Aussie Bush Fires
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I live on the mornington peninsula , no problems where I am ,
Was considering buying an investment house in Warburton as a possible retirement option for down the track ,
Fire risk would be pretty high up there , will need to do some research
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@kiwiinmelb said in Aussie Bush Fires:
Fire risk would be pretty high up there , will need to do some research
... and that is pretty much the long and the short of it.
There is extensive information available to the public on real estate - markets, town planning, flood, fire, construction - from numerous sources at minimal cost. The omniscient young have been better educated though, by television shows like My Home Renovation is Better Than Yours, and are focused on sourcing floor tiles from Grenoble.
It is not well known that spending your money without properly understanding the risks and rewards is not real bright. As for prohibitive insurance premiums in non urban fire prone areas - they are flat out keeping up the insurance on their essential Holden GTS Maloo ute! Anyway, the government should do something about it. But.
The Blue Mountains Council has had detailed bushfire protection requirements for more than 20 years that I am aware of. They have people who spend a good deal of their time listening to home owners demanding agreement to encroachment of their splendid new home on the exclusion zones a little bit here and a little bit there to better accommodate their home entertainment pod/module/suite. Sometimes they get what they want, then they cop it when the fires come every 5 or 7 years and cry like babies.
So we end up with what we see in the photo posted by Antipodean, featuring the dimwit between his 4WD (assembled largely with products supplied by the evil coal industry) and the ashes of his home. His strident call for CLIMATE ACTION NOW means, I assume, that government must DO SOMETHINK, like install a 1000 metre x 925 metre lift up dunny seat cover on the White Island volcano, to ensure it never happens again.
You couldn't make this stuff up.
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Bit dry on the West Island:
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Scott Morrison had a political day to forget yesterday.
Made to look even worse when you get "national shame" Nick Kyrgios donating his own money, and an American in LaMelo Ball giving up a month of his salary.
I find the politicisation of disasters to be distasteful, but Morrison has played this so fucking badly.
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@mariner4life said in Aussie Bush Fires:
I find the politicisation of disasters to be distasteful, but Morrison has played this so fucking badly.
I can't think of an exception to the statement "every decision has been wrong or clueless about the optics".
That firefighter had lost his own home.
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@jegga said in Aussie Bush Fires:
From the bbc
Thats terrifying, I see there has been an arrest in Gippsland
What I don't understand is how do they even catch people doing this? Surely once a fire takes hold then evidence is gone.
edit. Answering my own question, witnesses and what appears to be a whole lot of dumb luck
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@Rembrandt pretty frightening alright.
I suspect like many crimes, criminals arent always the smartest so usually find a way to get caught.
But gee, starting fires in Aus, WTF!!
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@jegga said in Aussie Bush Fires:
From the bbc
Cough:
A 2015 satellite analysis of 113,000 fires from 1997-2009 confirmed what we had known for some time – 40 per cent of fires are deliberately lit, another 47 per cent accidental. This generally matches previous data published a decade earlier that about half of all fires were suspected or deliberate arson, and 37 per cent accidental. Combined, they reach the same conclusion: 87 per cent are man-made.
Research has shown about 8% of officially recorded vegetation fires were attributed to malicious lighting, and another 22% as suspicious. However, about 40% of officially recorded vegetation fires did not have an assigned cause. When unassigned bushfires were investigated by fire investigators, the majority were found to be maliciously lit.
But official fires are just the tip of the iceberg: the actual number of bushfires in Australia is thought to be about five times that recorded. Virtually none of these unrecorded fires are investigated.
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Test
Oooops - pardon me. I was trying to understand the page layout in the context of whether the post to which I was responding was made by Antipodean or Jegga.
Thank you and good afternoon. May your wives produce for you many sons.
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Fires are starting to get a little close for my liking, I have already moved valuables etc into the inlaws house. Will be packed and ready to go tomorrow should we have to evacuate. I really feel for all of those people already impacted by the fire. I am feeling a little sick in my stomach waiting for tomorrow. At least we are lucky to have technology today that warns us re the risk and sends us a message on our phone.
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Quite interesting that this thread has taken a round about way to getting to the root cause of these terrible terrible bush fires.
What's actually causing these fires?
Not climate change, not corrupt politicians, not big business, not environmental destruction.
No. The cause of these fires is demented people within our society using fire tools (yes, matches and lighters) to cause untold death and destruction to appease their warped sense of being.
Can't focus our efforts on arsonists, (like we've done for drink drivers), because the whole tragedy has been used to advance political ideologies and divisions.
Take away the arsonists and we have no bush fire devastation like we're witnessing. Simples ain't it?
Ridiculous really
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Typical governmental cost saving measures gone wrong
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I'd be interested to see informed info about the role of back burning ( called cold burning by some as it occurs usually in June) in facilitating the fuel loads near housing and in the bush.
Talking to some farmers in western Victoria who swear by the practice as one pragmatic solution to the ever present bushfire threat.
My narrative favours that a reduce in cold burning for "looks good" environmental causes has contributed more to this disaster than any carbon trading dispute ever will.
But I'd like to know more and test my narrative.
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@Siam said in Aussie Bush Fires:
I'd be interested to see informed info about the role of back burning ( called cold burning by some as it occurs usually in June) in facilitating the fuel loads near housing and in the bush.
Talking to some farmers in western Victoria who swear by the practice as one pragmatic solution to the ever present bushfire threat.
My narrative favours that a reduce in cold burning for "looks good" environmental causes has contributed more to this disaster than any carbon trading dispute ever will.
But I'd like to know more and test my narrative.
Apparently the aborigines used to practice cold burning to minimize the risk. Someone more knowledgeable than me said that the authorities don't favour the practice. That leaves more dead wood as fuel and how they are paying the price
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@Siam O.K. Root cause, or scale of destruction? Climate change and the drier bush, or just the same old idiots lighting fires?
The the morons that light them aren't making them bigger,the hot, dry, windy climate does that. Then they become self sustaining by creating their own micro climate.
@Siam said in Aussie Bush Fires:
Quite interesting that this thread has taken a round about way to getting to the root cause of these terrible terrible bush fires.
What's actually causing these fires?
I agree about that as a starting point, but like all major tragedies there are other factors. Drier fuel is one of them
Can't focus our efforts on arsonists, (like we've done for drink drivers), because the whole tragedy has been used to advance political ideologies and divisions.
Take away the arsonists and we have no bush fire devastation like we're witnessing. Simples ain't it?
Ridiculous really
@Siam said in Aussie Bush Fires:
Take away the arsonists and we have no bush fire devastation like we're witnessing. Simples ain't it?
Ridiculous reallyYour comment is really.
No matter how they start, they are worse.
Why? because they have massive amounts of dry fuel.
Why? Because it is hotter. -
@canefan said in Aussie Bush Fires:
@Siam said in Aussie Bush Fires:
I'd be interested to see informed info about the role of back burning ( called cold burning by some as it occurs usually in June) in facilitating the fuel loads near housing and in the bush.
Talking to some farmers in western Victoria who swear by the practice as one pragmatic solution to the ever present bushfire threat.
My narrative favours that a reduce in cold burning for "looks good" environmental causes has contributed more to this disaster than any carbon trading dispute ever will.
But I'd like to know more and test my narrative.
Apparently the aborigines used to practice cold burning to minimize the risk. Someone more knowledgeable than me said that the authorities don't favour the practice. That leaves more dead wood as fuel and how they are paying the price
They did nothing of the sort. Some tribes used fire to flush out prey. This myth of them managing the environment has as much validity as secret women's buiness.
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@Siam said in Aussie Bush Fires:
I'd be interested to see informed info about the role of back burning ( called cold burning by some as it occurs usually in June) in facilitating the fuel loads near housing and in the bush.
Talking to some farmers in western Victoria who swear by the practice as one pragmatic solution to the ever present bushfire threat.
My narrative favours that a reduce in cold burning for "looks good" environmental causes has contributed more to this disaster than any carbon trading dispute ever will.
But I'd like to know more and test my narrative.
It's been too hot and too dry to do a lot of fuel reduction burns. The fire season is starting earlier and earlier, getting longer and longer. This means finding suitable dates to conduct fuel reduction burns becomes harder and they can't treat as many hectares as they require.
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@antipodean that's understandable. So definite strategies in place but unable to carry out because of weather as opposed to recent greenie laws prohibiting back burning (to suit my hypothesis narrative) then ( as far as you know)?
Sorry to lump all this on you mate, (you may know), just trying to test the " greenies stopped back burning" accusations.