topic Re: Don't say you wern't warned! in Community Spirit

Don't say you wern't warned!

davidc4430 — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 02:04:07 GMT

NSW fires see more than 850,000 hectares destroyed so far in season 'as bad as it gets'

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-11/nsw-bushfires-850000-hectares-destroyed-worst-to-come/11691038

many years ago after a monumentally bad fire a inquiry was formed to see what our leaders should do in order to be better prepared if the same situation should happen again.

like the puchasing of the canadian super tanker fire fighting planes.

of couse they were expensive but if each state was to purchase 1 then come a day like we are predicting now these planes would all be available to be deployed as a mega fire fighting group.

but no, we were told we dont need them, we can do better with out them.

and anyway, these big fires dont happen very often.

well well well, looks to me like the eastern states are in for fires, big fires, nearly every year!

i just heard on radio where if your considered in a fire prone area (thats just about everyone these days) you can forget insurance cover.

oh, and done mention 'climate change' to the govt, its still a load of you know what to scomo and co.

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

myoclon1cjerk — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 03:00:58 GMT

Another photo op for Scott Trump.

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

springyzone — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 03:01:59 GMT

Probably the reason is us, the voters.

There are no votes in doing things out of season, in fact, quite the opposite a lot of the time. People have short memories.

A few years ago, there was a widespread drought in Vic. Newspapers were on and on about how the govt should have prepared for this, built a dam or whatever as it is predictable we have droughts every now & again.

The govt at a big cost started to build the desalination plant. the drought broke before it was completed and suddenly the papers were on about the waste of money on this white elephant & they have not let up about it since.

2009. You might recall the bushfires. People & papers were up in arms-Why didn't the govt have special building regulations in high risk areas? Why hadn't they looked into compulsory bunkers and other things?

Fast forward to now and we are still reading of people complaining about the extra cost of trying to build in some of these areas and how the govt 'takes away incentive'.

The only time I can see the govt getting away with spending big on super tankers that might stand idle would be during an actual fire emergency, then people would see the need and not whinge.

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

davidc4430 — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 04:07:07 GMT

yep, after the horror out will come our hero pollies to walk around looking glum and making speeches how we will 'pull together' and 'rebuild'

and there will be stories buried half way thru the papers years afterwards where people are still living in caravans (or worse) because their insurance companies have found tiny clauses that says they dont have to payout the claims.

i guess going by todays leaders we wouldnt have any fire fighting capability if theyd been in charge 100 years ago.

oh, but buy a load of jets from the good old USA for our airforce to go to anywhere the USA says at our expense, yes we can do that.

just how much do we spend fighting wars nothing to do with us?

or giving cash handouts to countries with despot leaders?

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

johcaschro — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 10:29:52 GMT

So, it's happening again. Have you looked closely at the news pictures of burned-out houses in this most recent episode of Australia's long history of bush fires?

Yep, they did it again. They built or bought wooden houses smack bang in the middle of densely forested areas in Australia and then claim surprise,shock and despair when the inevitable calamity finally overtakes them.

People living in wooden houses in forests in Australia are a direct cause of everybody else's fire insurance premiums rising when the ins. companies want their money back after the unescapable eventual bushfire burnout.

And what's worse, is hearing that reality-denying refrain . . . "we will re-build" (our wooden houses in the middle of the forest so we can claim surprise, shock and despair when it all happens again one day, as we all know it must).

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

myoclon1cjerk — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 11:13:04 GMT

Once we've finally succeeded in making Australia's animals extinct, we can begin to 'dismantle' the forests and replace them with fast food outlets,freeways and maybe a huge museum of flora and fauna. Job creation.

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

joz*garage — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:46:19 GMT

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2482728975338842

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

davidc4430 — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 22:51:37 GMT

Are bigger water-bombers the answer to Australia's bushfire woes?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-15/are-bigger-water-bombers-he-answer-to-bushfire-woes/11705502

of course they arnt the 'answer'

but 5 or 6 of those purpose built canadian super fire fighting planes would certainly be a bonus during a out of control bushfire wouldnt they?

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

imastawka — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 23:17:37 GMT

Talking about building in forests.

David, you might be interested in what happened to a friend of mine some years ago before Black Friday 2009 in Victoria.

They still made him pay.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/fined-for-illegal-clearing-family-now-feel-vindicated-20090212-85bd.html

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

chameleon54 — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 00:15:42 GMT

I had the same experience on a smaller scale. Our house fronts onto a river gully owned by the council. The council never do any fire management, so myself and a couple of neighbours went in one weekend and cleared out some of the fallen timber and whipper snipped the metre high grass that comes right to the roadside in front of our houses.

Monday morning I get a knock on the door. Its a council rep. there to tell us if we ever do anything like that again we will be up before the courts on charges for clearing native vegetation.

The following year I contact the council to get them to clean up the mess.......... SILENCE......So then I call back again stating I had taken photos of the tall grass and would be keeping them in a separate place as a record of council negligence. If a fire ever comes through the gully I will be forwarding the photos to insurance companies, lawyers, the media and anyone else interested in the councils negligence........A team of council workers where on site within hours clearing away the grass....

Now each year before the fire season I just quietly go into the gully and mow and whipper snip and clean up any fallen timber while the council does a great impersonation of the three wise monkeys. See's nothing, hears nothing, says nothing......

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

thenewdazzledentway24 — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 00:20:00 GMT

I live right next to a National Park, and we’re not to TOUCH, OR EVEN LOOK AT the dry tinder broken fallen trees and detritus on the forest floor, honestly, I look at my house and remind myself that I will survive if I lose it all, as I expect to one day. Luckily I am able to get insurance so far.

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

davidc4430 — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 02:57:28 GMT

i think if those who make the decisions to let people live 'amongst the gumtrees' should say its ok to clear a barrier of up to 300 meters from the house. homeowners choice.

if your silly enough to not clear a barrier then let it be on your head.

its criminal to think we have govt that on one hand says its ok to build in the bush but on the other your restricted from making it safer from fire.

we used to live in a bush area, my brother and i installed a sprinkler system om the house fed by 2 huge tanks (also protected by sprinklers) and a petrol driven water pump that could turn the place into a rain storm for 20 minutes and longer if we ran the bore to keep the tanks full. we also installed a power generator powerful enough to run the house including the bore pump during blackout because of fire.

the one time we used it it worked perfectly, the fire passed our house splitting and going around leaving our little wet spot untouched.

all up it cost just under 10 grand.

money well spent, our neighbours crossed their fingers and hoped. they were lucky (that time) as the fire missed them.

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

go-tazz — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 05:54:31 GMT

@davidc4430 wrote:
i think if those who make the decisions to let people live 'amongst the gumtrees' should say its ok to clear a barrier of up to 300 meters from the house. homeowners choice.
if your silly enough to not clear a barrier then let it be on your head.

No way as they are then destroying part of the reason THEY built there in the first place and if one lot is

allowed to do it others will follow and then you'll have people moving into those areas and destroying them.

If only a thousand do it then there is 200 odd thousand trees gone and the bush is no longer bush.

its criminal to think we have govt that on one hand says its ok to build in the bush but on the other your restricted from making it safer from fire.

The home owner knows what they are and aren't allowed to do BEFORE they build and can't include

anything to destroy areas to make it safer after they've moved there.

Everyone has a choice on whether to live in a possible bush fire prone area and it's their CHOICE to do so.

It's exactly the same as building in a flood zone (you know that sooner or later you will get flooded and yet they

still choose to build there).

If you build in an area that has a good chance of having a bushfire destroy your home why would you build

there and then expect some sort of protection after you've done so by destroying something that you knew was

there in the first place.

You build there then you are responsible for anything bad that happens which you knew was going to happen

sooner or later.

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

myoclon1cjerk — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 04:37:36 GMT

I posted this on the government thread. You might want to read it.

Hi everyone. my name is bruce walker, you might remember me from ABC TV yesterday, i'm one of the survivors of the wytaliba fires of last friday november 8th, 2019.

responding to this well informed ****wit here - Anthony - just anthony. (okay, zuckerberg? no last names.) 🙊

so mate - first up, i've been an RFS volunteer for close to 20 years, and am part of the highly regarded Wytaliba RFS - one of the most respected and hardened crews on the northern tablelands and beyond. our crew number over 50 and include decorated vets of ash wednesday and many other national disaster catastrophic level fires.

so - regarding hazard reduction. let me fill you in.

for my time here, we used to do managed hazard reduction whenever it was viable in winter.

however - sadly, the moment gina and rupert went halves and purchased the LNP wholesale, we saw a MASSIVE increase in wholesale industrial logging across the nation.

tell me, anthony - do you garden? do you use MULCH?

compare a mulched garden to a non-mulched garden. you'll see a near instant difference. if you're not schooled on how soil works, try standing all day in the sun with no hat on. what happens?

that's right, anthony. your head gets ******* hot.

that's what's happened to the planet. now. as anyone who's dabbled in, you know... physics, will spell out better than i can - an increase of just one degree is quite significant.

another neato thing physics talks about is the water cycle, anthony.

you see, part of the water cycle is this cool thing called "transpiration"

it's part 4 of this essential way in which trees send up moisture to meet clouds, creating low pressure troughs which draw rainfall inland.

in fact, it's physically impossible to get rain on the lee side of a mountain, without trees doing this very thing. impossible. ask the residents of the atacama desert in chile - who haven't had rain for one THOUSAND years. why? no ******* trees, anthony.

so anyway, back to the greens enacting a ban on burnoffs - that time we elected them to majority government and they had the final say.

when was that again, anthony? i'll wait.

nah. lets move on, since we ALL know this was never a thing . ever.

so anyway - here in wytaliba, we used to have an incredibly green lush valley - right up until industrial loggers finally broke in to compartments to our north. right about this time, there was a near instant and significant drop to our vital streamflow. this happened again after each and every highland logging operation - and with LNP slashing and burning every national park in sight, well... you know, lets' not go there. climate change is a hoax, right?

so wholesale burn quotas came in with LNP too. this... well.. i just want to pause here and say "wow" because this did indeed make us say wow.

in recent years, we've seen hazard reduction burns take place completely surrounding our once green, lush valley. so much so, that after the last july burn - of an area once supplying most of our water - well... 27 years of no burn had left a healthy and regenerating semi-arid rainforest. now it's simply arid nothing.

despite this burn and 3 more last year, we got the following result - fires flared up in this dry mulch-less wasteland and burned for 6 weeks, destroying 2 more former rainforest areas, leaving them also tinder dry and unable to transpire - hasn't actually rained a drop since then. weird. almost like cause and effect took place.

clouds pass over, for sure. they get rain on the tablelands even - but - as physics reminds us, when air drops, it warms, expands, and rather than raining, sucks even more moisture from trees and soil.

oh well.

i mean, this is normal for australia, isn't it? watching 200 or more year old trees slowly wither and die right in front of you. that's normal. happens all the time. rivers dry up too, even though ours is home to platypus - who aren't known for travelling much - and hasn't dried up in probably 100,000 years minimum. until last summer, and it's been bone dry since august. this has never happened in my entire 25 or so years here. no local elders remember such a thing. wow.

now, we all know about the bees nest and kingsgate fires and the hundreds more around the state. my crew and many other heroic RFS volunteers have been fighting them for months on end. yet another back-burn actually got lit up about a month ago, on our south side, just half an hour before high southerly winds were due. the responsible paid agency, then ran out of paid hours, packed up and left it to spot onto our property and threaten 80 homes.

we're like the mujahideen of firefighting though, so we got it after about 10 days nonstop hectic battle with the help of RFS crews from as far away as Sydney.

this... brings us up to date, anthony.. we've got bare, blacked out dust for 50km in all directions. right up to the actual eaves of half the homes here.

which is why, friday's hellstorm caught all of us by surprise, anthony.

a mushroom cloud went up at 3pm, 20 or so km away. within an hour or two, high winds turned that into a 20km long front - strangely, this front was on ground burnt black as recently as 3 weeks ago - crown fires too, since every tree was literally a giant matchstick with dead leaves and nothing else.

this then switch to 80km/h southerlies and rained hell on 3500 acres of already blacked out ground.

well... you can't say we didn't prep or do hazard reduction redneck style, can you ant? or can you?

curiously, within 1 hour we'd lost 20 homes, a school, a fire-shed, and a concrete ******* bridge - meaning only 2 outside units even got in to help.

falling trees in the hundreds blocked the old grafton road, so no one could even help neighbours.

by dawn, of 80 homes in our community, 52 were lost, 2 dead (one a sex party voter, the other apolitical - this one is for you, barnaby ******* joyce) 😉 we had many injured, thousands of local animals died, and.. it' looks like a warzone here. which it did almost before, except we had homes.

so, Anthony, and ALL you ******* armchair experts out there, tell me. how again, was this the greens fault?

thanks.

bruce walker, DIEHARD NSW - wytaliba RFS member and survivor.

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

twyngwyn — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 07:46:32 GMT

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-19/sa-schools-to-close-amid-catastrophic-fire-conditions/11718984

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

davidc4430 — Thu, 21 Nov 2019 22:27:12 GMT

Bushfire crisis costing Queensland and northern NSW millions

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-22/queensland-bushfire-crisis-nsw-fires-cost-insurance-damage-bill/11725920

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

davidc4430 — Fri, 06 Dec 2019 20:33:03 GMT

NSW bushfires close in on Sydney from two sides as weather forecast deteriorates

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-07/nsw-bushfires-close-in-on-sydney-from-two-sides/11775070

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

davidc4430 — Sat, 14 Dec 2019 22:27:12 GMT

Perth bushfire emergency continues as firefighters spend a fourth day trying to protect lives, homes

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-14/yanchep-and-two-rocks-bushfire-could-burn-for-days/11800060

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

davidc4430 — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 00:49:07 GMT

Muslim mates 'adopted' by small community, after making 10-hour round trips to cook for bushfire victims

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-18/muslim-mates-drive-from-sydney-to-cook-bbq-for-bushfire-victims/11802674

Re: Don't say you wern't warned!

myoclon1cjerk — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 03:35:41 GMT

That"s good story david. I'm up here in Stanthorpe where no doubt most of you would be aware of what affect the crippling drought is having on this town. What most people wouldn't be aware of is what happened here a few weeks ago. Details below.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7649691/Outback-town-Stanthorpe-battling-drought-gets-massive-water-hay-donation-Muslim-community.html