Bushfires.

[the fly]

I think a lot of that was actually dust coming up from the south with the wind change.

Fair enough. Looking at the image that Billy ray posted, I think we had smoke in the late morning (which had cleared by lunchtime) with the dust rolling in at around 2 or 3. After the wind change, the Central Coast would've been getting both.

 

[PoppedCorn]

Get out when they advise u too is my opinion
We had a massive fire thru here a couple years back and were told to go
It was still a while away and I was sure it wouldn't hit us but ya know, wife was a bit panic so packed the car of important shit and got out.
We have a couple of CFS people at work and we had a bushfire prevention and plan meeting during our safety/pre shift meeting yesterday

I spoke to one of the CFS guys who I know well enough and said how our house has a decent clearing around it
He explained how damaging embers are and they will destroy houses as well as a normal fire.

We really need to invest in water bombers
Dozens of them
Stuff the cost just do it ffs

 

[Bomberboyokay]

 

[Billy ray]

 

[peternorth]

Although during the day in sydney it was quite pleasant weather and temperature wise, i always thought about the fire hit areas. man its heartbreaking.

anyway, flew out of sydney so it couldn't have been me

 

[Power Raid]

I live in a reasonably affluent suburb of Sydney and have had my suburb named as one of the most high risk areas in Sydney. Please do tell me how this constitutes 'living in the bush'.

if it backs onto bush land, it's a bush fire

If it doesn't, it is not a bush fire

 

[Billy ray]

Not sure if this will work but some photos from fires

 

[Hawk Dork]

This sounds horrific


This is climate changed. Pray for rain. Pray harder for leadership

We had a bushfire two months ago that burned most of our property. It didn’t matter. It burned again
The September fire burned to our perimeter.
This was just two months ago. Everything that should be done was done, and lots more.
The fire that came last Friday was of another order of magnitude altogether.
A crown fire roaring in from the west on a hot afternoon with an 80km/h wind – it wasn’t on the ground.
It was a firestorm in the air – raining fire.


There was no fuel on the ground; it was already burned.


The heat ahead of the fire front ignited nearly everything in its path. Before he saw any flame my neighbour’s car exploded

This is climate changed - pray for rain, pray harder for leadership | Badja Sparks

We had a bushfire two months ago that burned most of our property. It didn’t matter. It burned again

www.theguardian.com

 

[NSWCROW]

Big fire out my way burning for a few days flared up today
Up near Colo Heights

 

[Kram]

Big fire out my way burning for a few days flared up today
Up near Colo Heights

View attachment 779595

Ohh so Mr fancy pants resides somewhere where everyone lives in double story homes

 

[Power Raid]

Imagine if we had better land care management techniques rather than doing nothing, clearing or burning back. Imagine if we started to replicate natures way of controlling how much fuel we had on the land.

Hopefully this is the event that starts people thinking about biological solutions the manage the environment and introduced animals to control fuel and at the same time contribute to capturing and storing carbon in the soil.

Unfortunately all we are getting so far "it's climate change". Given we have had bushfires before the industrial revolution and the fact climate will change even if we remove any human caused climate change, what is the value of arm waiving? When will we start implementing solutions that work.


oh and while I am at it, why are we giving farmers $1b just after some of the best years they've ever had? why are we giving them $1b no strings attached? why not give farms that are change their land management techniques that reduce CO2, increase soil quality and become more water efficient?

Unfortunately governments swing with the breeze, along with public opinion. Even when the public opinion is problem focused rather than solution focused.

 

[Hawk Dork]

Imagine if we had better land care management techniques rather than doing nothing, clearing or burning back. Imagine if we started to replicate natures way of controlling how much fuel we had on the land.

Hopefully this is the event that starts people thinking about biological solutions the manage the environment and introduced animals to control fuel and at the same time contribute to capturing and storing carbon in the soil.

Unfortunately all we are getting so far "it's climate change". Given we have had bushfires before the industrial revolution and the fact climate will change even if we remove any human caused climate change, what is the value of arm waiving? When will we start implementing solutions that work.


oh and while I am at it, why are we giving farmers $1b just after some of the best years they've ever had? why are we giving them $1b no strings attached? why not give farms that are change their land management techniques that reduce CO2, increase soil quality and become more water efficient?

Unfortunately governments swing with the breeze, along with public opinion. Even when the public opinion is problem focused rather than solution focused.

Its a dry continent you need moisture to mulch the leaf litter back into top soil on a eucalypt forest floor no rain and dry winds isnt going to help that process.
We have had rainforest catch fire in Qld, Northern NSW and Tasmania they have moist mulched forest floors

 

[Billy ray]

Saw this on facebook.
——-
Bruce Walker. Fire fighter. Survivor makes a comment...

hi everyone. my name is bruce walker, you might remember me from ABC TV yesterday, i'm one of the survivors of the wytaliba fires of last friday.

responding to this well informed ****wit here - Anthony Goodwin

so mate - first up, i've been an RFS volunteer for close to 20 years, and am part of the highly regarded Wytaliba RFS - one of the most respected and hardened crews on the northern tablelands and beyond. our crew number over 50 and include decorated vets of ash wednesday and many other national distaster catastrophic level fires.

so - regarding hazzard reduction. let me fill you in.

for my time here, we used to do managed hazzard reduction whenever it was viable in winter.

however - sadly, the moment gina and ruper went halves and purchased the LNP wholesale, we saw a MASSIVE increase in wholesale industrial logging across the nation.

tell me, anthony - do you garden? do you use MULCH?

compare a mulched garden to a non-mulched garden. you'll see a near instant difference. if you're not schooled on how soil works, try standing all day in the sun with no hat on. what happens?

that's right, anthony. your head gets ****ing hot.

that's what's happened to the planet. now. as anyone who's dabbled in, you know... physics, will spell out better than i can - an increase of just one degree is quite significant.

another neato thing physics talks about is the water cycle, anthony.

you see, part of the water cycle is this cool thing called "transpiration"

it's part 4 of this essential way in which trees send up moisture to meet clouds, creating low pressure troughs which draw rainfall inland.

in fact, it's physically impossible to get rain on the lee side of a mountain, without trees doing this very thing. impossible. ask the residents of the atacama desert in chile - who haven't had rain for one THOUSAND years. why? no ****ing trees, anthony.

so anyway, back to the greens enacting a ban on burnoffs - that time we elected them to majority government and they had the final say.

when was that again, anthony? i'll wait.

nah. lets move on, since we ALL know this was never a thing . ever.

so anyway - here in wytaliba, we used to have an incredibly green lush valley - right up until industrial loggers finally broke in to compartments to our north. right about this time, there was a near instant and significant drop to our vital streamflow. this happened again after each and every highland logging operation - and with LNP slashing and burning every national park in sight, well... you know, lets' not go there. climate change is a hoax, right?

so wholesale burn quotas came in with LNP too. this... well.. i just want to pause here and say "wow" because this did indeed make us say wow.

in recent years, we've seen hazzard reduction burns take place completely surrounding our once green, lush valley. so much so, that after the last july burn - of an area once supplying most of our water - well... 27 years of no burn had left a healthy and regenerating semi-arid rainforest. now it's simply arid nothing.

despite this burn and 3 more last year, we got the following result - fires flared up in this dry mulchless wasteland and burned for 6 weeks, destroying 2 more former rainforest areas, leaving them also tinder dry and unable to transpire - hasn't actually rained a drop since then. weird. almost like cause and effect took place.

clouds pass over, for sure. they get rain on the tablelands even - but - as physics reminds us, when air drops, it warms, expands, and rather than raining, sucks even more moisture from trees and soil.

oh well.

i mean, this is normal for australia, isn't it? watching 200 or more year old trees slowly wither and die right in front of you. that's normal. happens all the time. rivers dry up too, even though ours is home to platypi - who aren't known for travelling much - and hasn't dried up in probably 100,000 years minimum. until last summer, and it's been bone dry since august. this has never happened in my entire 25 or so years here. no local elders remember such a thing. wow.

now, we all know about the bees nest and kingsgate fires and the hundreds more around the state. my crew and many other heroic RFS volunteers have been fighting them for months on end. yet another backburn actually got lit up about a month ago, on our south side, just half an hour before high southerly winds were due. the responsible paid agency, then ran out of paid hours, packed up and left it to spot onto our property and threaten 80 homes.

we're like the muja hadeen though, so we got it after about 10 days nonstop hectic battle.

this... brings us up to date, andrew. we've got bare, blacked out dust for 50km in all directions. right up to the actual eaves of half the homes here.

which is why, friday's hellstorm caught all of us by surprise, andrew.

a mushroom cloud went up at 3pm, 20 or so km away. within 30 minutes, high winds turned that into a 20km long front - strangely, this front was on ground burnt black as recently as 3 weeks ago - crown fires too, since every tree was literally a giant matchstick with dead leaves and nothing else.

this then switch to 80km/h southerlies and rained hell on 3500 acres of already blacked out ground.

well... you can't say we didn't prep or do hazzard reduction redneck style, can you andrew? or can you?

curiously, within 1 hour we'd lost 20 homes, a school, a fireshed, and a contrete ****ing bridge - meaning only 2 outside units even got in to help.

falling trees in the hundreds blocked the old grafton road, so no one could even help neighbours.

by dawn, of 80 homes in our community, 52 were lost, 2 dead (one a sex party voter, the other aplotical - this one is for you, barnaby ****ing joyce) we had many injured, thousands of local animals died, and.. it' looks like a warzone here. which it did almost before, except we had homes.

so, Anthony Goodwin and ALL you ****ing armchair experts out there, tell me. how again, was this the greens fault?

thanks.

bruce walker, wytaliba RFS member and survivor.

 

[Power Raid]

Its a dry continent you need moisture to mulch the leaf litter back into top soil on a eucalypt forest floor no rain and dry winds isnt going to help that process.
We have had rainforest catch fire in Qld, Northern NSW and Tasmania they have moist mulched forest floors

This was the bit I couldn’t get my head around initially, as you’re right more water can speed up the process.

What happens is rain events aren’t controllable but the morning dew is. Same said with frost. By having morning dew, that’s enough to keep systems going between drinks.

Also the focus isn’t mulch rather keeping foot systems at all times sustaining microbes. So the engine room is actually below the surface rather than on it.

This results in being a better sponge when rain events occur.

 

[Billy ray]

Past 9 days video loop

 

[Billy ray]

Smokey sunset again

 

[SM]

if it backs onto bush land, it's a bush fire

If it doesn't, it is not a bush fire

It does back onto bush.

But let's argue semantics. That's the important thing.

 

[Kram]

Man charged with lighting out-of-control NSW fire 'to protect cannabis crop'
AAP
AAP
Saturday, 16 November 2019 7:40 am

A 51-year-old man has been charged with lighting an out-of-control fire in the NSW Northern Tablelands Credit: DAN HIMBRECHTS/AAP (FILE)

A 51-year-old man has been charged with lighting an out-of-control fire in the NSW Northern Tablelands in order to protect a cannabis crop.
The fast-moving blaze at Guyra Road in Ebor, northeast of Armidale, was burning across more than 2000ha on Friday afternoon as it spread towards the Ebor township.
The fire was reported to emergency services at about 10.30pm on Thursday.

The man was arrested just after 2pm on Friday in Ebor and charged with intentionally cause fire and be reckless to its spread.

One of your mates Bomberboyokay, Gough?

 

[Bomberboyokay]

One of your mates Bomberboyokay, Gough?

Hur hur hur

 

[Power Raid]

It does back onto bush.

But let's argue semantics. That's the important thing.

Identifying a fire in a bush land is called a bush fire is not semantics

Identifying an outer suburb, probably 30km, 50km or more away from Sydney backing onto bush land is not semantics it’s also not Sydney

Understanding that bush fire risk for areas backing onto bush land is real and always has been real is not semantics

Understanding that better land care management is required is not semantics



Or do you think affluence is some divine intervention from a bushfire?

 

[SM]

Identifying a fire in a bush land is called a bush fire is not semantics

Identifying an outer suburb, probably 30km, 50km or more away from Sydney backing onto bush land is not semantics it’s also not Sydney

Understanding that bush fire risk for areas backing onto bush land is real and always has been real is not semantics

Understanding that better land care management is required is not semantics



Or do you think affluence is some divine intervention from a bushfire?

Wot? It's not 30-50km out of Sydney. Understand what you're trying to argue about before screaming into the void.

 

[Cuzz09]

So they pretty much said they cant put out the fires and waiting for them to burn out naturally.

On SM-G925I using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Billy ray]

So they pretty much said they cant put out the fires and waiting for them to burn out naturally.

On SM-G925I using BigFooty.com mobile app

Burn for months still....

 

[Cuzz09]

Burn for months still....

Unfortunate but what can they do? Just hope it rains soon

On SM-G925I using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Hawk Dork]

On Insiders this morning
Fire chief was saying if he had the meeting with government earlier they could have ordered more water bombers to be here now