Australian navy races to rescue thousands as new fire threat looms

[webfact]

Australian navy races to rescue thousands as new fire threat looms

 

Bushland burned out by bushfires surrounds the Princes Highway in Ulladulla, NSW, Australia, January 2, 2020. AAP Image/Heather McNab/via REUTERS

 

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The Australian navy was racing on Friday to rescue thousands of people stranded on the east coast of the fire-ravaged country as a searing weather front was set to whip up more blazes across the states of Victoria and New South Wales (NSW).

 

The premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, declared a state of disaster for the first time ever, giving authorities broad powers to compel people to leave their properties and take control of services.

 

Wildfires have already killed two in the state and 17 are missing with grave fears for their safety.

 

NSW also issued a state of emergency as tens of thousands of holidaymakers were urged to leave national parks and remote tourist areas.

 

The navy's HMAS Choules was set to evacuate "at first light" around 800 out of 4,000 people stranded on a beach in the isolated town of Malla­coota in far-east Victoria, with women, children, the elderly and sick going first.

 

Yet with all roads blocked, sea transport is the only way out of the stricken town and each round trip could take a day or more. Forecasters are warning that temperatures will soar above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) on Saturday, bringing a return of wild winds.

 

"It is forecast we will see dry thunderstorms coming across the state and the potential of lightning strikes mid- to late afternoon," Andrew Crisp, emergency management commissioner for Victoria, told ABC news.

 

He urged people in the area to leave their homes immediately and not count on luck to avoid disaster.

 

"This is your opportunity to get out. It is not just the fires we know. It is the new fires that might start today."

 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison had called for calm on Thursday, before visiting the fire-devastated NSW town of Cobargo where he was not entirely welcome.

 

Video showed Morrison confronted by a group of angry locals, one of whom shouted he should be "ashamed of himself" and said he had "left the country to burn".

 

Speaking to ABC news, Morrison said he understood there were strong feelings. "They have lost everything and there are still some very dangerous days ahead," he said.

 

Morrison's conservative government has long drawn criticism for not doing enough to address climate change as a cause of Australia's savage drought and fires.

 

Bushfires so far this season have scorched more than 4 million hectares (10 million acres) of bushland and destroyed over 1,000 homes, including 381 homes destroyed on the south coast just this week.

 

(Reporting by Wayne Cole; Editing by Peter Cooney)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-01-02

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[steven100]

Tragic events .....  house after house destroyed :

 

[cmsally]

This seems to be on a totally unprecedented scale. Families I know whose grandparents grew up in the bush are saying they have never seen anything on this level. The scale and devastation are really unprecedented. Absolutely tragic.

[Tug]

Absolutely horrifying god speed to the Australian navy isent Morrison the guy that was vacationing as his country burned?lf so get rid of the bum if he isent the one I apologize 

[4MyEgo]

It is a sad event and you have to feel for all those who have lost their houses, family members etc etc, that said, it doesn't take much effort to know that most of those places are bushfire prone areas, and therein lies the problem, did those people do their due diligence, I mean did they know that when purchasing their properties, did they know that they could have been within a bushfire prone area ?

 

Generally speaking it is the solicitor or conveyancer duty to advise their clients of this when they are going through the zoning certificate issued by local council which is a requirement to form part of the sale of contract.

 

If they were advised, it's just bad luck, but they knew, and got to get back on the horse that threw them off, hopefully they have adequate insurance to rebuild, that or take the money, sell the land and move to an area that is not bushfire prone.

 

With technology these days, you can go to a council website and look up maps of areas you are looking to purchase in, those maps will tell you if you within a bushfire prone area or a flood prone area.

 

The above said, council's will not stop people from building on those parcels of land, but they do have requirements as to the types of materials they use when building to reduce the impact of damage if a fire just happen to come around, that said, I don't care how good of a spot a place is, if it's bush fire prone, it's off of my list.

[steven100]

This picture shows how bad it is .....   fire after fire from the windy conditions 

[cmsally]

3 minutes ago, steven100 said:

This picture shows how bad it is .....   fire after fire from the windy conditions 

Looks like that one caused from burning embers that have "flown" from the main fire upwind. Hence the ever increasing scale and unpredictability.

[nobodysfriend]

This tragic event is , at least partly , due to the global warming , that so many still deny ...

Wake up , that is real and just the beginning ...

Edited January 3, 2020 by nobodysfriend

[Tarteso]

Horrible situation!!!

 

[steven100]

we need more fire trucks and a big water plane same as the US one. 

Just buy them now and don't waste time .... 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2020 by steven100

[Momofarang]

If one compares the magnitude of the disaster, to the relatively low number of casualties on can only be admire all the people involved. I think one of the clues is on the picture below: Australians have the brain to understand that a mindless stampede only makes things worse. These people weren't in a rush to get drunk with their families for new year, they were in the process of saving their lives.

 

 

[tifino]

anyway all the failings; involving control of Brigades...backburning/not backburning etc

  are failures at the State level

 

Edited January 3, 2020 by tifino

[Odysseus123]

3 minutes ago, tifino said:

anyway all the failings; involving control of Brigades...backburning/not backburning etc

  are failures at the State level

 

Totally incorrect.

[Odysseus123]

Very strong..

[bristolboy]

*Deleted post edited out*

 

That's some impressively misleading link. Here's one that actually links to the science and the scientists who are expert in this field. .

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-20/hazard-reduction-burns-bushfires/11817336

There actually was a huge amount of burning during the winter. But the burning season was necessarily shorter because of conditions this last winter. And the swamps and wet forests weren't candidate for controlled burning during the winter because they were still too wet. One of the takeaways from this article is that given the current severe weather conditions and dryness, controlled burning would have had essentially no effect on these fires.

[Mick501]

40 minutes ago, nobodysfriend said:

This Disaster is at least partly due to failed policies , so it can and should be politicised .

And it will be in due time.   If there is not an RC, which seems likely, there will at the very least be multiple coronial hearings (in each effected state).  Right now, however, people are dying and it is not the time to score points.

[Eric Loh]

4 hours ago, steven100 said:

we need more fire trucks and a big water plane same as the US one. 

Just buy them now and don't waste time .... 

 

 

 

 

What about raking the forest Steven100 the wise one. 

[Mick501]

1 hour ago, bristolboy said:

That's some impressively misleading link. Here's one that actually links to the science and the scientists who are expert in this field. .

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-20/hazard-reduction-burns-bushfires/11817336

There actually was a huge amount of burning during the winter. But the burning season was necessarily shorter because of conditions this last winter. And the swamps and wet forests weren't candidate for controlled burning during the winter because they were still too wet. One of the takeaways from this article is that given the current severe weather conditions and dryness, controlled burning would have had essentially no effect on these fires.

However, Professor Bradstock noted that the McArthur Meter and the FFDI were developed empirically through observations of small fires burning under mild conditions in the 1960s, and did not necessarily perform well in the extreme fire conditions prevailing in the current NSW bushfires.

"[W]e know that the McArthur FFD models underpredict the rate of spread and intensity under high forest fire danger index conditions; in other words, they don't fully capture all the things that are going on when it's really hot, really windy and the humidity is very low," he told Fact Check.

 

 

 

you must have missed this bit.   Yet the opinion you tout is completely based on that model, which does not work.  Try again please.    Or you can just go back to default mode and attack grammar and punctuation in the event of being proved wrong.

[jany123]

5 hours ago, taichiplanet said:

 

What is needed is a sensible approach to back burning, and for this the Aboriginal Nations should be on a panel of experts to help advise what to do. At least with controlled back burning, animals can escape to another area that is not on fire. Of course what is happening there is horrendous and God speed to all involved, particularly the Volunteer Fire Fighters and people that have lost so much.

Your seriously deluded if you think that aborigines did any form of “controlled backburing”.... all they did was use fire to hunt, with the “escaping” animals ending up in the cook pot.... or picked up ready cooked from the ground.

 

 

[steven100]

This is a case of sustained hot dry conditions for years, therefore zero new re-growth and the build up of dead leaves and timber ideal combustible fuel situation when fire starts usually through lightning strikes.

This coupled with the time of year when hot dry windy conditions are the normal create an ideal scenario for extreme bushfires. 

Nothing to do with aborigines, they knew nothing about back burning, only building their fire for roasting kangaroo.   

[steven100]

1 hour ago, Eric Loh said:

What about raking the forest Steven100 the wise one. 

impossible .. clearing around properties is one part, however these fires and winds we are experiencing are raging huge balls of fire with embers blowing constantly for miles so it's a very difficult situation.

[superal]

5 hours ago, steven100 said:

we need more fire trucks and a big water plane same as the US one. 

Just buy them now and don't waste time .... 

 

 

 

 

Agree it should not be a logistical problem . When I look at the videos of aircraft dropping water on the fires there seems to be a minimal effect as one aircraft looks to be the only one dedicated to that fire in that area . It being a national disaster I do not understand why there is not a global involvement with bringing in hundreds of more aircraft and firemen .   I also have to ask the question , why were there not wide corridors devoid of forestation to prevent the spreading of the fires ?     As well as the tragedy of loss of human life there is the loss of 500,000,000 animal lives , yes half a billion ( just quoted on the BBC News ) .

I hope the Australian Government can assist the folks who lost their homes in what must be the biggest natural disaster in Australia's history . Temperatures set to hit 45c tomorrow in certain states and the country is forecast to get hotter every year in the forthcoming future according to the weather experts .   

[metisdead]

An off topic post containing a link to Bangkok Post has been removed. 

 

Off topic posts and the off topic replies have been removed. 

[thaibeachlovers]

On 1/3/2020 at 9:40 PM, superal said:

 I also have to ask the question , why were there not wide corridors devoid of forestation to prevent the spreading of the fires ? 

Been asked and answered on the other threads about the fires.

Look into who pays to prevent fires and why they didn't do it.

[thaibeachlovers]

On 1/3/2020 at 9:12 PM, jany123 said:

Your seriously deluded if you think that aborigines did any form of “controlled backburing”.... all they did was use fire to hunt, with the “escaping” animals ending up in the cook pot.... or picked up ready cooked from the ground.

 

 

Does the reason they lit fires matter? Whatever they lit them for, it removed the ground cover that is the fuel for the present fires. I saw a clip on Al Jazeera after a fire had passed through, and the canopy was intact. Only the ground vegetation had burned.

The point here and now is that controlled backburning wasn't done when it should have been done.

[thaibeachlovers]

On 1/3/2020 at 9:40 PM, superal said:

I do not understand why there is not a global involvement with bringing in hundreds of more aircraft and firemen . 

Money. Someone has to pay.

They can't just take all the aircraft from the US and Canada as they have to be prepared for fires of their own.

[thaibeachlovers]

On 1/3/2020 at 11:37 AM, webfact said:

Morrison's conservative government has long drawn criticism for not doing enough to address climate change as a cause of Australia's savage drought and fires.

Who in their right mind think it's a problem that could be solved in a couple of years? It's never going to be possible to convert every vehicle to electric, and the solution to where the power for them comes from has not even been addressed.

Windmills and solar will take decades to replace conventional power plants. Hasn't happened anywhere.

Any other ideas? ......................... Thought not.

[Stargeezr]

I have never been to Australia, but I wonder if its forests are a bit like the

forests of California? Not only trees, but bushes that have oils that make

burning hotter. I wonder about how many posters on this forum have actually been

to Australian, or are just experts by watching movies of the country like I have

done.  If I was younger and not bound by my work, I would go and try to help in

fighting the fires.

Geezer

[samran]

18 minutes ago, Stargrazer9889 said:

I have never been to Australia, but I wonder if its forests are a bit like the

forests of California? Not only trees, but bushes that have oils that make

burning hotter. I wonder about how many posters on this forum have actually been

to Australian, or are just experts by watching movies of the country like I have

done.  If I was younger and not bound by my work, I would go and try to help in

fighting the fires.

Geezer

Every time I visit California I am struck by how similar it feels to Australia. You have a lot of eucalyptus trees there - bought across by Australian gold miners during the gold rushes. And yep, they burn hot. 

[jany123]

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Does the reason they lit fires matter? Whatever they lit them for, it removed the ground cover that is the fuel for the present fires. I saw a clip on Al Jazeera after a fire had passed through, and the canopy was intact. Only the ground vegetation had burned.

The point here and now is that controlled backburning wasn't done when it should have been done.

Well yes.... it matters very much when my response was a reply to a suggestion that aborigines should be included in managing the forests to prevent/ mitigate future fires, because of their past association with the land

 

aboriginals were not carefully selecting and managing their burns... these were not controlled back burns.  they (aborigines) were performing an action that would now be classified as “arson”.... but in no way did they act in any manner reflective of responsible forest management.

 

Animals running before a bushfire was observed... lighting fires to cause this blind panic in animals was the result.

 

ergo, suggesting that they (aborigines) have knowledge of forest management is ridiculous... they do not (as a people).

 

even the trumps suggestion of raking the forest is a more responsible approach to forest management, vs hunting with fire.