Bushfires

Just to our north, of course, Monsoon has hit Indonesia and Jakarta has been savagely flooded. Madness yeah? And we wont get any rain before the end of this month. The firies are so exhausted, they are just trying to defend lives first then property. There is no stopping the fires which are burning in forests never burned before. They have lost that battle.

We get smoke where I live, and there have been a couple of fires south of here, but so far (fingers crossed) nothing like the fires everyone else has had to endure.
 
the scope of these fires is impossible to imagine...
The BBC has some infographics on this page...

A visual guide to Australia's bushfire crisis

Don't know what to say... hope it rains soon... (but no floods... :/ )
Thats an excellent summary.
Lots of Australians are following the BBC’s coverage, regrettably because they’re addressing matters not raised in the Australian media or by politicians generally. Quite a terrible state of affairs in that regard😪.
 
Thats why we seek alternative media at times. I don’t know if our overseas cousins will be able to see this writeup, its worth looking at just to get an idea of whats on tomorrow.

Watch the video, too, you can see where new fires have started because of ember attack, ahead of the main fire front. There’s no stopping it.
 
You know, in a way, in spite of the facts, I have a hard time believing this - not the fires, obviously, but the denial and ongoing outragous behaviour ... But I recall that this board has a "no politics" policy (correct me if I'm wrong about this, please), so I will stop commenting here because I would be unable to prevent myself from flying into a rant.

To everyone concerned and afflicted, my best wishes for an improvement of the situation.

M.
 
You know, in a way, in spite of the facts, I have a hard time believing this - not the fires, obviously, but the denial and ongoing outragous behaviour ... But I recall that this board has a "no politics" policy (correct me if I'm wrong about this, please), so I will stop commenting here because I would be unable to prevent myself from flying into a rant.

To everyone concerned and afflicted, my best wishes for an improvement of the situation.

M.
Thanks Matt, I’m the same (as in, really want to fly into a rant, too)
 
Thanks for the thread move, Luke, I hope it will dampen the flames too, but hold no real hope of that. We have another 6 weeks to go, of this, before theres any hope of a real reduction.

The winds have whipped up, today, making it absolutely horrendous (I’m sure there must be a more descriptive word for it) for the firefighters, who are exhausted from months of it (its being going on since August/September really)... so the fires are going in all directions at once. Temperatures have been ridiculous. Over 40 everywhere, its just a matter of degree (no pun intended). At my back door it was 48.6 at one point and officially Penrith, an outer suburb of Sydney, it reached 48.9. The “feels like” was over 52ºC and I believe that because I almost fried as I went out to refresh water for the birds.

On the coast of Victoria at Mallacoota, the Navy had to evacuate people who were trapped on a beach, I think the number was around 100 but I could be wrong, its probably more. It was a lot anyway.

Kangaroo Island, off South Australia, is now 1/3 burnt out, including a huge holiday resort.

Here in NSW, the South coast fires have gone completely berserk and are rampaging through town, village, forest and farm, leaving only destruction behind...

More than 12 million acres burnt out, multiple deaths, hundreds of homes and other property lost. Australia isnt going to recover from this very soon. At least the PM had consented to using defence personnel to help with fire fighting, evacuations etc. Only a few weeks back he said they werent needed. Its going to prove to be his downfall. Cant come soon enough for me. /end political comment.
 
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Words fail me Sue, just keep yourself safe x
Appreciate that Karen, but at this stage, we arent in any danger here. There are a couple of smaller fires which have been controlled, but nothing threatening here (which is unusual, we usually have at least one within a few kms... and will likely get one later in the fire season)... I’m just really fretful over the fires because our water supplies are dwindling (we are on Level 2 now which is really restrictive) and the drought has wiped out half our food supplies. The supermarkets still have food at really high prices, but sooner or later, if all this doesnt stop, we will run out (oh cripes, we probably wont, we will import from china or something..). Weird for a country which is supposed to be “first world”. Then again, successive governments have sold our farms, our water (yes, they sell our water) and our land to other countries. Short term gain. Long term pain.
 
This is unbelievable... in 2017 about half of my country was heavily affected by wildfires in a single day (due to combination of extreme and severe drought and hurricane winds) and the burned area in Australia is already over 12 times what we had in that year. Can’t even imagine it. People here have been following the situation developing on the national news networks already since some weeks, as everyone is very connected with this matters and I find strange that on other places the news take so long to address it.
 
This is unbelievable... in 2017 about half of my country was heavily affected by wildfires in a single day (due to combination of extreme and severe drought and hurricane winds) and the burned area in Australia is already over 12 times what we had in that year. Can’t even imagine it. People here have been following the situation developing on the national news networks already since some weeks, as everyone is very connected with this matters and like then, I find strange that news take so long to pick up on these.
Being in Europe atm, I have been made aware of you being no stranger to regular mass fires in your part of the world and can only hope the Australian government leans on Portugese expertese in dealing with the current problems.
 
The following photo turned up in my facebook feed yesterday. Utterly heartbreaking!

5E2B1DE0-1B9D-4F9C-ACE6-FD76D213AE76.jpeg
 
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