[lonewolfny42]

Hello Hugh....

I spotted this news...

Australia ablaze....bushfires....

I hope you and fellow AC members from Oz are out of harms way....

                    Chris

[AKSA]

Chris,

Things have been terrible.  I have a good friend who may well have lost his life, and almost certainly his house.  I can't contact him at present;  I've left an inquiry with our Bushfires people and they will give me a ring when/if they find him.  His area is closed off by Police;  it's extremely dangerous travelling.  In his area 16 people officially lost their lives, but the figure will rise in coming days.

Yesterday was our hottest day since Melbourne's recordings began in 1859 - 46.4C, which is 115.5F.  I left home at 7:30am on my motorcycle to see a pal on the south side of Melbourne;  on return at 10:15am it was extremely hot and I felt like I was riding a 120 bhp hair dryer as I rode north into a growing sulphurous cloud of dust and bushfire smoke.  I spent the rest of the day indoors;  it was too hot to go outside and my 5Kw air conditioner worked harder than ever before just to keep one large room habitable.

Contrary to our image, Australia is an urban country;  90% of us live in cities of 100,000 or more.  When it gets very hot, you understand why.  Water is very short, temperatures are very high, and the danger of bushfires is horrific.  A grassfire moves at around 25 mph, passes in seconds, but a bushfire at around 5mph, moving slowly but relentlessly.  In forested areas, roads can quickly become impassable due to falling timber, and lots of people are actually killed fleeing fires in vehicles at the last moment.  We have some of the most sophisticated fire fighting equipment in the world but it amounts to very little since the areas are so great, the bush is so parched and dry, and there is so much fuel.  You may know that the Australia flora has evolved to cope with bushfire;  it's a natural regeneration mechanism, but people do insist on building their homes in the midst of it all.  And there is no rhyme nor reason as to which houses survive and which fall.

This week will be cool, I hope to do lots of work.  Thanks for the concern, Chris, it's been a hot summer.  When we returned from three weeks in Indonesia on the 19th Jan, we felt like returning, because on disembarking the temperatures in Melbourne were higher than Jakarta!

Cheers,

Hugh

[Bemopti123]

Chris,

You may know that the Australia flora has evolved to cope with bushfire;  it's a natural regeneration mechanism, but people do insist on building their homes in the midst of it all.  And there is no rhyme nor reason as to which houses survive and which fall.

Cheers,

Hugh

Reminds me very much of what happens in Southern California, some areas of which people insist in building in fire prone areas and wonder why calamity happens to "them."  Lets not even talk about people's tendencies of building in flood and hurricane prone areas of coastal Florida and complain about the high or non existent house insurance policies. 

Hope all things are well in Australia, one of the countries I hope to visit someday. 

[Raj]

Hugh,

I am truly relieved you are ok my friend. I just heard so was looking out for you online. Thought I'd try here. Sorry to hear about your friend's house, I hope he's ok. Take care man...


regards
Raja

[Seano]

Sorry to hear you've been touched Hugh.....this was not a good weekend.  Nor is it shaping up as a great week. 

My missus left yesterday as part of the NSW crew to fight the Beechworth fire and I can't say I'm thrilled.  She and her colleagues are very well trained & experienced fire fighters but all the same....

At least the weather has turned for the better for the next few days.

I won't go into the whys and wherefores of the tragedy....mainly because I (thankfully) wasn't there....except to say that rarely has the cost of a series of bad personal decisions been so high for so many people.

[gaetan8888]

Hello Hugh

I am relieved to see that you are ok.

Sad to see this hard times for Australia, I've seen in the news about the bush fires in south and today they show that there is floods in the north of Australia.

I hope that your friend are still alive and that Bushfires people will find him.

Bye

Gaetan

[AKSA]

Thanks Raja, Seano, Gaetan,

Nice of you.  Still haven't heard about Jim and Dianne at Kinglake.  Seems to me that the weather is indeed becoming more extreme;  hottest day since records began here, floods in North Queensland with the flooding of the Herbert River......  this country is beginning to look a little disaster-prone, a Bangladesh in the Great South Land! 

It is worth remembering that on past figures the carbon emitted into the atmosphere with these bushfires in Victoria alone is around 50% MORE in a few days than that emitted by the tailpipes of the entire transportation industry in this State for one year.

Must get back to work.....  an amp off to France today.

Cheers,

Hugh

[doorman]

Having lived several years "down under" I hope all our Aussie friends, known and unknown, survive this (these)
horrendous fires.
Best to all,
Don

[ecramer]

Hugh Man take it easy in that heat. Got to get around to writing a review for your Paris head amp  Got her all boxed up and a coupler of hundred hours on her and its pretty magical.

ED

[lonewolfny42]

Thanks for your reply Hugh....I hope things improve, and all are safe....and that it cools down. Be careful....


AP....

Police declared crime scenes Monday in the towns destroyed by wildfire; officials suspect some of the more than 400 fires were deliberately set.

From further reading on the web tonight, seems a number of the fires started were arson....and that the toll has risen. A terrible thing to do....

Google has a map showing the fire locations....here...

Good luck Hugh...stay safe.

                           Chris

[JohnR]

I had no idea there were so many of them.....

Here's the interactive version: http://mapvisage.appspot.com/fires/FireMap.html

[WerTicus]

131 dead so far.  I found out how big the fire is, 80km wide and moving at 100km per hour!

which is 50miles wide and 60 miles an hour its moving.

[Jens]

Nice to hear that Oz Aksaphiles seem to be holding out. Here in Denmark we have temperatures around zero and prospects of a bit of snow over the next few days How would you like that, Hugh?

Wishing everyone in the fire-affected parts of Oz cool breezes and lots of rain ...

[WerTicus]

156 dead, 700 homes burnt down.

[AKSA]

Jens,

I would love it.  I always find snow romantic, doubtless because I don't have to live with it.....  and I do enjoy the cold, it makes me more energetic!

Conditions on the 7th Feb were surreal.  I put a wet, washed shirt on the line and it was dry right through in 15 minutes.  This only happens with very high temperatures AND very strong winds.  In Victoria at 2pm on the day in the country areas wind speed was up to 100 kph, and it doesn't take much imagination to see that a fireball travelling at windspeed IS the advancing speed of the fire.  Count is now at 173 dead, many of them caught in cars and in homes, sheltering, when the roof fell in.  A lot of car accidents;  the smoke brought pitch black conditions, people were driving blind, and there are numerous accidents, and a lot of fallen timber over the road too.  Two areas are being treated as crime scenes and remain closed, even to surviving owners, while victim identification teams scour all properties looking for DNA evidence.  Helicopter views reveal blackened bush, with many trees still standing, all ground foliage removed, and large expanses of white ash where houses once stood.  Yet in the same street, seemingly at random, you see homes completely intact, with black marks on the lawns stopping a few feet from the house.  The psychological aftermath will be horrific, with many lives destroyed.  Presently people are anaesthetised, simply numb, but soon this will erupt into debilitating grief.  A lot of people did not have insurance, and here we are at the jaws of Recession, it's very cruel.

I was raised on a farm in country South Australia.  I can name four people killed in fires in the seventies and eighties from my district.  This disaster has touched an unprecedented number of people, many of them semi-urban people who lived within 100 kms of Melbourne, and  work in the city.  This is not just a country phenomenon;  this touches large numbers of people living in Australia's second largest city.

It also raises questions of global warming, national drought, and the health of the environment for the generations ahead.

Hugh

[Seano]

Conditions on the 7th Feb were surreal. 

This is not just a country phenomenon;  this touches large numbers of people living in Australia's second largest city.

Not surreal so much as plain fecking nasty.....even in my part of Victoria which has a reputation for being quite warm.

For those of us in the Oz bush...this book is essential reading

http://shop.abc.net.au/browse/product.asp?productid=576176&SearchID=704189&SearchRefineID=1406659

Even so.....we wouldn't have stayed.  We'd have prepared as best we could in the days before (there was a few days warnig of shitful conditions) and then abandoned for the beach/river/wherever.

As for impacting the city......what about those poor sods at Narre Warren (outer suburb of Melbourne) who were watching the Kinglake/Maryville devestation on the TV when a raging grass fire knocked at their own back doors and took out six houses before the news program had even finished!!

[Tliner]

Hi all,

The fires have been a worry to my family as my sister and brother in-law live at Taggerty right in the path of the bush fires. The fire went over and around their house in less than 30 seconds in an almighty what sounded like a sonic bang from a low flying jet fighter as the fire sucked all the oxygen out of the air. They have a obviously well designed sprinkler system which saved them. Five submersible pumps and 80,000 litres of water which provided a heavy mist over the house and sheds and the surrounding 30 meters of watered close cut grass.  The rest of the farm was recently mown down to 50mm (2") stubble which the fire raced over at 100 mph. It took seconds to cover the mile or so. Without a sophisticated fire system neighbours lost everything in seconds, houses and cars just exploded.

We live 60Km (45 or so miles) from the fire region. We were awakened early before dawn by smoke although the wind was blowing from the other direction from other fires. I took a photo of the glowing sky, absolutely sobering. I can't manage to post the picture on this site as there are some tricks that I'm unaware of.

There was no news till later on Sunday morning and no one could get their minds around the total devastation so news often made little sence due to the scale of the fires.

Some AKsaphiles live within a kilometer or two of my sister and there is no news of how they are.

Cheers,

Tliner

[gaetan8888]

...
It also raises questions of global warming, national drought, and the health of the environment for the generations ahead.

Hugh

Hello Hugh

Australia very hot temperature and wildfire really seem to be link to Global warming, but it is hard to know for sure what will be the future of Australia climate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/08/global-warming-weather-science

http://www.twilightearth.com/2009/02/australian-wildfire-intensity-linked-to-global-warming-scientists-say/

Bye

Gaetan

[RoadTripper]

As one who made it through the 2004 San Diego fires and the 2007 San Diego fires (which came within a half mile in 2004 and two miles in 2007 of my houses) I don't get how in the case of the 2007 fire 1500 homes were destroyed yet only 9 people were killed. In this Australia fire, I see numbers like 700 homes destroyed and 140 or so people killed. Why such a poor ratio of homes/people destroyed?

[AKSA]

I haven't been to San Diego, but I understand that the country is more open, with less trees, and wide, open roads.

In the three Australian areas of greatest casualties, all had narrow roads surrounded both sides by tall bush.  People had little time to make a decision, since the fireballs travelled very swiftly through the bush fanned by 60mph superhot winds.  With only minutes, and in some cases seconds to make a decision, people were either forced to stay indoors, or took to the roads in panic, and were blinded by intense smoke, often dying in collisions, or subsequently in the ensuing inferno.  I saw pictures of gutted cars, four of them, which had been immobilised in collisions, and where occupants had either perished inside, or run away, to be caught anyway.  Kinglake, Marysville and Churchill are all closely forested areas with winding roads;  this is not open country at all.

We'd had a week's hot weather in early February, and a couple of weeks back, an extremely hot week in late January as well.  The fuel was tinder dry, and very easily lit.  It was a freakish situation.

Hugh