hard on the heels of one of the longest droughts in the history of Australia and the longest heatwave ever recorded, with weeks of 40 degree-plus weather and low low humidity, comes the sad news of a series of massive bushfires sweeping the states of Victoria and New South Wales. While the fires in NSW have been limited in damage, burning in less-populated areas (apart from one near Peats Ridge on the central Coast, which has just been brought under control), fires in Victoria are much more serious as the state is much more heavily populated (it’s much smaller than NSW).
The worst fires in Victoria have been burning very close to the capital city, Melbourne, about 50-70 km north of the city in the Healesville and Yarra valley areas. Entire towns like Kinglake have been destroyed, with thousands of houses burnt to cinders, and the death toll so far stands at more than 100 people and countless thousands of head of farm stock, and of course much more wildlife. Almost worse than the death toll is the large number of people who survived but with massive deep burns. to 30-60% of the body. many of these burns patients will also, inevitably, die. Families have been burnt in their cars as they evacuated, people have been trapped by falling trees on isolated burning roads with no escape. Many died in their houses when the winds suddenly switched direction, pushing the fires north and past containment lines and firebreaks.
The fires are slowly falling in intensity as a cool change sweeps a little more humid air over them, but the radiant heat alone from a massive eucalyptus fire can kill at ranges of 100m or so, not to mention the fact that the oxygen is used up and a wave of toxic gas, itself often bursting into flame, precedes and follows such waves of fire. A big fire can sweep up a hill faster than a horse can run, if the wind is right, and the winds have been gusting at up to 100km/h this week. houses catching fire have exploded and set light to neighbouring houses a hundred yards away. the current cool change will help for a few days, but more extreme temperatures are forecast for later in the week. the major town Beechworth is under threat, and more than 350,000 hectares have been burnt in Victoria alone.
Terrible. while some of these fires started from dry lightning storms, it seems (tragically) that many additional fires have been the work of deranged arsonists. murder charges are pending against any who are caught, but it’s almost a pity that Australia has done away with the death penalty.
Very sad and scary news indeed. I’m amazed that bush fires can travel so quicky that they can outrun vehicles. As for arsonists, yes, they deserve to be shot. Sick bastards.
Kiwis in NZ will be looking to the western sky at night, but there will be little joy in seeing beautiful rosy sunsets. They’ll be shuddering at the source of the colour, those fires so far to the west.
I lived in Taiwan for years and coped reasonably well with the combination of earthquakes, typhoons, Chinese missile threats and crazy blind corner overtaking drivers.
Nothing came close to the trauma of nearly losing our house on Saturday. Worst was not being able to breath and trying to get around corners to take a breath hopefully and then go back to try and keep fighting the flames. I walked out on shaking legs after the firefighters finally arrived. They saved the house after we’d finished saving it. 2 days later and my nerves are really jangled. Seemed to do better yesterday and collapsing today. Funny how we cope with stress and trauma. I won’t be back on this subject, just felt the need to make a comment. Stay warm in those uninsulated houses and make the most of it. Believe it or not, you’ll probably miss Taiwan when you eventually leave!
and thank you ever so much to the many firefighters, volunteers and professionals, and the army, who helped and are still helping to fight the fires on many fronts. I remember doing a week of hot dusty smoky back-burning and fire-raking in 1983, when the army was last called to help. it’s thankless work, fighting fires without water.
Horrid stuff all round. Commiserations to all concerned, and hats off to the local fire volunteers and the army. As Uro says, and I recall Fox knows all too well also, it’s a shitty, shitty and dangerous job beating out fires with sticks and old old fire hoses! These fires turn suddenly and you are always at the very real risk of ending up in the midst of them. There is no way to adequately describe the sight of a bushfire spreading - hundreds of metres from where you think the fire is a tree line will just suddenly burst into flames. It’s a complete mind fuck, all the more so given the terror, the noise and the smoke, not to mention all the creatures, furry and friendly as well as venomous and deadly, scrambling to get away from it all.
Does anyone have any pics of that amazing dust cloud that crept in over Melbourne weeks before the ash Wednesday fires back in the eighties? I tried looking for this several times but haven;t found it. I wanted to highlight how these sorts of fires seem to pop up in fairly regular cycles. From early reports - and there is now a Royal commission going to look into the causes, environmentalists seem to be copping some blame here.
[quote]The 1983 Melbourne dust storm was a meteorological phenomenon that occurred on the afternoon of 8 February 1983 in Melbourne, the second largest city in Australia. It was one of the most dramatic events of the 1982/83 drought, the worst in Australian history, and is now viewed as an ominous precursor to the disastrous Ash Wednesday fires which occurred eight days later.
During the morning of Tuesday 8 February 1983, a strong but dry cold front began to cross Victoria, preceded by hot, gusty northerly winds. The loose topsoil in the Mallee and Wimmera was picked up by the wind and collected into a huge cloud of dust that heralded the cool change. At Horsham in western Victoria, raised dust was observed by 11:00am. Within an hour, it had obscured the sky.
Fed by the strong northerly, the temperature in Melbourne rose quickly and by 2:35pm it had reached 43.2°C, at that time a record February maximum. Around the same time, a dramatic red-brown cloud could be seen approaching the city.
The dust storm hit Melbourne just before 3:00pm, accompanied by a rapid drop in temperature and a fierce wind change that uprooted trees and damaged houses. Within minutes, visibility in the capital had plunged to 100 metres. City workers huddled in doorways, covering their mouths from the choking dust, and traffic came to a standstill.
The worst of the storm was over by 4:00pm, when the wind speed dropped. The dust cloud was approximately 320m high when it struck Melbourne, but in other areas of Victoria it extended thousands of metres into the atmosphere.[1]
It was estimated that about 50,000 tonnes of topsoil were stripped from the Mallee (approximately 11,000 tonnes of it being dumped on the city). The combined effect of drought and dust storm inflicted damage on the land that, according to the then President of the Victorian Farmers and Graziers’ Association, would take up to 10 years and tens of millions of dollars to repair [2].
The exact weather pattern that had caused the dust storm was repeated one week later, when the Ash Wednesday fires caused enormous destruction and loss of life.[/quote]
I moved to Melbourne not long after this, and recall people there, much like 911 or Kennedy’s assasination, would recall exactly where they were and what they were doing when they saw this sucker rolled in. The common thought was - “the world’s coming to an end” - recall that Melbourne is the city at the centre of Neville Chute’s famous On the beach novel about the end of the world. All knew it meant trouble eventually, and sure enough, eight days later the state was ablaze.
A mate checked in with me yesterday to let me know how friends were (I used to live in Melbourne before I moved out here). A couple of families I know had to be evacuated, but returned safely to unscathed homes. Some others were on standby for a while, but were fortunate in that they didn’t have to leave in the end. One family had the fire stop at the boundary of their property. Two other couples lost holiday homes, which is no big deal especially since no one was in them at the time.
But one family I know was in Marysville, a small country town which now no longer exists. Thankfully, the family is safe. The remains of their house are somewhere in this lot:
Some people are wondering why the death toll is so high, especially in a country very familiar with and usually well prepared for bushfires. There are a number of factors:
Access: Some of these country towns only have one or two main access roads, and can easily be cut off by a couple of different fires converting
Speed: In some areas the fire has been moving at around 100kph, and it has simply engulfed vehicles trying to escape; some towns received their first warning that a fire was imminent when windows started to crack from the sudden heatwave preceding a fire coming in at 80kph, which doesn’t leave you with much time to act
Smoke: The massive smoke and ash clouds produced by the fires have made it almost impossible to actually see where the fires are, or which direction they’re travelling in (even if you’re viewing them from the air), and this has made prediction and warning extremely difficult
The sheer number of fires: This series of bushfires has involved a few hundred different fires, including around 30 major fires (even now there are nine fires in Victoria alone), and the more fires you have the greater the number of casualties is going to be (see ‘Access’ above)
The fact is that all the preparation and knowledge in the world can’t prevent something of this scale. The weather has been against us from the start, and lightning strikes (responsible for many of the fires), can literally happen anywhere. Add arsonists, and you can probably understand how damage control is about the best which can be done right now.
Fark! That sucks. Marysville is/was a beautiful little town, as are so many in that region. My aunt has a place at Woori Yallock on a bush blocvk near a flora and fauna reserve, although she lives in Sydney. Haven’t had time to see how Woori Yallock has fared.
Anyone heard from Fox? He’s from rural Vic, I think, although can’t recall quite where.
The following article is not for the sensitive. It describes a father’s loss of two children in fairly agonizing terms.
[quote]“I unfortunately lost two children, Neeve and Mackenzie, 9 and 15,” he said.
“I decided to drop them around to my in-laws, to be safe, because the fire was really coming from the Wondong, Kilmore area.”
As the Kinglake pumpman, his house outside of the town was well set up to defend the bushfires.
Mr Buchanan returned to the property and, with the aid of his neighbours, managed to save his home.
“I went back home, I’ve basically been up at Kinglake since '93 and my trade is the pump bloke and I’d set up a fire system at home,” he said.
"My neighbour Wally, who was in the CFA years ago before he bought the house, I’d set up a big fire hose reel and my other neighbour, he had a fire hose reel.
“And we stayed, we saved our houses.”
After salvaging the house, Mr Buchanan returned to the town of Kinglake to find his children had perished in the blaze that swept through the town.
“My mother-in-law is in intensive care with burns in her body from trying to go back into the house,” he said.
“Lots of people tried to help so much, risking their lives.”
Mr Buchanan broke down as he spoke about his children.
“Mate, they were just the best … they were the best,” he said.
Mr Buchanan said there was not enough fire staff to protect the town, but refused to lay blame.
“It was a bit of a shame. I think we did have a lack of resources up at Kinglake because they’d already gone down the hill to attend Wandong and Humevale,” he said.
"But realistically nobody could, and I’m sure some scientists are going to tell us the actual speed that the fire come up from the Humevale, Arthur’s Creek, St Andrews way.[/quote]
Source. Far worse than the destruction of property is the appalling psychological toll these fires are wreaking.
The police say they’re closing in on one of the arson suspects, and will shortly release images of one man wanted for questioning. Whoever he is, he had better get himself under arrest before anyone else finds him.
I’m done with this for tonight, the latest news I’ve read has just been too much to take.
I just old enough to remember the Ash Wednesday fires in South Australia. Our house survived because my parents thought about fire when they planted and pruned the garden. They mowed fire breaks and thought about various fire scenarios and how they would react to each.
Looking at the footage from the Vic fires I can see that many of the destroyed houses were surrounded by trees. CNN have been showing one town, prefire, as seen from Google Streetview. And guess what? It was surrounded by trees.
And now it is destroyed…
I took a subject at university called Fire Science Management. One lecture documented the stupidity of housing, garden and township design in the bushfire prone areas in Australia.
If you don’t want your house to burn down then cover it with earth. Or don’t build in the forest. Or don’t plant flammable vegetation all around it and not clean the gutters.
Sure, it is a sad state of affairs in Victoria right now. But its hardly surprising.
As a landowner and long time resident of the desert southwest of the USA, I can feel for those poor folks. Our drought cycle appears to have just ended, but for the last few years I had been constantly checking the fire maps on the web to see if any of my family were affected.
Four years ago I was stuck at LAX and couldn’t even make it home for 5 days because the wildfires grounded all traffic.
To all of you from Oz on the board, I hope your families are all safe.
The misnamed Limey’s not called in as yet (he should be pom, of course). He’s in Vic, Brinswick cafe, wanker, I thought, but most Victorians are somehow more linked to the country than say Sydney folks.
I have been listening to ABC Radio which is probably the best source of information about the fires. Go to abc.net.au/melbourne/ where you can find the link to listen via live streaming.
[quote=“Thelonlieste”]I just old enough to remember the Ash Wednesday fires in South Australia. Our house survived because my parents thought about fire when they planted and pruned the garden. They mowed fire breaks and thought about various fire scenarios and how they would react to each.
Looking at the footage from the Vic fires I can see that many of the destroyed houses were surrounded by trees. CNN have been showing one town, prefire, as seen from Google Streetview. And guess what? It was surrounded by trees.
And now it is destroyed…
I took a subject at university called Fire Science Management. One lecture documented the stupidity of housing, garden and township design in the bushfire prone areas in Australia.
If you don’t want your house to burn down then cover it with earth. Or don’t build in the forest. Or don’t plant flammable vegetation all around it and not clean the gutters.
Sure, it is a sad state of affairs in Victoria right now. But its hardly surprising.[/quote]
Australian fire management policies are robust, and have been practiced with considerable success for years. It’s true that you’ll always get people who don’t keep them, but in this particular case it wasn’t simply a matter of people not clearing their gutters, or leaving flammable vegetation around. Houses which were defended successfully were those which had fire fighting equipment such as huge water tanks and firehoses.
If you look at some of the photos you’ll see that may houses were well clear of trees. You’ll also see that the fire had no problem tearing through areas which were not densely packed with trees. It quickly traversed hummock grasslands, which enabled it to move through areas without any trees. One man describes how he saw smoke on the horizon one minute, and fifteen minutes later the field nearby his house which he had specifically cleared and cut down to stubble, was ablaze. Ten minutes later his house was on fire. He escaped with his family from a smoke filled house, even as their second car caught on fire. The cleared area around his house proved completely ineffective.
The fires were able to propagate and traverse cleared areas (and in some cases entire firebreaks), due to the huge amount of hot ash and burning embers which were thrown into the air and carried along by wind. Many houses were set alight as a result of embers raining down on them from above. You can’t defend against that simply by clearing your gutters, ensuring there is no flammable vegetation around your house, and building clear of trees.
Fire management policies have been scrutinized in detail as a result of this latest disaster. But the main conclusion repeatedly asserted by professionals is that fuel management was the key issue in these fires, not residential fire management policies such as clearing gutters, ensuring there is no flammable vegetation around your house, and building clear of trees. The fact is that Victoria and New South Wales contain thousands of hectares of native forest, almost all of which constitutes national parks. You can’t clearfell them or turn them into deforested deserts.
The real issue is fuel management. These forests represent fuel. They have to be selectively cleared and burned out on a regular basis in order to reduce fuel buildup.
However, some professionals have expressed doubt that there was any effective means of containing such an outbreak. The standard McArthur Grassland Fire Danger Rating System used in Australia rates a fire index of 100 as ‘the worst possible’ fire weather conditions. In the case of the Victorian fires, the fire weather conditions reached a value of 320 on this index. This being the case, some professionals have said they don’t believe there was any way to prevent the fires taking place on such a magnitude:
Note that’s the fire danger rating, not a measurement of the intensity of the fire itself. Standard residential fire management policies are useless in the face of fires on this scale. And the only way to minimize the risk of fires on this scale is not simply by clearing your gutters, ensuring there is no flammable vegetation around your house, and building clear of trees. It’s about forestry management, fuel load minimization through selective clearing and burning:
The “oh, gee, that’s sweet” segment of this story . . .
Apparently this was taken after fire fighters were back burning to prevent fires a week before the big bush fires broke out, but still, quite amazing for a wild koala to do that! And two bottles of water!
