Bushfire Anger

Today I am angry. I awakened to a world full of smoke and a hazy blood red sun that has filled the house with an eerie orange glow. The people of Victoria are trying to get on with their lives. Thousands are displaced with nowhere to go, nothing but the clothes they are wearing, although hopefully they have been able to get some help from the many donations that have come in. The fires are still burning, the temperatures are set to rise again next week which can’t be good, and they have charged a man with arson over the Churchill fire. So, what would the state as a whole like to do to him? Yeah, I feel the same way.

What angers me is in all of this destruction and horror is that there are people in the world so ignorant they feel the need to comment in a less than positive way.

The Mail on Sunday in the UK captioned this photo with the comment ‘Er Bruce, the fire’s the other way!‘ To those who wrote and approved this copyline… are you morons? I know you are a newspaper so it might sound like a silly question but have you been watching the news or do facts not get in the way of a ‘good’ story. I mean, we’re rolling on the ground here laughing at your oh-so-funny quip. Over 181 people are dead, thousands homeless, entire towns burnt and melted into the charred remains of earth, millions of wildlife dead and those that are injured are left without habitat. I got up this morning having tossed and turned all night, dreaming bad things as the smoke seeped into my house. Hope you guys had a good old night’s sleep though.

Maybe, just maybe, these firefighters, many of them VOLUNTEERS by the way, had the good sense to remove themselves from an inferno bearing down on them (see my previous post for the stats on the fires).

As for one of our nations cutest icons, TMZ showed their poor taste too with: Koala to Firefighter: I Won’t Tap That! ‘After battling some of the worst wildfires ever to hit Australia, a firefighter shared his bottled water with a pampered koala on Monday. Afterwards the new friends went to Pilates and dined on sushi.‘ Yep, that’s just what the firefighters are doing in the face of the worst devastation in living memory in Victoria. Pilates! You have apologised, but again, how did that copy get approval to go live? You are a bunch of idiots. Enough said.

And lastly, it’s last because I can’t bear to read any more negative things today, here is a link to a very scary piece of footage: http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-211954 To the poster on the iReport site that made disparaging comments about Jim, the guy who took this footage, why don’t you actually inform yourself about this tragedy instead of making ill-informed comments. Perhaps you think he could have ‘run’ as you put it. These fires are like liquid vapour travelling at speeds that are unfathomable. It is being dubbed ‘the perfect storm’ because of the conditions that caused it to grow into the monster it has become. Fleeing, for many, either on foot or in a vehicle, was just impossible. Amaranth, I did not even finish reading your post. You are an ignoramus!

I am going to leave on a good note because after all, who can resist a good news story and a koala!

Sam the Koala Video

Victoria on Fire

Tonight the Dandenong Ranges are no longer visible from our house. The smoke is thick in the air and it is hard to breath. It has even managed to work its way into the house. They warned us that the eastern areas of Melbourne would be affected by smoke. We feel too far away but we’re not. I feel like life has stopped still inside a blazing furnace that is hell… that is Victoria. Even those who aren’t affected by the fires themselves are affected by the horror of what has happened in the last week.

Last Saturday we were shocked by the smoke that billowed across the sky from the fires in Kinglake. A week later we are still stunned by the devestation of our state. How can the state rebuilt, how can those people affected by the fires move on? When the fires are still blazing.

What started with me reading the paper for news of what is happening at the beginning of the week is now me crying at the heart-breaking stories of people losing homes, pets and loved ones. But it is also about the heroes. Even if they don’t know they’re heroes. The guy who saved the family of five from an approaching firewall, the young man who lay on top of his 94 year old great uncle as the firefront passed and burnt down their house, even the firefighter who saved Sam the koala… especially the firefighters, many of them volunteers battling and inferno so hot the stats give you goosebumps.

Average bushfire:
Short distance spotting 50-100m (spotting = where embers, burning leaves and branches are thrown in front of the fire)
Long distance spotting 1-2km
Energy expelled 10,000kW/m of fire
Flame Height 10-20m
Proximity to flames up to 80m

Black Saturday:
Short distance spotting 1-2km
Long distance spotting 15km
Energy expelled 60-80,000kW/m of fire (equivalent to 500 Hiroshima atomic bombs released at once)
Flame Height 50m
Proximity to flames up to 200m (making it difficult for the firefighters to get close)