Current Events > Australian firefighters drive through inferno

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QwLRZKI9haw&feature=emb_title

Bump.

Firefighters in Cali yawn
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The fuck is going on there? Im legit concerned for Australia.
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GiftedACIII posted...

The fuck is going on there? Im legit concerned for Australia.

Global climate change and years of misuse and defending of resources led to volatile conditions that in turn gave way to nightmare fires all over the country, and as a result there are massive areas being burnt and over half a billion dead animals, and humans are starting to see that there's little to no escape or reprieve from it, even if the fire doesn't come to them they still are facing the stark reality with the heat, unbreathable air, and red sky.

Also that whole self propagating thing going on where smoke from the fires causes moisture to create new heavy clouds that rain some and then afterwards result in thunder clouds that strike in fresh areas to start new blazes.

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gunplagirl posted...

Global climate change and years of misuse and defending of resources led to volatile conditions that in turn gave way to nightmare fires all over the country, and as a result there are massive areas being burnt and over half a billion dead animals, and humans are starting to see that there's little to no escape or reprieve from it, even if the fire doesn't come to them they still are facing the stark reality with the heat, unbreathable air, and red sky.

Also that whole self propagating thing going on where smoke from the fires causes moisture to create new heavy clouds that rain some and then afterwards result in thunder clouds that strike in fresh areas to start new blazes.

Did this just happen with no warning? I mean, hurricanes, tornados, and even earthquakes get warnings for the most part.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/world/australia/fires-red-skies-Mallacoota.amp.html
Its terrifying that something like this can just happen outside your home without knowing beforehand.
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Holy shit
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spudger posted...

Firefighters in Cali yawn

This fire is significantly more devastating than anything California has ever experienced IIRC

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I imagine this is what hell looks like.

GiftedACIII posted...

Did this just happen with no warning? I mean, hurricanes, tornados, and even earthquakes get warnings for the most part.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/world/australia/fires-red-skies-Mallacoota.amp.html
Its terrifying that something like this can just happen outside your home without knowing beforehand.

Former fire chiefs publically spoke out about the fire risks in April of 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/09/former-fire-chiefs-warn-australia-unprepared-for-escalating-climate-threat

Here's a news story from November, talking about how the government hadn't bothered to meet up with 24 fire chiefs who were warning them about the worsening conditions due to climate change politics: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/14/former-australian-fire-chiefs-say-coalition-doesnt-like-talking-about-climate-change

Mullins said he and 23 other fire and emergency chiefs had been trying to have a meeting with the prime minister, Scott Morrison, since April because they knew that a bushfire crisis was coming.

Instead, he said current fire chiefs had been locked out of discussions and were not allowed to mention climate change.

This government fundamentally doesnt like talking about climate change, Mullins said. We would like the doors to be open to the current chiefs, and allow them to utter the words climate change. They are not allowed to at the moment.

The Grenfell fire in London, people talked about the cause from day one. Train crashes they talk from day one. And it is OK to say it is an arsonists fault, or pretend that the greenies are stopping hazard reduction burning, which is simply not true.

But you are not allowed to talk about climate change. Well, we are, because we know what is happening.

Bibby, who was in charge during Victorias Black Saturday, said politics was the reason the government was ignoring the former fire chiefs advice.

Black Saturday, by the way, was the last bushfire that did this much destruction. I live around the middle of NSW, and smoke from Victoria was making its way up to where I live. The border is a good 3-4 hour drive away, and we were getting smoke.

The man who was in charge during Black Saturday, the bushfires that added a new level to our bushfires warning scale - called "Catastrophic" - is saying that he and another two dozen fire chiefs were ignored or dismissed because they raised an alarm about climate change. They warned us as far back as April, and now my state is burning to the ground because the government stuck their fingers in their ears and looked away. I put this squarely on the shoulders of Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and Josh Frydenberg, Australia's biggest gang of crooks and cronies in power today.

To end on a lighter note, here's a satire website poking fun at our politicians for their adamant refusal to take action due to the climate connection: https://m.betootaadvocate.com/breaking-news/now-is-not-the-time-to-discuss-how-we-ignored-decades-of-warnings-that-this-would-happen/

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spudger posted...

Firefighters in Cali yawn

Ah... ( '-')

So your contribution to this crisis is by bringing your callously unwarrented, stupid ass pain-Olympics comparision to a foreign nationwide scale tragedy with our own and absolutely nothing else?

Spudger, have you considered: Shutting the fuck up?

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I want to talk about something wind for a second.

Our last bushfire catastrophe was in early 2009, and we called it Black Saturday: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires

It burned 450,000 hectares of forest and grassland. Towns were destroyed. 173 people died. Many were left homeless.

Our fire warning system, up to that point, had five warning levels:

• low moderate
• high
• very high
• severe
• extreme

Black Saturday added a sixth warning level: Catastrophic.

That's how bad Black Saturday was.

This is how bad things are now. Keep in mind, these bushfires have been happening since November: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bushfire_season

Good news first: only 19 people have died, as opposed to 173.

Bad news? 5,900,000 hectares are estimated to be lost. That's over 12 times more than Black Saturday.

Here are some crisis map screenshots I took yesterday - they're probably wildly out of date now, but they're worth checking out now.


See that massive criss-cross of streets down the bottom there? That's the entire city of Sydney. Five million people live there. Look at both of the fires next to it.


This is the affected area around Grafton. The blue symbols indicate that they aren't out of control, but you should stay up to date to make sure they don't get worse.

Why did I take a screenshot of Grafton? Because my dad lives there. Look at that tiny dot - it's a moderately sized town. Tiny compared to Sydney - the population is apparently like 19,000 people. But that's where my dad lives. And that black outline is the area that has been affected by fires.

If he flees south, he runs into the Port Macquarie fires and he puts himself at risk of running into the fires near Sydney. But he can't go north, and he can't go west.

I'm not at risk compared to other towns. I'm extremely lucky for that. But it's pretty rough seeing town after town get levelled by bushfires. The last time we had a bushfire this bad, we had to add another level of warning to our bushfires danger scale. What the fuck are we gonna do this time? How do we come back from this, and safeguard ourselves from experiencing it all over again?

Because we had professionals who warned our government about the dangers. We had people who were in charge of handling Black Saturday and its aftermath, and these people are being turned away because they factor climate change into things. Even now, our PM only mentions climate change in the same breath as "as well as other factors which are equally as culpable".

Our fire services have been getting budget cuts for the better half of a decade, now. They were facing a $40 million budget cut in 2020 before the country started burning to the ground. We're in this mess due to lack of funding, and because the people with any kind of power at the moment - our politicians - wouldn't listen to the professionals who spent years fighting Australia's deadliest fires over party politics.

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spudger posted...

Firefighters in Cali yawn

The fires in Australia are way worse lol

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BettyB0op08 posted...

https://i.imgur.com/eh8H4sD.jpg

Damn.

I'm just surprised the instathots from Australia i follow haven't mentioned a thing yet

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Looks like the final level in a video game where you've defeated the last boss and now you have to escape.
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cliff's harbor is dead noo :(.
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GiftedACIII posted...

The fuck is going on there? Im legit concerned for Australia.

There is a mountain of fire destroying the brushes on the entire continent.

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https://twitter.com/jwwr/status/1213369562499928064
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I'm all about green energy reform and taking better care of the environment, but how exactly is the current bushfire situation the fault of humans?

Bushfires are so common in Australia that the ecosystem depends on them for floral life to reproduce. It's not like a person set the current blazes. It's a horrible situation.

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Far Cry 5 spoilers.

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Antifar posted...

https://twitter.com/jwwr/status/1213369562499928064

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Perascamin posted...

I'm all about green energy reform and taking better care of the environment, but how exactly is the current bushfire situation the fault of humans?

Bushfires are so common in Australia that the ecosystem depends on them for floral life to reproduce. It's not like a person set the current blazes. It's a horrible situation.

Fire chiefs from years past, as well as current fire chiefs, have mentioned climate change as a factor in worsening bushfires. The base temperature going up by even 1c worsens fire conditions significantly - things dry out more, fires are more likely to start etc. the hotter it is, and Australia's temperature is getting hotter and hotter every year. The only people who have been downplaying or refusing to talk about climate change have been our right-wing politicians, like our prime minister who left the country for a holiday after the bushfires had already been burning for a month.

Australia's climate scientists and our fire chiefs - some of which were in charge during Black Saturday, Australia's previous "worst bushfire on record" - have taken climate change into consideration in regards to worsening fire conditions. They've been warning the public and asking for an audience with the PM since last April, and the Liberal government wouldn't take climate change into account even with these experienced fire chiefs bringing it up as a very real factor.

Labor and the Greens are willing to come to the table on this. Current and former fire chiefs are willing to come to the table on this. The prick who left a burning Australia to holiday in Hawaii and his cabinet of cronies are the only ones downplaying climate change in regards to its role in our fires. Side with them, and you're siding with one of the stupidest ruling parties in Australian history.

In regards to your next point, bushfires are common in Australia. Backburning is meant to reduce the risk of these bigger bushfires, and bushfires have been happening for centuries to clear land and make way for new life. However, bushfires usually leave something behind, and with modern infrastructure we.have to balance cleansing fires with the lives and needs of the people living in the bush.

Also, one or two fires every year seems to be started by some punk kid. A few of the fires last year were lit deliberately, including by a fire fighter who would start fires so he would be called out to put it out, which got him paid. So yeah, people have been known to light some of Australia's bushfires. In prior years, deliberately lit fires have been some of the worst ones for fire fighters to deal with.

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MrMallard posted...

Fire chiefs from years past, as well as current fire chiefs, have mentioned climate change as a factor in worsening bushfires. The base temperature going up by even 1c worsens fire conditions significantly - things dry out more, fires are more likely to start etc. the hotter it is, and Australia's temperature is getting hotter and hotter every year. The only people who have been downplaying or refusing to talk about climate change have been our right-wing politicians, like our prime minister who left the country for a holiday after the bushfires had already been burning for a month.

Australia's climate scientists and our fire chiefs - some of which were in charge during Black Saturday, Australia's previous "worst bushfire on record" - have taken climate change into consideration in regards to worsening fire conditions. They've been warning the public and asking for an audience with the PM since last April, and the Liberal government wouldn't take climate change into account even with these experienced fire chiefs bringing it up as a very real factor.

Labor and the Greens are willing to come to the table on this. Current and former fire chiefs are willing to come to the table on this. The prick who left a burning Australia to holiday in Hawaii and his cabinet of cronies are the only ones downplaying climate change in regards to its role in our fires. Side with them, and you're siding with one of the stupidest ruling parties in Australian history.

In regards to your next point, bushfires are common in Australia. Backburning is meant to reduce the risk of these bigger bushfires, and bushfires have been happening for centuries to clear land and make way for new life. However, bushfires usually leave something behind, and with modern infrastructure we.have to balance cleansing fires with the lives and needs of the people living in the bush.

Also, one or two fires every year seems to be started by some punk kid. A few of the fires last year were lit deliberately, including by a fire fighter who would start fires so he would be called out to put it out, which got him paid. So yeah, people have been known to light some of Australia's bushfires. In prior years, deliberately lit fires have been some of the worst ones for fire fighters to deal with.

Okay, thank you.

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How are some of our Australian CEmen doing?

@bluebeans
@Darmik

and the others Ive surely missed. You guys and your family/friends holding up well?

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So what exactly could have been done if the government acknowledged climate change? Cloud seeding?

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VTBM posted...

So what exactly could have been done if the government acknowledged climate change? Cloud seeding?

Sounded like a lot of the problem was deforestation, based on the commentary from that one firefighter.

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The_Scarecrow posted...

How are some of our Australian CEmen doing?

@bluebeans
@Darmik

and the others Ive surely missed. You guys and your family/friends holding up well?

Where I'm at is pretty fine. I've actually been on leave from work since my wife and I had our new baby girl in November and I just went back to work today.

What sucks is that the days are often very smokey so I wasn't able to take her out very often. We've had the odd day of clear air but for the most part the poor girl doesn't get to experience fresh air very often.

We've had a friend had to rush away from holidays and had to evacuate her house as well. Our baby's nurse at the local clinic also had to evacuate her home. It's impacting a lot of people.

Thanks for checking up on me! I've got it good compared to a lot of the state right now but I do worry about the future and how sustainable all of this is.

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VTBM posted...

So what exactly could have been done if the government acknowledged climate change? Cloud seeding?

The big problem is the future more than what they're doing about this specifically. Even before New Year's Eve there were political correspondents trying to act like this is normal for Australian life.

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The_Scarecrow posted...

How are some of our Australian CEmen doing?

@bluebeans
@Darmik

and the others Ive surely missed. You guys and your family/friends holding up well?

Cheers for the concern mate, things are ok at home today compared to a couple hours away, smoky as all hell though. Just praying on that rain.

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spudger posted...

Firefighters in Cali yawn

Funny you say that cuz some of our dudes are actually on the way to Australia to help out

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/04/us/california-firefighters-australia-brushfires/index.html

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hopefully god will hear your prayers to him, about the rain.

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