Fires got really close to my inlaws home in nsw. Like across the river close. Not out of it yet, they had to evacuate once and have been prepping the house ever since. We were lucky to get the last flight out of the Moruya airport on new years eve. The sky was red that day and the sun dark orange. Crossing the runway to our small plane was like something out of the apocalypse. Winds were blowing heavy suitcases away. Still feel guilty that we had to leave.

Kangaroo island in my home state (South Australia) has been under siege for a while now. A 3rd of the island has already burnt.

Getting used to the smell of smoke now. Every day in NSW we would wake up to smokey haze and the strong smell of smoke. Its like standing next to a barbeque. It has been a terrible season so far. Touched by the community spirit its brought out. The awareness of the fires and donations have been incredibly inspiring.

Kangaroo Island:

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

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RAvh1QX_a...8373441326.jpg

Glad to hear you are safe. Didn't realise it reached where you live. Went back and read the thread.

Ill add that flying over the fires was incredibly eye opening. I didnt realize or have any scope of things until seeing just how big the smoke plumes were. Truly horrifying

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The map on the left is a gross exaggeration if you zoom in the icons get smaller still bad tho

just short of 200 arrests for arsonists during this fire. one firie started 7 on his own.

that said, after 520,000 hectares burnt, the blue mountains fire is 'out'. this does not include current fires elsewhere. there is a current one that has merged on three fronts (i believe the media is milking the current situation, but...) this one merged fire is still less than the total burnt in our region. loss of any life is a real tragedy. and it is mass...

but i have seen photos of areas burnt early on, and there is beautiful new vegitation taking place of the old.

so we will recover, its just going to take time :thumb:

Holy ****. Arsonists are out there lighting this shit? What the ****ing ****?

It will interest me a lot to watch the coverage by media of the regrowth and recovery that will come next.

Fires like this are horrific and create a lot of damage for sure. But the regrowth after natural fire events like this is simply hard to behold. The repopulation by native species is rapid and fantastic.

There will be a huge amount of misinformation and positioning for political reasons by people who seek to profit or gain leverage and that is really the suck.

The learning from this is we have to manage lands not abandon them to whatever happens. California proves it annually, Yellowstone should have been the wake up call all land managers needed but the land managers were overridden and we ignored the lesson. The Bitterroot was next and again the lessons were read and the politics overrode science.

If those fires are half as intense as they look, that ground is going to be sterilized by the heat and lots of luck getting much of anything to grow back within a generation or two.

As I understand it the map on the left was from satellite heat sensing so it represents essentially nothing but garbage being passed on all over the internet. Big cities give off heat signatures that were included and have no relationship to what is claimed.

Don't worry, Tina Turner is on top of this shit.

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

A common misperception.

Eh, you'd be surprised. All that ash makes for great fertilizer. Grass will be back in a year. Shrubs in 4-5. Trees are the thing that takes forever to be back. It'll take 20 years to have anything resembling dense forest and a century before it really seems "normal" again.

A small town in Northern Cali (weaverville) that is surrounded by forest that I used to drive through often had its biggest fire in quite some time. The hills were black but 5 years later I was amazed at the regrowth and how fast nature came back to make everything green.