Australian Fire Status
The latest from ABC.
The short version: There are still about 30 fires burning, but all but a dozen are contained, and all will hopefully be completely under control before next week which is forecast to have a couple of days of dry lightning before the next heat wave on Wednesday.
The two people who were picked up yesterday were probably “disaster tourists” as they have been released. [I would chain them to a tree if they were so interested in disasters. I really hate sightseers at disasters.]
Not very far off the record officials believe that the death toll, which is still at 181, will be 300+ in the end.
An informational note for all of the anxious people who want to return to their property in the devastated areas: They won’t admit it, but it is a lot easier to shoot looters when the only people allowed to be in the area are military, police, and firemen. The unspoken rules of engagement are – no uniform = looter. This is a lot easier than explaining the laws of arrest to the military. We do this in the US, and it doesn’t take long for looters and “disaster tourists” to understand they are in a very high risk profession. Keep in mind that many of these destroyed areas are murder scenes if the fires were arson. Looters aren’t just stealing stuff, they are removing evidence.
8 comments
…I’ve always been amazed at how some people simply can’t resist the idea of jumping in the the truck and try to go roaring around in a fire area. One of the first things we do when a wild fire starts is round up some people and barricades to close access into the area. I’ve thought that if they wanted to be in there so badly, we ought to put them in fire gear, hand them a pulaski, and put them on the line; they can see all the burned area they want, live and in real time, while it’s happening…
After hurricanes you are scrounging for gas to power generators and chain saws and you see these idiots cruising around, getting in the way. Looters at least have a reason for driving around.
I really tend to get unreasonable when I’m sweating like no tomorrow using an axe because we’re waiting for more gas and some yehu drives by taking pictures in an air conditioned vehicle.
Like you say, if you love it so much, there’s plenty of work that needs doing.
Agree about the looters. Worse than grave robbers. I don’t understand the mentality… I mean, I understand the supposed psychology… *shrug*
Also agree about the rubber neck morons.
Even after 50 years and the fact that I’ve pretty much seen it all, I despair of the human race sometimes.
It time to face facts, we are not exactly a warm and cuddly species. The nice guys won’t cull the herd, and the SOBs are taking out the best, not the worst.
There are a lot of good people coming through for those in pain, but there are always the “takers” trying to get something for nothing.
Just finished watching the evening news. They are very worried about the fires around Healesville, starting to warm up again now. Expecting 30’s by Sunday or Monday. Over 2,000 homes have been lost. It’s now being estimated that millions of wildlife have been lost.
Millions of animals dead in Australia fires
On the plus side, In one week, over $AU100 million has been raised so far, which they say equates to about $50k per lost home (so many homes have been destroyed!) About 20% of homes had no insurance.
The biggest problem however, will be to our depleted water supply. Experts are now predicting that because of the massive fire areas, when the vegetation regrows, it will use significantly more water then the old growth and of course will seek out the best water supplies. Also, some of the dam’s and catchments have been poisoned by ash and other contaminants caused by the fires and water will be lost because of extra filtration requirements. One expect predicted that the impact may be a 20% to as much as 50% reduction in available water over the next 50 years. Victoria cannot survive that as we now stand.
I’ll end with thanks to a brave Californian who helped save many last Saturday. 🙂
Shawn Stavang, the man behind Elvis Helitak’s might
As I said in my post on the interview with the RSPCA spokesman, that fire was moving at times at nearly 300 kph, and it blowing embers well out in front of it, starting new fires.
Under the conditions that existed last Saturday, all you can do is grab some clothes and your paperwork and head for the ocean. Firebreaks 10 kilometers wide wouldn’t have stopped these fires.
Mr. Stavang is, I believe, a very brave man, and possibly insanely lucky! Flying a water-bombing chopper for hundreds of water drops on the weekend on fires that could suddenly shoot flames up to 100m in the air and moving up to 300km/hr and surviving, takes a lot of courage and skill. The wind and air currents would have been insanely unpredictable. He deserves a medal at the very least. Of course, there would have been careful planning, but with a chaotic event such as this, no plan would be worth the paper (or pixels) it’s on 5 minutes after takeoff. I am sure he helped save many peoples lives. As I know all the thousands of firefighters, most of whom are unpaid volunteers such as the thousands in the CFA, have saved many lives also.
Also, I saw a report on the news that two would-be looters were killed when the building they were looting collapsed on them. Swift justice. Good. I hope it happens to all of them.
Events such as this always seem to bring out the extremes, the best and the worst.
It has been my experience that most chopper pilots are more than a little insane.
They train the military chopper pilots down here on the Panhandle and in Southern Alabama. They were very annoyed at not being allowed to help in New Orleans. There was a point when FEMA suspended flying over the city because of reports of gunfire. One on the pilots wondered what it hell FEMA thought flying in Iraq and Afghanistan was like. There attitude was, there were no SAMs or RPGs, so it was completely safe.
The Special Ops guys noted that one of their crew was called “the door gunner”, so anyone shooting at them would be in for a nasty surprise.
I know what it’s like going over an area hit by napalm, an it gets pretty damn exciting. You hit the express elevator of the thermal and then drop off the other side. I don’t want to find out what that’s like in a helicopter.
I don’t doubt, that Stavang feels he is a lot safer in his chopper, than being stuck on the ground, and I know that’s how I feel.