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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 7:12 pm Post subject: Wow - check out these pictures of Australia's bush fires |
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2009/feb/07/australia-fires?picture=342947489
These fires shoot along the ground as fast as a bullet, four storeys high, destroying whole properties and hamlets in minutes. You can not out run them. You see the smoke in the distance, and suddenly a terrible fire is raging all around you. Familes have been found huddled together in houses and cars - incinerated. 108 dead so far. Really horrible. 
One of the most horrible things is that some of the fires have been set deliberately, and other have been deliberately reignited after being put out. WTF. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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Some calamity appears to have destroyed civilization - it's like a film set, perhaps for Cormac McCarthy's post-nuclear novel The Road.
On the Maroondah Highway a shrouded corpse lies on scarred earth, surrounded by police tape. Black dots under trees turn out to be fried animals.
The horror of those furious minutes when panicked residents tried to flee the firefront is evident on a road that connects the towns of Whittlesea and Kinglake.
Cars litter the road, crashed and abandoned. In many cases, the cars that people sought as their only hope of survival, became their tombs.
On one corner just west of Kinglake, six cars lie, four completely burned out. They rest in ditches and crashed into fallen tree limbs. A motorbike lies, crashed into a tree, on the side of the road. Molten metal, car parts melted into the road, are a sign of the heat that tore through.
Elsewhere on the road there are cars that have crashed head-on.
Bodies are still being removed from the burned-out shells. Police scientists and coroners are on the scene. The official death toll in Kinglake is 12. In nearby Kinglake West, another 10.
But there are still, almost certainly, other bodies not yet found, people unaccounted for. Fire crews are moving from house to house, checking each room, every shed, every water tank.
Survivors described the firefront, fanned by the changed wind direction, as ferocious - and fast. Maryanne Mercuri was listening to the radio news for fire updates. Kinglake wasn't mentioned.
"Within two minutes, the sky went black with smoke, it was black like it was midnight, and the fire was right there. There was nothing we could do. We couldn't escape, we couldn't go anywhere," she said. "Fire was falling from the sky, huge shoots of flame. Mercuri, her husband, Rod, and children Allison, 11, and Dean and Kirk, both nine, took shelter first in the garage. When that caught fire, they ran to their shed, before running back to the house. She covered the children with towels, just something to protect them from the scorching heat.
"We didn't have time to wet them, I couldn't even see them, it was just whatever I could grab in the dark and the smoke," she said.
"They were good kids, they were really good kids. But we were all scared. We were all so scared. We even talked about heaven."
In the town of Narbethong, where the charred ground crunches underfoot, it is eerily silent. There is no noise, no birds. Rows of houses have been destroyed, a melted truck still burns, the corrugated iron of water tanks is twisted like plasticine. Only the metal clothes lines survived intact.
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Day Fire Fell From the Sky
Last edited by Big_Bird on Sun Feb 08, 2009 11:49 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 7:42 pm Post subject: |
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double post
Last edited by Big_Bird on Sun Feb 08, 2009 11:46 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 7:50 pm Post subject: |
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triple post
Last edited by Big_Bird on Sun Feb 08, 2009 11:47 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Leslie Cheswyck
Joined: 31 May 2003
Location: University of Western Chile
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| Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 9:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Wow, so these wildfires are spreading like... ah... wildfire. |
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Underwaterbob
Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Location: In Cognito
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| Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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| What I want to know is why does my PS block the Guardian? |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 11:11 pm Post subject: |
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Suspect charged over deadly Australian fire
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Authorities charged a man Friday with lighting one of Australia's deadly wildfires and whisked him into protective custody amid national fury that arsonists may be to blame in the blazes that left more than 180 people dead.
Police said the man was charged with one count of arson causing death and lighting a wildfire near the town of Churchill, one of hundreds that raged through southeastern Victoria state last weekend, police said. He also was charged with possessing child pornography.
More than 180 people died and more than 1,800 homes were destroyed in the blazes. The official toll for the Churchill fire is 21 dead.
The suspect's identity was being kept secret for his own safety, Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Dannye Moloney told a news conference. He was brought from Morwell, near the fire zone, to the state capital of Melbourne, Moloney said.
Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported that the man was charged in court in Morwell on the three charges, but that he did not appear. He was ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation, the broadcaster said.
The suspect faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison for the deadly arson charge, and a maximum of 15 years on the second arson charge. |
I wonder what was going through this guy's mind when he did this. |
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OneWayTraffic
Joined: 14 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 11:48 pm Post subject: |
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Fleeing at the last second is the worst thing to do, apparently. Note that family survived in the house while those in cars mainly died.
Flee early or stay and fight.
If your house has sprinklers and a clear belt of 30m around it then the chances are good, ordinarily. But extraordinary fires like these...
A news program showed a chicken coop, complete with its chickens totally intact, 5m from a completely burned out car. Boggles the imagination. |
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