Posted on 02/09/2009 12:51:50 PM PST by naturalman1975
VICTORIA has suffered the most tragic bushfire disaster to have occurred on this continent throughout its period of human habitation.
The deaths, loss of homes and businesses and the blow to our feeling of security will take decades to fade into history. The trauma will live with the victims, who, to a greater or lesser extent, are all of us.
How could this happen when we have been told in a withering, continuous barrage of public relations that with technology and well-polished uniforms, we can cope with the unleashing of huge forces of nature.
I have been a bushfire scientist for more than 50 years, dealing with all aspects of bushfires, from prescribed burning to flame chemistry, and serving as supervisor of fire weather services for Australia. We need to understand what has happened so that we can accept or prevent future fire disasters.
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The third and only controllable factor in this deadly triangle is fuel: the dead leaves, pieces of bark and grass that become the gas that feeds the 50m high flames that roar through the bush with the sound of jet engines.
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The decision to ignore the threat has been encouraged by some shocking pseudo-science from a few academics who use arguments that may have a place in political discourse but should have no place in managing our environment and protecting it and us from the bushfire threat.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
The first reports last week indicated that these fires were deliberately set. My pseudo-science decoder ring points to the crescent and star.
100% true also for Western US brushfires, made deadly by environmentalist wacko litigation.
Green is the color of death.
That may be so, but greenie weenies who don’t allow proper thinning and cleanup in forests make mega-fires like these more frequent. This set of fires is a perfect storm combination of intense heat (it’s been as high as 113 F in Melbourne last week), drought, the types of trees in the forest, uncleared brush and tinder, and arson. Take out any one of those things and the fires are much less damaging or may not happen at all.
}:-)4
Modern man can control raging infernos by selective burns, cutting, and cleaning near where they reside.
The idiot eviromentalists and their enablers, by impeding these processes, are as responsible for these conflagrations as is the heat, lightning strikes, or enemy arsonists.
Colorado was burning. The enviro-nazi’s refused to allow large bulldozing equipment into the area to create a fire break because it would crush some so called flora.
The fire burned on, people died, homes were lost, yet there was no relenting on the part of the enviro crazies.
And I can agree with this 1000% We had to evacuate twice last year when the forest fire (that was supposedly out one time) got within 1/4 mile from our house in New Mexico.
The fire personnel could not do anything about the fire because of the 50 mile per hour wind but more importantly all the fuel that was on the mountain.
Over the years attempts had been made by the Forest Service and local agencies to thin out the slash to no avail because some STUPID greenies would block it. Now 90 homes are gone, 30,000 acres of forest are black toothpicks, and the greenies have moved on since there is nothing to burn or use now.
Green is the color of hate in our area now.
I think the California fires are because of greenies too. They won’t allow controlled fires and wonder why fires begin because of overgrown brush.
Green is the color of death.
My favorite color that has been kidnapped by those wackos.
The Islamists were encouraged last September to start fires.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/islam-group-urges-forest-fire-jihad-20080906-4b53.html?page=-1
Somewhere around here there’s a story citing an Aussie Islamic web site as advocating arson.
The bottom line is, in circumstances like this, ignition will always happen, suppression will always be ineffective, fuel management is the only solution. We’ve been fighting that battle in San Diego County for thirty years now, and the greens keep trotting out new excuses. I’m taking a certain wry satisfaction from the fact that their last argument was that all we had to do was adopt the Aussie approach to firefighting and we’d never have a wildfire again.
I live in the inland northwest. A huge evergreen forest. In August of 1910 conditions were just right for an unbelievable conflagration. Several small fires blended into one. A huge one. Burning limbs were thrown into the air by hurricane force winds generated by the fire itself, thereby throwing fire hundreds of feet forward, and igniting fresh forest.
Several towns near here and across a larger landscape were burned out. Millions of board feet of timber destroyed. Most fled from the flames, so there was less loss of life than there otherwise would have been.
Towns were rebuilt, lives put back together. We still live here. But there are still scars visible. The Fire of 1910 is an indelible part of the landscape and psyche of the community to this day.
It will indeed take those Australians affected by this fire decades to recover.
Well put.
Thank you for your enlightening post.
“Colorado was burning. The enviro-nazi’s refused to allow large bulldozing equipment into the area to create a fire break because it would crush some so called flora.
The fire burned on, people died, homes were lost, yet there was no relenting on the part of the enviro crazies.”
SO, why aren’t these people prosecuted for MURDER??? WHY??
We're learning.
Thank you.
Same thing in the US where windblown trees and other forest debris cannot be removed from National Forests turning them into tinderboxes.
What is more, Victoria has been drought stricken for the last ten years. The simple fact is that be it by a fool or an act of nature, the whole country side is a tinder box.
May God hold close the ones he called home, comfort those who lost everything and to give the rest of us wisdom enough to do the same.
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