Affentitten Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 As some of you may be aware, we've had some pretty bad fires down in the state of Victoria over the weekend. At the current count we have 130 dead and 750 homes destroyed. Many of these dwellings have not yet been searched for victims. There's some pretty harrowing pictures around. The road out of one small town (now totally destroyed) looked like a mini version of the road out of Kuwait in Gulf War 1. People died in their cars, running into each other in the black smoke and panic. I recall we have at least one forum member from the affected region, though I can't recall his name. The people have some hard times ahead down there. Check the Sydney Morning Herald for details. (I would have liked to post this earlier today, but for some reason my ISP at work has been banned by the admins!) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnergoz Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 It's a real tragedy alright. We are used to having fires here in Southern California too, but we seldom have loss of life on the scale that the poor Aussies are experiencing. I wish them well, they are good folk. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoolaman Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 It seems like it was all the very worst of conditions and things started moving way too fast. Very dry, very hot (48C), literally gale force winds the fires were moving at 60km/h. Not to mention the forests here have basically evolved to be highly flammable. Some people dying is bad, like any big disaster its a bit of an abstract concept unless you are there. What really bothers me is what a hellish way to go it must have been. Visibility down to zero and trying to flee for your life, finding a tree across the road, fire on all sides. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomm Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 What really bothers me is what a hellish way to go it must have been. The less one thinks about it, the better. Best regards, Thomm PS: Wasn't there this horrific incident somewhere in Africa where people tried to salvage fuel from a fuel transporter that had an accident? Well, the truck exploded alright, leaving more than a hundred people dead ... nightmarish. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lars Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 My sympathy to the Aussies. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090209/D9681TKG0.html Didn't know that staying in a burning house is the best thing you can do sometimes. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 I think the disaster in recent times that moved me the most was when people got caught in the pyroclastic flow when Mt. St. Helens blew in 1980. The numbers were not large, but it must have been horrible. The only consolation would have been that it was probably quick. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Affentitten Posted February 9, 2009 Author Share Posted February 9, 2009 I think the disaster in recent times that moved me the most was when people got caught in the pyroclastic flow when Mt. St. Helens blew in 1980. The numbers were not large, but it must have been horrible. The only consolation would have been that it was probably quick. Michael Brings back memories of Vesuvius, hey? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Other Means Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 Awful situation. Will it bring about a change in forest management? It looks like it needs to. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Affentitten Posted February 10, 2009 Author Share Posted February 10, 2009 Well the Victorian government has announced a Royal Commision, which is the standard Australian reflex. The pundits are also nattering on about the policy of allowing people to stay with their homes and defend them versus total evacuation. But I feel this is really a case of trying to apportion blame because people didn't survive the unsurviveable. The flames were being pushed along at between 60 and 80 kms an hour, fanned by winds of over 100kms an hour driving a storm of burning debris. The typical story seemed to be "I saw the smoke over the hill. It was about 2 kms away. I went and got the kids and the wife and then when we went back outside the roof was already alight. It was about 4 minutes from the time I first saw the smoke until the time the house was alight and we were fleeing for our lives." The temperatures in that part of the world had been over 40 degrees C for about 2 weeks. This was truly an act of nature / God rather than somebody's bad management decision. Of course, when ****wits light fires for fun there isn;t much you can do either. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
costard Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 Well the Victorian government has announced a Royal Commision, which is the standard Australian reflex. The pundits are also nattering on about the policy of allowing people to stay with their homes and defend them versus total evacuation. But I feel this is really a case of trying to apportion blame because people didn't survive the unsurviveable. The flames were being pushed along at between 60 and 80 kms an hour, fanned by winds of over 100kms an hour driving a storm of burning debris. The typical story seemed to be "I saw the smoke over the hill. It was about 2 kms away. I went and got the kids and the wife and then when we went back outside the roof was already alight. It was about 4 minutes from the time I first saw the smoke until the time the house was alight and we were fleeing for our lives." The temperatures in that part of the world had been over 40 degrees C for about 2 weeks. This was truly an act of nature / God rather than somebody's bad management decision. Of course, when ****wits light fires for fun there isn;t much you can do either. I'd agree with all of this - though the decision not to have fuel reduction burns (as practised by earlier generations of forest management) is based on the ignorance of risk management and a lack of adequate apportioning of accountability in state government organisations. If no-one can make the decision to allow a fuel reduction burn go ahead because the risk of [an accident] is not zero, then they will not take place. Instead, a high temperature, uncontrolled burn will take place - possibly, maybe even probably at the worst possible time. A fuel reduction burn is a controlled fire that gets rid of leaf litter and debris that has collected on the ground and in the understory. After twenty years of natural accumulation of this debris, you can end up with more than a metre of loosely stacked fuel sitting on the floor of the forest. After a week of 40+ temperatures, this can ignite and stay lit with a carelessly discarded cigarette butt - the problem then becomes one where, if there is enough fuel and enough wind, the fire gets into the crown of the forest. In December 2006 / January 2007 we had some big fires in Victoria - huge acreages burnt. We were lucky, though, that an unusual weather system happened to be around at the time, giving very little wind and relatively low temperatures. This weekend we found out (again) what happens when we rely on luck for the management of our fire prone forests. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 What kind of forests are we talking about here? Eucalyptus or something else? Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FAI Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 I'd agree with all of this - though the decision not to have fuel reduction burns (as practised by earlier generations of forest management) is based on the ignorance of risk management and a lack of adequate apportioning of accountability in state government organisations. If no-one can make the decision to allow a fuel reduction burn go ahead because the risk of [an accident] is not zero, then they will not take place. Instead, a high temperature, uncontrolled burn will take place - possibly, maybe even probably at the worst possible time. A fuel reduction burn is a controlled fire that gets rid of leaf litter and debris that has collected on the ground and in the understory. After twenty years of natural accumulation of this debris, you can end up with more than a metre of loosely stacked fuel sitting on the floor of the forest. After a week of 40+ temperatures, this can ignite and stay lit with a carelessly discarded cigarette butt - the problem then becomes one where, if there is enough fuel and enough wind, the fire gets into the crown of the forest. In December 2006 / January 2007 we had some big fires in Victoria - huge acreages burnt. We were lucky, though, that an unusual weather system happened to be around at the time, giving very little wind and relatively low temperatures. This weekend we found out (again) what happens when we rely on luck for the management of our fire prone forests. Didn't they suspect foul play in at least some of the fires? Whole towns sealed and declared as crime scenes, investigators looking for arsonists tracks etc. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Affentitten Posted February 10, 2009 Author Share Posted February 10, 2009 If no-one can make the decision to allow a fuel reduction burn go ahead because the risk of [an accident] is not zero, then they will not take place. I agree. Unfortunately Risk Management, as practised by bureuacrats, often becomes "Total Risk Avoidance", which is not practical. I do sometimes think that people and local governments are a bit to blame in the manner in which properties are allowed to be constructed. I rented a holiday house last month on the NSW south coast. From the back deck I could physically touch the trunks or around half a dozen eucalypts. ie. they were within a metre of the house, which was itself made of wood and at the top of a gentle slope full of tall canopy forest. I thought at the time "Nasty place to be in a bushfire." 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stalins Organ Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 It's unfair to blame the bureuacrats for this - the population only wants such things if it's not gonig to affect them, and despite tragedies like this the vast majority of the population are not prepared to be inconvenienced. A building standard for constructoin in bushfire-prone areas had been under development for 22 years and a 3rd edition was being prepared when this article was published in 2005. This Issues brief from 2002 discusses fuel reduction. Similarly Australia revoked regulations that allowed authorities to force people to evacuate some time ago - Aussies now have the choice of "staying to fight" fires......this article from Adelaide today has a Fire commisioner still ruling out compulsory evacuation. what has happened in Australia then to cause this disaster? the same article gives part of the answer I think - What has occurred since Ash Wednesday* is the number of people and the number of houses located in these high-risk areas has dramatically increased.... .....{analysis of the current disaster}.. may lead to a review of our guidelines for living and building houses in bushfire-prone areas. It may lead to a review of whether we should be subdividing and settling people in these areas." (* - the Ash Wednesday fires were in 1983 & caused about 50 deaths & destroyed over 2000 homes) Basically Aussies like "going bush", the "suburbs" are spreading out around the big cities, and they're living in areas where fires previously would not have harmed them. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
costard Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 Michael Emrys - yes, Eucaluypt forests. All the Eucalypt leaves contain a highly flammable oil. When most of the moisture is stripped out by a hot northerly wind, and the fire manages to get into the crown, the fire then begins to travel at the same speed as the wind. The crown is at about thirty metres for most of these southern forests - the radiant heat at the fire front is huge, one estimate being about 12000 kW/m2 for the fires at Kinglake. The firetrucks are required to get out of an area when the radiant heat hits 4 kW/m2. So you see, you don't so much have a fast moving fire as a slow moving explosion. FAI - arson is likely in a couple of the fires, but the number of possible causes is pretty big: a broken bottle lying on the ground would be enough to start a fire in the temperatures we've been getting. Arson is going to be hard to prove, but easy to accept as a "reason" for these events - and it'll provide some media filler material. That's my read on it, anyway. And Affentitten has it right on the planning and building of dwellings - not that you've been allowed to cut down a tree on your block for the last 15 years or so. As an aside, there have been quite a number of houses built in gullies and on floodplains during that same period. Sure, we haven't had much rain in that time, but it will come.... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stalins Organ Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 Lightning is a common cause - on the news this morning they said that at least 1/2 of 2 dozen or so "new" fires overnight were thought to be caused by it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bassplayer192837 Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 I heard that a terrorist leader told muslims to set fires in an act of terrorism. I know thats not the cause of the fire but may be the cause of many more. If they are really planning to act this plan out how do you think they will stop it? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnergoz Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 I heard that a terrorist leader told muslims to set fires in an act of terrorism. I know thats not the cause of the fire but may be the cause of many more. If they are really planning to act this plan out how do you think they will stop it? Yep, better lock up all those insidious Aussie Muslims while there's still time... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
costard Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 I heard that a terrorist leader told muslims to set fires in an act of terrorism. I know thats not the cause of the fire but may be the cause of many more. If they are really planning to act this plan out how do you think they will stop it? If you heard it in Wisconsin it is undoubtedly true. Lighting a bushfire as an act of deliberate destruction is pretty hit and miss - the circumstances whereby an effective result is likely don't come around all that often, certainly not often enough for the act to be politically useful with its timing. The lesson to be learned here is - avoid the disaster if possible. The problem with most of the towns burnt is that they had maybe two roads into them, both going through burning forest; no chance to avoid. I guess the same could be said for attempting to inspire racist or religious hatred and war - better to avoid it if at all possible, or at least be prepared to have anyone listening doubt your motives and sanity. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Affentitten Posted February 10, 2009 Author Share Posted February 10, 2009 Lightning is a common cause - on the news this morning they said that at least 1/2 of 2 dozen or so "new" fires overnight were thought to be caused by it. Because they had a storm then. But there were no storms last week when these mega-fires began. The most recent survey, done last year, determined that just over 50% of bushfires were down to human activity. That activity covered the gamut of causes from deliberate arson (13%) to accidents to just plain stupidity. The phrase "deliberately lit" is often used by the media here because that's how the fire brigade class a non-natural fire. But it tends to give people the wrong impression of some sort of malicious intent. But it usually means the campfire that got out of control, or the farmer burning off a pile of bulldozed vegetation. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnergoz Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 It sounds like our Aussie friends are going to have to spend some serious time studying the impact of all this urban spread into the outback, and determine how they are going to provide infrastructure (safe roads, fire shelters, fire fighting assets) to support a lot more people living out there than in the past. I understand that people want to live closer to nature, but sometime nature can be pretty unforgiving. Here in Southern California we see this all the time - people want to live in the boonies and then get burned down in the big rural fires...some of which are caused by the increased human traffic in the area (including arsonists and idiots, e.g. like visitors who leave campfires unattended.) The high numbers of people killed this time really leave the impression of total unpreparedness, which is a shame because much of this is preventable with enough civic infrastructure and governmental attention. Let's hope that this catastrophe finally brings about some changes. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Affentitten Posted February 10, 2009 Author Share Posted February 10, 2009 It's unfair to blame the bureuacrats for this - the population only wants such things if it's not gonig to affect them, and despite tragedies like this the vast majority of the population are not prepared to be inconvenienced. That's not true in my experience with controlled burning in Australia. Most people couldn't care less if controlled burning goes on precisely because it doesn't effect them at all. It's just some smoke on the horizon during winter. There has over the years been some finger-pointing at the inner-city Green lobby who have sometimes made it politically difficult to carry out burning in national parks. Likewise the green/heritage influence is felt at local government levels who are the ones approving tree felling. As someone above mentioned, it has become almost impossible to cut down any tree over 3m height these days, even if it's about to fall on your house. (As I can attest from bitter experience.) But the bottom line is that people are building their homes in some pretty stupid spots. Tree-changers and hobby farmers being some of the worst offenders there. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Affentitten Posted February 10, 2009 Author Share Posted February 10, 2009 The high numbers of people killed this time really leave the impression of total unpreparedness, which is a shame because much of this is preventable with enough civic infrastructure and governmental attention. I disagree. This was beyond anything that had ever been experienced before. It is a news story in Australia if even a single house gets burned down in a bushfire. Losses of this magnitude demonstrate the utter scale of this. The scale they use to rate bushfires classes a score of 100 as 'uncontrollable'. This fire rated a 400. Most people had 'fire plans' and the like. But the weather conditions were record breaking. ie. have not been recorded since they started taking measurements in colonial times. The speed and temperature created a "Dresden effect" where the oxygen flow being sucked in fanned the fires even more fiercely. You can't out-run or fight that. The best that could be legislated maybe is to make some sort of fire cellar mandatory in building construction. Of course, in this sort of fire that might give you the option of baking or suffocating to death instead of burning. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Affentitten Posted February 10, 2009 Author Share Posted February 10, 2009 Actually now we know why the fires happened. Some fundamentalist preacher has said they are God's punishment for the state of Victoria's liberal abortion laws. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnergoz Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 Affentitten- I mean no disrespect, certainly to the dead and injured or all the folks who have had their lives devastated by this. But I'm not so sure that it is unpredictable. Even given an "Dresden Effect" that happens once every 50 years or so, it is the responsibility of Governments to plan and prepare for such things. I propose that we send "Brownie" the director of US FEMA over there, if we can find him. Gosh knows he did a great job during Katrina. Seriously, governments need to get on the ball with this sort of thing, its why we supposedly tolerate them. If what I'm reading is indicative, the numbers of people moving into the outback greatly outstrips governmental preparations to deal with crises of this magnitude, even if it is a rare occurrence. Or are you saying that this can't ever be avoided and folks just have to learn to deal with it every 50 years or so? I can't believe you're saying that. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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