With over 2 million hectares of land burned so far...
 

and probably another 2 million before it's done, this will be the largest combined set of bush fires Australia has seen in modern times. Where we are at, the fires are set to reach our mountain ranges in the next three to four days. Me personally (and the fam) aren't necessarily in harms way as we live in the center of town, but the rural area's about to be affected will be in harms way severly. Just our bush fire that started in the Wollemi National Forest, is more than three times that of all the fires in California combined... this does not include any of the other fires currently burning.

This image is of our back yard. The town is about two miles in diameter, and you can only see about 100 yards away, if that.

Shit man. Stay safe. Fire is nothing to **** with. There was a fire around Johnson Kansas that was moving 42MPH. That’s horrifying.

I had a fire on a field once and the farm wasn’t right for 5 years.

FTR that is almost 5 million acres. Or 7500 square miles. That’s for real man.

Put another shrimp on the barbie mate:thumb:

this fire is larger than the Greater Sydney basin. The smoke is so bad in sydney from this fire alone that it's setting off fire alarms and spooking people. Some mass transit there has shut down as it's impossible to not choke people out on the buses and trains.

no room on the grill with all the other animals being burnt to a crisp. kid you not, it literally smells like i have a roast on the smoker around here. imagine planting your face at the top of a smoke chimney and trying to breathe. it's 'almost' that bad, and will get worse in the next four days. one would imagine you will see almost everyone outside with different sorts of breathing apparatus' on.

Maybe you guys should like....ummm...put it out or something.

That's what I would do.

ROFL, one person wrote on the cities facebook 'what's the fires like in your town'

First repy:

Very Hot

This image is of rain radar. Problem is. It’s not rain.

Well the Aussies are known for blunt humor, stay safe.

You guys should get that Greta Thunberg kid in there. She can shame you out of your climate crisis.

I would hide in the pouch of a marsupial until this all blows over.

You'd become a "Hot Pocket":
[IMG]https://i.redd.it/kpg3m3euwod11.png[/IMG]

the irony in your statement: for years every one has lobbied for controlled burns, but the greenies said nooooooo, it will kill a roo. so after 20 years or more, the region just becomes a powder keg (and 10000 roos die, 4000 koalas, and uncountable numbers of other animals). then when the fires erupt like now, they will claim global warming is the cause. it's like if instead of burning that pile of leaves every year, you are now forbidden to burn it, but have to still stack the leaves in the same pile. then twenty years later lightning strikes and you've now burnt your house down along with it :D

Why isn't this message being spread to the masses? (cause and current damage).
2 M hectares should at least get people to wake up. In my little bubble all I'm hearing is there's "fires in Australia". No one seems to give a shit.
From my menial understanding of Australia as a country, this is a big ****in' deal.

not that the threat is any less now by any means, but if you could see the radar info for the last four hours... it's amazing. it looked like the hour hand reversing directions from 6pm to 1pm like motion...

i use weatherzone.com.au ****ing brilliant, hey :thumb:

Hope it burns all snakes spiders and crocks and everything Australia is deadly for.



Just add fire to the country of death habitat.

5The post you responded to was baseless AM radio bullshit. There's no environmentalist or "greenie" conspiracy to prevent controlled burning.

The Green political party holds one (of 150) seat in the federal house of reps and 3 (of 93) in New South Wales. Clearly any public policy failure will be entirely their fault, what with their close to supermajority representation in parliament.

It is true that some areas prohibit DIY burning, but if you consider tha half the state is currently on fire, it should be fairly obvious as to why we don't let Joe Sixpack do his own bonfires.

Mother Nature finally listened when enough people said to “kill it with fire” as it pertains to venomous Australian wildlife.

Good luck.

So sorry to hear that the deadly virus known as leftism has spread faster than that fire.

I wish the best for our Australian friends.

Praying you guys to get some rain down there to end the suffering. Best wishes to you and your family.

You are repeating the claims of Barnaby Joyce of the Nationals party. But it's not true. Australia has had political issues with climate change for a long time now, even as droughts have been steadily increasing for years. The truth is that brushfire hazard reduction has actually increased over the last few years.

I'm going to react to this as soon as I figure out how big a hectare is.

Well, according to Greek and Roman mythology he was a Trojan prince and the greatest fighter for Troy in the Trojan War. That's pretty big.

I probably should have stated when I say 'greenies', I am talking about the environmentalists out there, not the political party. the pressure they put on all parties is a given though.

now as to how many controlled burns there are over the years, even our local RFS fighters say they aren't allowed to do the burns they know need done. so there is that :thumb:

One hectare equals 0.00386102 square miles.

Better stated, for an approximate result, divide the area value by 258.999.

****ing thread has turned into a goddamn math class.

ROFL

I love throwing out metric units to the CP units here :thumb:

Just to get an idea as to the size of the fires....
 

This is only the Blue Mountains fires. Over 350,000 hectares burnt as of today.

The area shaded in red is our region. The fire is about two to three days away, currently within a 15km range.

I learned something today regarding mines and operations. There are huge converyor belts that transfer the coal to the power plants and washeries. In transit, this coal will bounce dust below the conveyors. Over time this dust becomes a literal 'wick'. If luck would have it, and the fire reaches a mine, or the transfer line, it 'could' spark out like lightning strikes to other areas. Not that it will, but you never think of things like this. They have suspended operations at one of the mines and will probably make two by tomorrow. Again, you never think of it, but with such poor air quality to circulate air to the miners, and risk of ember ignition underground. you can't mine.

whoduthunket?

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NSIjB96H4Sc" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

This has been a horror season so far. We have been much luckier down South, but fires seem to be far more common than seasons past. The air pollution in Sydney has been horrendous due to the fires apparently.

as it stands, we could get an inch of rain over night and it wouldn't do a thing to the fires. :cuss:

I put it in the second post yo

2.5 acres per hectare.

Good enough approximation.

Thanks Mike, that was very helpful!

Anyone know how big an acre is...?

Approximately twice the size of a half acre

Basically, 1 hectaire = 2.47 acres...

...or it's a big ass fire...

Give or take...

LMAO

A football field is ~1 1/3 acres.

as of the latest update:

acres burnt: 899,500 acres

in other words:

270,700 football fields (just this one fire alone)

we did have burnt gumtree leaves fall into our carpark today. we are three kilometers away from that section of fire.

16.5 ft by half a mile.

Or

43560 sq ft

FWIW 16.5 ft is a rod. Apparently it was a common unit of measurement in the day. And we thought CP had high opinions of ourselves. :D

time to batton down the hatches. embers are now lighting spot fires. got the sprinklers going on the yard closest to the house for the next day or two. it's amazing how nice it was this morning with the westerly wind. in about twenty minutes time, it shifted easterly and the area is back to covered in smoke. a couple of our employees was working the local mine and they booted them off the property, and are in full fire mode. there is an out of control grass fire within a half mile of where i work. it started shortly after we finished for the day. before the night is over, we will cross the 400,000 hectares burnt mark. :cuss:

https://www.facebook.com/7NEWSsydney...2721727480666/

well, the fire finally made it here. a couple homes lost. the fire is actually on two fronts. the next front could make it to our mountain ridge in the next couple days.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BW2UjLTqRQo" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

How are you doing Nick? This is monumental shit. I'm worried about y'all.

Damn. Seems like wildfires have been nuts in the past few years. Best of luck.

Holy shit man. Best of luck

Be safe Nickhead and your family and friends and save some Fosters

Need to build a wall around Australia before this shit spreads to the civilized world.

if we can keep the second front from moving too fast, it should be okay. but if the back side of the valley catches, there are a hundred or so houses built up under the trees, rather than on the edge of the valley. that is what saved most of the houses from yesterdays fire. we are all on watch and act now. on a side note. due to the highway closures, and leading up to the holidays, no transport can come in to restock the shelves at the local shops.

This. Stay safe man.

Late to this thread. But just as an update, as we approach mid-January an area larger than the size of England has been burnt across several states. We've had several days of over 40 degrees C (~115 F) since Mid-December and each time it happens all these fires grow in size. Those that remember me from when I was a regular around here know I'm from Sydney, so I'm fine. But I have family members who have been impacted by the fires. Hope OP is safe, I know up in the Blue Mountains its been very bed for a month now.

Where you at Nickhead??????

Warnings like this are pretty common at the moment. This map shows the current highest risk areas on the NSW south coast, so Sydney is just to the north of the top of this map. And for scale, the top of the map to the bottom is about 250 miles.

Perspective:

https://i.imgur.com/iC2yPsc.png

They're predicting that over 500,000 animals have already died...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/aust...is-mounts.html

It sounds like there is a lot of crazy pricks going around intentionally starting a lot of them.

Wow

You turn on the news expecting to see things eventually under control, but it just keeps getting worse

If it wasn’t so true, that first graphic would be comical

****ing ****. I was wondering why the hell wheat was rallying some.

I saw some YouTube vids of regular people driving out to the fires and filling their cars with koala’s to save them.

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

<iframe width="1182" height="665" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3dfPFxWTWF0" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width="1182" height="665" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NmyWqgBBhzY" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width="1182" height="665" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UpNFjLsg38Q" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

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.

RIP to the three American firefighting pilots whose plane went down while helping with these blazes. :crybaby:

Damn, that sucks. What's the latest on all of this? Is it so out of control that they're largely just letting it all go until the weather turns, or is there some end in sight?

LMAO

i think they decided early on to let it burn itself out, aside from the obvious, trying to protect lives and property.

as far as intensity goes, there are spots that are still at great risk, but with over 14 million hectares been burnt, theres not much left.

there has been enough rain in general the last couple weeks, and with the heat tamped down a bit, it's more about fire management i think.

the plane going down was merely a freak accident. some are wondering aloud whether a plane that size has the structural strength to be dive bombing fires like this over extended periods of time.