused by Arson?
The numbers arrested for purposely setting fires seems crazy to me
http://thedailychrenk.com/2020/01/03/australias-arson-crisis/

They have caught a few arsonists over the years.
A guy got caught for setting fires around Churchill that added to the Black Saturday bushfires of Victoria around Saturday Feb 7th 2009.
I think he got sentenced to around 14/15 years.

Another arsonist is actually interviewed and they go through his mentality.
He was actually sometimes working as a volunteer firefighter.

Something similar happened in US where someone put the pieces together and found fires started after a firefighters conferences/get togethers and it was as one guy drove home from these meetings.

Idbatterim

LOok whether you believe this is climate change related or not. Human kinds total disregard for this planet is a disgrace. They burn and export coal in outrageous quantities. I also agree about the donations , Australia is a rich country , they should be funding this themselves. If it was a poor country and throwing money at it could totally sort the issue, I’d be in favor of it. But that isn’t the case ...

They stop the firefighting planes/ choppers flying at nightfall. For safety reasons I assume ?

jmayo

Idbatterim wrote: »

...

They stop the firefighting planes/ choppers flying at nightfall. For safety reasons I assume ?

If you are going in low then hazards such as powerlines, pylons with non working beacons, etc would be hard to see at night.

In 2017/2018 two helicopters were actually approved for dropping water at night using NVGs.
And one was approved for hover refilling which was first time done anywhere.
They also started using helicopters at night in California this year.

Operating off non paved runways or operating the likes of Fireboss on floats or Cl-215/CL-415 on water would be pretty dangerous at night.
A lot easier to see floating log in daylight than even with NVGs.

Idbatterim

jmayo wrote: »

If you are going in low then hazards such as powerlines, pylons with non working beacons, etc would be hard to see at night.

In 2017/2018 two helicopters were actually approved for dropping water at night using NVGs.
And one was approved for hover refilling which was first time done anywhere.
They also started using helicopters at night in California this year.

Operating off non paved runways or operating the likes of Fireboss on floats or Cl-215/CL-415 on water would be pretty dangerous at night.
A lot easier to see floating log in daylight than even with NVGs.

Just googled it , very interesting. Thanks

https://www.albernivalleynews.com/news/coulson-aviation-cleared-for-night-vision-firefighting/

JJayoo

https://youtu.be/_5LKF8G5huw

These are the only aircrafts that could realistically help against a big fire. A fleet of these loading up from a reservoir within a few km of a fire would seriously help.

What will happen to all these trees that burnt but are still standing?

Hopefully moving forward logic and rational thinking will triumph over emotions in how forestry should be managed and allowed to regrow.

mandrake04

JJayoo wrote: »

What will happen to all these trees that burnt but are still standing?

They regenerate and seed, they have evolved over millions of years to tolerate and use fire. it’s not unusual to see burnt out hollow tree to continue to live to be burnt many times again just as long as the root hasn’t been burnt.

This kind of explains it.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-06/fire-rejuvenation-for-queensland-bushland-after-bushfire/10584714

mandrake04

kildare lad wrote: »

A lot of the wildlife in Australia is under serious threat even before the fires , feral cats , foxes and cane toads, lose of habitat , etc , scientists reckon cats alone kill a billion native animals . Half of the chlamidya free koala bears have been killed in the fires. I'd say there'll be a lot more localised extinction of animals due to the fires


https://www.livescience.com/65915-australia-cats-wildlife-killers.html

Yes a lot of wildlife is under threat, that’s well known. Fires have damaged numbers of some species that will take a long time to recover and the Koalas on KI might never recover. No one knows for sure at the moment.

But you do realise that Koalas are marsupials and not actually bears?

Discodog

JJayoo wrote: »

https://youtu.be/_5LKF8G5huw

These are the only aircrafts that could realistically help against a big fire. A fleet of these loading up from a reservoir within a few km of a fire would seriously help.

What will happen to all these trees that burnt but are still standing?

Hopefully moving forward logic and rational thinking will triumph over emotions in how forestry should be managed and allowed to regrow.

There isn't enough water. They won't use seawater because of contamination. Although I would of thought it preferable than losing lives & property.

kildare lad

mandrake04 wrote: »

Yes a lot of wildlife is under threat, that’s well known. Fires have damaged numbers of some species that will take a long time to recover and the Koalas on KI might never recover. No one knows for sure at the moment.

But you do realise that Koalas are marsupials and not actually bears?

Ye I did ,it's just some of us are used to saying koala bears, better heartbreaking videos of them recently been burned , and dying off thirst . Pretty hard not to feel sorry for the little guys

jmayo

JJayoo wrote: »

https://youtu.be/_5LKF8G5huw

These are the only aircrafts that could realistically help against a big fire. A fleet of these loading up from a reservoir within a few km of a fire would seriously help.

I would say the reserves in the reservoirs are low enough what with almost continous droughts over the years.
Also not as many lakes as in some other countries.

They can operate using sea water as the Croats, Greeks (Turks, Spanish & French possibly) have often done.

mandrake04 wrote: »

They regenerate and seed, they have evolved over millions of years to tolerate and use fire. it’s not unusual to see burnt out hollow tree to continue to live to be burnt many times again just as long as the root hasn’t been burnt.

This kind of explains it.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-06/fire-rejuvenation-for-queensland-bushland-after-bushfire/10584714

This is one of the weird things with recent huge bush and forest fires around the world.
The intensity of the fires means that now the roots of the trees actually burn right down rather than just the tops above ground with lesser fires years ago.

This is all about the argument about letting smaller less intense fires burn to clear out the vegetation that is building up on the forest floors, which if left unchecked eventually provides huge amount of fuel when a major fire takes hold.

Indigenous people used to carry this out years ago but have been banned from doing this.
Also over the years the plan has been to quickly stop, often by using the likes of helitack teams or smoke jumpers in likes of USA and Canada, any small fires before they could take hold.

The thing is, fires are quite natural and part of the bigger picture.

jmayo

Discodog wrote: »

There isn't enough water. They won't use seawater because of contamination. Although I would of thought it preferable than losing lives & property.

The Greeks, Croats have definitely used seawater.
I think the Spanish and French have done so, especially when helping Greek island fires.

Watch this for flying.
And to think some gimp of a so called airline pilot complained about them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8SUiv70iOQ

silverharp

straight talking Aussie

https://twitter.com/robcennon/status/1212248064066543616

mandrake04

mandrake04 wrote: »

There reports of this in the media but listening to experts on the Radio on Friday and they said it will take a while to recover but it’s not as if this hasn’t happened before it just hasn’t in living memory.

I think everyone thinks that the whole country is on fire, truth is it’s only tiny pockets here and there those pockets might be 1/2 size of an Irish county but compared to size of Australia really small current total area burnt in NSW, VIC, SA and QLD 6.2m Hectares over the last 6 weeks nearly size of Tasmania and in comparison Ireland is 8.4m Ha so it's not really that big and it’s only frightening if you live in bush areas.

https://twitter.com/daraobriain/status/1214562281771524099?s=19

mandrake04

Deleted User wrote: »

https://twitter.com/daraobriain/status/1214562281771524099?s=19

First your map is wrong, total fires have burnt 12.35 m Ha...Ireland is only 8.4m Ha


Not really that big, really only a camp fire in terms of size. There’s been bigger fires than this in the past.