For Scale

[CINDERS]

Here is a red outline of Australia with the areas of conflagration superimposed on top of the United States to give you the size of our land and just how much of us is ablaze.



God bless all the fire fighters and those helping them.

[browningautorifle]

And it appears there's a burn right close to you...

[RASelkirk]

Saw on the news today, 183 arrests for arson so far. They should suit 'em up and drop 'em into the fray...

Russ

[42rocker]

Thoughts and Prayers for all in Harms Way.

Later 42rocker

[CINDERS]

Thanks BAR its a fair ways off more to Esperance way last year we had a fire come within 500M of our property as the scrub line is that close to our sub division I left work to keep the place dampened down thankfully we do not have evaporative air con seen to many horror stories from embers with those things we went reverse cycle air con's instead much safer.

Will wait and see on that one about arsonists there is all sorts of stories on F/B to give you some idea the impact to our land and agriculture cannot be fathomed whole dairy/beef/sheep/cropping are gone, industries gone Kangaroo Island has lost 50% or more of its honey bees the most pure strain of its type in the world irreplaceable the hive keeper was in tears he has had his business for 30 years now decimated.
Allot of critically endangered animals on the island are gone, the Koala's have suffered as well as the Roo's unique to the islands.

To show you the gravity of the bee's here is part of a burst from the ABC ~
Ligurian honey bees

The Ligurian bees on Kangaroo Island are believed to be the last remaining pure stock of this insect found anywhere in the world.
They have been thriving on the island for the past 135 years after the South Australian Government declared the island a bee sanctuary.
Kangaroo Island Ligurian Queen Bees owner Stephen Heatley lost 40 of his hives in the fires but "guessed" up to 500 hives could have succumbed to the flames.
"That part of the island that was burnt was the main drawcard for keepers to put their hives," he said.

He said the Ligurian honey bees were introduced from Italy and arrived in Australia via the United States in 1885, before making their way to Kangaroo Island.

There are grave fears some of the critically endangered small marsupials the fires have been an extinction level event where even the loss of 20 of them is critical as they are too small to escape, the Gloss back Black Cockatoo is also threatened they only feed off of one tree the Drooping She-Oak and have extremely low breeding rate maybe 1 chick a year if at all.

Its as bad as it can get there is a threat that fires may link up NSW - Vic as they are only 10 K's apart and create a mega fire..........

[Surpmil]

Someone ought to call Coulson Aviation. There are two Martin Mars sitting around up here with nothing to do. One ready to go with the most up-to-date navigation and flight control technology and another sitting on the hard, but could be brought into service.

Heck, maybe you can even buy the damn things as they put out fires much too fast for Canada.

You see up here we know there's a fortune to be made fighting forest fires, all on the taxpayer's tab, so big planes which put out fires quickly get in the way of maximum profitability for fire-fighting companies, and funnily enough, quite a few of those are not Canadian owned.

Just follow the money!

On the other hand they had one Mars all painted up in USN colours ready to go to a Museum in the USA when the federales intervened and said it couldn't be exported because it was a cultural asset or some such nonsense. I guess the plan is to gradually bankrupt Coulson by starving the company for work while forcing them to pay to maintain and store the planes.

[CINDERS]

This is what happened when we were seriously on fire in 2009 and how our Govt reacted to Russia helping us, no sir I think our Govt is hell bent to keep Dantes infrno going for reasons unknown to us otherwise they would be screaming for water aircraft from all over the world.
Russia offered these planes our Govt basically said stick it "Each of the giant Ilyushin-76 jets could drop in a single pass 42,000 litres of water or retardant on a fire - almost five times the maximum capacity of the ''Elvis'' skycrane helicopters."

I came up with a thought where possible to protect town and infrastructure pinch a fire tender water cannon truck from all the international air ports they could afford to lose one unit that water cannon would be a great asset.
The fire truck I looked at purchasing for the power station had a water cannon on it which could fire water up to a vertical height of 40M but the bean counters said at $565,000.oo it was too expensive I said to them how much is this power station worth to rebuild and received a deer in the headlight response..............! schmucks......

Anyway will keep you people posted if you wish.

This picture pretty much sums up the desperation victims are faced with.

[AFJon]

I feel for you guys down under.

Saw the MAFFS guys doing pattern work today and wonder if they'll get activated.
https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-She...ghting-system/

[Flying10uk]

As well as the news reports referring to the tragic loss of life and to the loss of property in Australia there has been some detailed news reports referring to the effect of the fires on Australian wildlife and livestock recently. Some of the images coming from Australia showing the suffering of wildlife and livestock have been quite upsetting to watch and clearly thousands and thousands of animals have perished in the fires with many more injured. One recent news report showed the Australian army helping to treat some animals that had got their paws and faces burnt trying to escape the fires and sadly not all of the injured animals could be saved.

I think that the images of Australians helping injured animals does highlight the fact that Australia is a land of animal lovers, like the UK, but perhaps people outside of Australia haven't thought about it much before.

[browningautorifle]

Saw on the news today, 183 arrests for arson so far.

But WHO ARE these people? Is this going to be dealt with as terrorism? There were people making statements that this was how they were going to fight...