VSalonistas Down Under and the fires

[Blue Jays]

Rain has thankfully started falling in some of the impacted areas. Hopefully a long and saturating rain continues.
Authorities have also arrested dozens of extremely dangerous arsonists who intentionally set many of the fires.
Stay strong, Australia. Hopefully a "corner will soon be turned" during this nightmare. We are rooting for you.

[BBB]

Some rain, but not enough. It has been cooler the last couple of days, but it will heat up later in the week.

There's also a lot of disinformation about the fires, including in relation to arsonists. You might want to check your sources.

See this link and then click on "No fires in Victoria confirmed to have been deliberately lit, premier says" link on the left hand side and that will take you to the appropriate spot in the live feed.

Australia fires live: NSW and Victoria bushfires insurance bill tops $7m – latest updates | Australia news | The Guardian

[Colinmclelland]

Rain has thankfully started falling in some of the impacted areas. Hopefully a long and saturating rain continues.
Authorities have also arrested dozens of extremely dangerous arsonists who intentionally set many of the fires.
Stay strong, Australia. Hopefully a "corner will soon be turned" during this nightmare. We are rooting for you.

I'm hoping a corner a corner has indeed been turned. If Australia comes out of this no longer willing to put up with morons who display no leadership in positions that require leadership, that will at least be a result.

As my 14 year old kid said this morning, "Why do we only have morons in government?"

[Mark Kelly]

Australia fires live: NSW and Victoria bushfires insurance bill tops $7m – latest updates | Australia news | The Guardian

That headline is out by two orders of magnitude : it's $700 million and counting.

Rain has thankfully started falling in some of the impacted areas. Hopefully a long and saturating rain continues.

We got all of 2mm out of it (less than a tenth of an inch). Expectation for the next week is less than half of that.

The Indian Ocean Dipole has finally reversed so the North should get rain but they're not predicting much for down here.

[Blue Jays]

Firefighters are definitely heroes there. They must be so exhausted.
I know firefighters have departed from the U.S. and Canada to assist.

These immense flames apparently generate their own high-speed powerful winds.
It is undoubtedly terrifying to see an approaching wall of fire. Praying for more rain.

[BBB]

Yes it should be tops $700m. The two zeros did not come across from the cut and paste of the link!

[Blue Jays]

I figured it was a technical glitch with the way the URL pasted-in here.
The total cost of these fires is going to be astounding once calculated.

My concern is the army of firefighters eventually all need to eat, drink, and sleep.
Given the scope, literally every firefighter could be working 24 x 7 and more are needed.

[guido]

Australia burns - in photos

[Blue Jays]

Praying for more rain to please help the firefighters, rescue squads, residents, animals, and everyone impacted.
Australian Police have identified 183 arsonists with more arrests to come as the official investigation continues.

The Australian / Arson Arrests

[BBB]

Again, you need to be careful of your sources. For whatever reason there is a whole lot of disinformation being spread about these fires, including in relation to arson.

Bots and trolls spread false arson claims in Australian fires ‘disinformation campaign’ | Australia news | The Guardian

[BBB]

Scorched earth: the bushfire devastation on Kangaroo Island – in pictures | Australia news | The Guardian

[Mark Kelly]

The Australian / Arson Arrests

Worth remembering that the owner of that paper also owns Fox and the family were funded into the newspaper game to run propaganda for mining companies. At the time the papers in a couple of mining districts were union owned and the mining bosses wanted a countervailing voice so they chose Murdoch Snr, knowing they could trust him to parrot what they wanted.

[Too Tall]

*Following. No words really. Keep talking, it must get better.

[jclay]

It's heartbreaking for the humans but even more-so for the wildlife. I hope you get rain, soon, and plenty.

Put out water buckets for the animals who are trying to survive and escape. They'll need it.

Good luck with the weather, and the leadership. If humanity survives another thousand years, which for a number of reasons I doubt, not the least of which is nuclear war fuckup, I don't think historians will aim many complementary paragraphs at our current crop of "leaders", never mind our species.

[Blue Jays]

Who are the 180+ people whom the Australian Police have secured evidence, investigated, and arrested for arson?
One would think anyone who had their homes burned down would be heartened to know criminals were being caught?
If they are in the bush with cans of gasoline and tossing matches...they simply MUST be caught and punished justly.

[BBB]

Australia fires live: NSW and Victoria bushfire clean up ahead of deteriorating conditions – latest updates | Australia news | The Guardian

Scroll through this and read it carefully.

This is from the most recent entry.

"If there is misinformation to be spread, chances are a Trump will jump at it.

24 people have been charged with deliberately lighting fires in NSW. The rest are for defying the total fire ban - so angle grinding, fireworks, etc. So far, none of the Victorian fires have been deliberately lit.

No one is saying that arson doesn’t happen. But spreading false claims like this does nothing to fix any problems."

[RichTheRoadie]

Only just saw this thread.

As an Englishman living in Aus., this has been scary. I was pretty relaxed about it for a while due to it not being in our immediate proximity (distressed, frustrated, concerned, yes - but not for my own life); but then we were diverted onto a quiet country road on our way back from our pre-Christmas vacation and a fire flared up in a small town minutes after we passed through. Last week the town we stayed in for our vacation was in the evacuation zone - that really brought it all home for me.

Right now things seem to be easing slightly; but, as Colin said, here in Sydney we're yet to experience a truly *hot* day. On Saturday a town to the west of Sydney hit 48ºC or more and towns on the outer edges of Sydney hit the early 40s, but metro Sydney still only saw mid-30s. Summer isn't over either - things could easily flare up again. And there is no real rain to speak of (by which I mean rain of the persistence and intensity to actually help ease the fires) on the forecast.

In fact storms are now a potential issue, rather than a benefit - whilst they may bring rain, they also bring lightening; and with the ground as dry as it is, that risks more fires sparking up. The rain that those same storms may bring isn't enough to do anything about it.

Worse, the storms that are developing are often being created by the fires themselves - that just blows my mind.

The nearest major fire is now 60km from where I live, and yet the smoke today is as bad as I have seen over the last few weeks. Where I work is probably less than 1km from the Sydney Harbour Bridge but I can barely see it. The city, just across the harbour, might as well not be there.

The firies have been AMAZING, but I only hope they have been able to rest - if this all kicks off again they're all we have to manage it, but the poor buggers have been at it non-stop.

Fingers crossed, folks - and donate if you can.

[Mark Kelly]

Who are the 180+ people whom the Australian Police have secured evidence, investigated, and arrested for arson?

Please, please, please stop spreading this discredited rumour.

It is classic diversionary propaganda from the masters of the game. BBB has posted above that it is based on a total misrepresentation of the actual figures. The fires where I am were mostly started by lightning strikes.

If I can tug on your heartstrings: I'm stuck in the middle of this and facing the loss of a year's income, so if nothing else do it as a favour to me.

[mjbabcock]

Serious question here, is fire a part of the ecology of Australia they say it is in PNW/Californian landscapes? Is there invasive plants that are a more potent fuel? Are management practices leaving too much fuel on the forest floor? Or is this straight low humidity and massively high temps driven by warming?

[Mark Kelly]

The answers to that question are very complex and would require a real expert to give a definitive answer. I'm not that expert but here's what I see the situation being:

The invasive plant thing: mostly no, it's the other way around: Australian trees (Eucalypts) prove to be a big fire risk overseas, possibly due to carrying high levels of a volatile terpene (cineole). There's a fair bit of evidence that fire has been part of the landscape for a very long time: the dominant genus of understory tree (Acacia) has adapted to the extent that the seeds preferentially germinate after fire.

Underbrush: to some extent. The net opinion of the experts is that fuel reduction is worthwhile but there's a limit to what it can do: I'd say 90% of the biomass in dry sclerophyll forests is the trees, mostly Eucalypts and see comment above. Wet sclerophyll forests have a higher level of understory plants but they are harder to burn, see next comment. Additionallly the hot dry weather limits the time period available for fuel reduction burns.

Hot dry weather: yes, we have been in drought for most of the time since the turn of the millenium and fourteen of the twenty hottest years ever recorded have been in that period. 2019 was the hottest of the lot, 2018 was fourth and 2017 fifth. Much of the destruction this time round has been in forests that are usually lesser fire risk; these wet scleropyhll forests are now dry.