Feb 2009 Victoria State Australia Wildfires

[Cheese Head]

I don't think we have any members from Victoria State (although they may have relatives or friends there) in Australia thus I am posting this in this Geographic > Australia board.

My commiserations on the loss of so far reported 84 dead from the Wildfires just outside Melbourne Australia, very sad news, our hearts and minds are with you.

[wharris]

I actually read that in the news and thought of our Aussie members...Hope all is alright.

[Tea]

Thanks John and Wayne, this has been absolutely horrible.  News report this morning states 109 dead and still counting.  Whole townships have been leveled with nothing left standing.  Anyone who has ever been in a fire like this, knows that is creates it's own wind conditions, and it has been the resultant tornado of wind and fire that raced through these areas that has caused the damage.  One father put his kids in the car, went back in the house to get something, came back out to find the car burning.

Paradoxically, while Victoria and the southern states are on fire and having record heatwaves, 60% of Queensland is under water, with another low coming down the coast again this week, and we are reported to be in for around 200mm of rain.  We had 9 1/2in of rain last Sat/Sun and only a couple of days where it has not rained in between.  Some towns have been under water for nearly a week, and there is more rain coming.

It is definately either feast or famine here at the moment.

[Tea]

166 confirmed dead this morning, and still 8 fires burning out of control.  This is not over yet.


They have just updated again, it is now 173 ... this is unbelievable

[SalMac]

Hi Tea

All my best wishes to you all. I lived in Australia in the mid 70's during a bad outbreak of fires, I remember the horror as clear today.

Sal

[Cheese Head]

Wow Tea, here we heard it was in 130's but your number is higher, and such an awful way to die.

Disaster.

[rockie900]

Such a tragic event. Not long after I was born the Ash Wednesday fires went through my district and this is still talked about now (26 years later). It has been good to see people haven't forgotten the help they received back then and are giving back lots of items, food, clothing, etc. I went down to a muster point today to drop off some food and things and saw that the organisers were people that I knew had lost houses and livestock in 1983.
I think it has touched us all in some way.

Al

[LadyLiberty]

Good luck to all those down there.  This is a horrible situation.  I have some understanding of it because California was on fire last year, and one of those fires was very close to our property (the Bonnie Doon fire).  They can change direction so quickly and it's nervous making to be close to it, especially when you have animals.

Carter, you were close to these as well.

May rain come to Victoria!

[Tea]

As it stands at the moment 181 confirmed dead, over 80 still missing.  The loss of over 1000 homes, is bad enough, but having to come to terms with the loss of so many lives, is going to take a long time for them to do.  :'(

[Cheese Head]

Simply a disaster, still on Nightly US National news here, must be all over the TV 24x7 there.

So sad, especially for the kids.

[LadyLiberty]

As it stands at the moment 181 confirmed dead, over 80 still missing.  The loss of over 1000 homes, is bad enough, but having to come to terms with the loss of so many lives, is going to take a long time for them to do.  :'(

I really feel for them.  From what I understand part of the problem down there is that it's a fire STORM so the wind whips this into a frenzy... I heard a lot of people lost their lives in car crashes trying to get out of there when the flames overcame them.  Just horrible, it's hard to get your mind around imagining that.  On top of that, if the power lines were burned up they may not have had any warning to get out of there in time.  This is horrendous, truly an Armageddon for those folks in Victoria. 

I hope the US is helping out down there, we have a lot of great fire warriors in California, and it's not fire season for us (thankfully). 

Earthquakes however, we never have any advanced warning for.

I'm still trying to get my head around how two satellites collided with each other. (Russian and American, who'd have thunk that would happen? It's a bit worrisome.  The Russian satellite was dead, 500 miles above, and the US satellite was over 100 miles away from it, so the odds of them hitting is very low.)  Very strange.

[Tea]

That is true LL, that and the fact that this fire was moving around 50-60km per hour, so no one knew at any given time just where it was.

Last report that I read today, stated that over 1,600 homes had been burnt.

[LadyLiberty]

That is true LL, that and the fact that this fire was moving around 50-60km per hour, so no one knew at any given time just where it was.

Last report that I read today, stated that over 1,600 homes had been burnt.

gulp.

prayers to them....

[wharris]

This just made my heart melt.

[LadyLiberty]

I love fire fighters.  What a precious little tyke (the koala).

I read today that they are forecasting more fires in Australia because of the El Nino effect. :(

Fortunately at least today we are getting tremendous rains.  Hopefully that will help us this summer.