Punchanello
Well-Known Member
Hi everyone,
I wanted to give all you fellow reefers an idea of what we are going through here in Australia right now. I live in Canberra, Australia's capital. It's referred to as the Bush Capital because it was designed to blend in to our beautiful landscape.
This is what it looked like the last few days even though we are not currently under any direct fire threat.
I have experienced devastating bush fire before. In 2003 the skies turned black and the mountains glowed red. Embers rained down on us and we lost hundreds of homes in Canberra.
It was the first recorded fire tornado and ripped through with such ferocity that it took us all by surprise, despite fire being a regular part of Australian life and being well prepared. What I saw in 2003 changed me forever, and what is happening right now is much, much worse.
fire tornado
For those of you that aren't familiar with Australia, our bush land is dominated by many different types of eucalyptus from shrubs and bushes to towering, majestic canopies. They contain oils that disperse in the air and in places like the blue mountains envelop everything with a beautiful smell and a majestic, dream like blue haze.
The oils also burn very hot, trees literally explode in to flames. This is what makes Australian fires so dangerous. You can see trees 'crowning' in this video.
crowning
Fire in Australia is part of our bush's natural cycle and the bush has adapted to it. Our indigenous people conducted burns for tens of thousands of years to cleanse and rejuvenate the land and mitigate much larger and more dangerous burns. Quite often, within days of fire you see trees with new sprouts and blooming flowers. That's what they do. But this is different - We have had one of the worst droughts in living memory, it seems like every day temperature records tumble across the country and the fire season starts earlier and earlier each year. Everything is parched. Fire season traditionally starts Oct/Nov and February (late summer) is typically our most dangerous month. Yet, this fire season has burned since the middle of winter 2019. We have lost temperate and tropical rains forests that are usually too wet to burn and have never experienced fire. Tasmania, our greenest, wettest, coldest and most southerly state has seen unprecedented fires in the past 6 months. The water at beaches is black with soot, smokes chokes cities thousands of kilometres from blazes and has even stained the New Zealand snow and reached Chile and Argentina. It was 50 degrees celcius in Sydney on the weekend. Utterly unliveable. People were trapped by multiple fire fronts. Rolling electricity outages are occurring in some areas. People are going in to cardiac arrest because of the poor air quality. The sky's are often orange and when they get red, you know fire is close.
Some of the fires are so big they create their own weather, in turn causing dry lightning and further fires
We are in Hell
I did not know this until I travelled overseas and compared attitudes, but Australians in general are very deeply in love with the country's landscape and wildlife. Spending summers in it, whether it be on the coasts or in the mountains or in the bush is a tradition, a birthright. People, especially indigenous people, consider themselves to be custodians of the land. The fires are not just deeply traumatic because of the human lives lost (24 so far) or the property (1300 homes at last count) but because of the estimated 480 million animals that have died during the blazes and the ancient and beautiful forests, bush land and farmland consumed by the 63,000 square kilometres of burnt land. We are in mourning. Amongst the most disturbing stories are the firefighters in tears because they can here the koalas and possums screaming in the trees as they are burnt. This koala ultimately died, but these scenes are repeated again and again -
Koala
What is most frightening for us is that this is the new normal. February is yet to come. What has shocked us is that despite the politics, Australian leaders have always downed their weapons and taken a bi-partisan, coordinated approach to disaster management. In this case, our Prime Minister was holidaying in Hawaii in the middle of the crisis, our Defence Minister was holidaying in Bali when troops were called in and the state Emergency Services Minister was holidaying in France. They had all chosen to take holidays with the crisis well under way.
I wanted to give all you fellow reefers an idea of what we are going through here in Australia right now. I live in Canberra, Australia's capital. It's referred to as the Bush Capital because it was designed to blend in to our beautiful landscape.
This is what it looked like the last few days even though we are not currently under any direct fire threat.
I have experienced devastating bush fire before. In 2003 the skies turned black and the mountains glowed red. Embers rained down on us and we lost hundreds of homes in Canberra.
It was the first recorded fire tornado and ripped through with such ferocity that it took us all by surprise, despite fire being a regular part of Australian life and being well prepared. What I saw in 2003 changed me forever, and what is happening right now is much, much worse.
fire tornado
For those of you that aren't familiar with Australia, our bush land is dominated by many different types of eucalyptus from shrubs and bushes to towering, majestic canopies. They contain oils that disperse in the air and in places like the blue mountains envelop everything with a beautiful smell and a majestic, dream like blue haze.
The oils also burn very hot, trees literally explode in to flames. This is what makes Australian fires so dangerous. You can see trees 'crowning' in this video.
crowning
Fire in Australia is part of our bush's natural cycle and the bush has adapted to it. Our indigenous people conducted burns for tens of thousands of years to cleanse and rejuvenate the land and mitigate much larger and more dangerous burns. Quite often, within days of fire you see trees with new sprouts and blooming flowers. That's what they do. But this is different - We have had one of the worst droughts in living memory, it seems like every day temperature records tumble across the country and the fire season starts earlier and earlier each year. Everything is parched. Fire season traditionally starts Oct/Nov and February (late summer) is typically our most dangerous month. Yet, this fire season has burned since the middle of winter 2019. We have lost temperate and tropical rains forests that are usually too wet to burn and have never experienced fire. Tasmania, our greenest, wettest, coldest and most southerly state has seen unprecedented fires in the past 6 months. The water at beaches is black with soot, smokes chokes cities thousands of kilometres from blazes and has even stained the New Zealand snow and reached Chile and Argentina. It was 50 degrees celcius in Sydney on the weekend. Utterly unliveable. People were trapped by multiple fire fronts. Rolling electricity outages are occurring in some areas. People are going in to cardiac arrest because of the poor air quality. The sky's are often orange and when they get red, you know fire is close.
Some of the fires are so big they create their own weather, in turn causing dry lightning and further fires
We are in Hell
I did not know this until I travelled overseas and compared attitudes, but Australians in general are very deeply in love with the country's landscape and wildlife. Spending summers in it, whether it be on the coasts or in the mountains or in the bush is a tradition, a birthright. People, especially indigenous people, consider themselves to be custodians of the land. The fires are not just deeply traumatic because of the human lives lost (24 so far) or the property (1300 homes at last count) but because of the estimated 480 million animals that have died during the blazes and the ancient and beautiful forests, bush land and farmland consumed by the 63,000 square kilometres of burnt land. We are in mourning. Amongst the most disturbing stories are the firefighters in tears because they can here the koalas and possums screaming in the trees as they are burnt. This koala ultimately died, but these scenes are repeated again and again -
Koala
What is most frightening for us is that this is the new normal. February is yet to come. What has shocked us is that despite the politics, Australian leaders have always downed their weapons and taken a bi-partisan, coordinated approach to disaster management. In this case, our Prime Minister was holidaying in Hawaii in the middle of the crisis, our Defence Minister was holidaying in Bali when troops were called in and the state Emergency Services Minister was holidaying in France. They had all chosen to take holidays with the crisis well under way.
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