Australian Fires
Posted on: February 10, 2009 - 10:01am
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Australian Fires
For those of you who haven't seen:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/10/australia-fires-arsonists
I don't know where any of our Australian friends live. So Bob, thingy, Eloise, and any other Aussies I don't know about, let us know you're okay, guys.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
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The worst of the fires are in Victoria, that's where the 181 and counting have lost their lives. Our previous worst fire in modern times, known as Ash Wednesday (1983), resulted in 70ish lives lost - the only one remotely higher was 1939 but this has far surpassed that. To compound the problems in Australia, a large section of Queensland is completely flooded due to rains brought in by a tropical cyclone.
Eloise and I are both in Sydney, New South Wales which is located between Victoria and Queensland. Bob is in Brisbane which is in the south-east corner of Queensland so not directly affected by the flooding. Unless one of us are out of town then none of us are affected, directly anyway. There's a fair number of other Aussies on here though, and I'm not certain of their locations.
I still can't believe when I started watching the coverage at 4pm Sunday the toll was only 40 ("only" 40? I say that like it's a low inconsequential number?). It just kept climbing and climbing, and still is. Every time it looks to be slowing down, another report comes out.
Some amasing photos of the events, for anyone interested.
abc.net.au
boston.com
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I'm from Melbourne and very safe from the fires, I do know people who have lost everything and others who are still at risk. The weather is expected to turn for the worse this weekend again and even in this state of hightened awareness, more lives could be lost. The landscape is just tinder dry, combined with the ferocious hot and windy weather we had on saturday a firestorm was inevitable. Although many bushfires occur naturally, this one may have been deliberately lit. To think that all this devistation is the result of thrillseeking is just mind boggling. It was about 47 degrees (I think thats about 116 in your scale HisWillness) whilst the fires were well away from us, we could smell the smoke in the air.
Good to know you guys are okay - reading it and looking at the maps, it just seems unbelievable.
No, I'm Canadian, so I don't speak Fahrenheit, and 47 degrees is a temperature I've never experienced.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Neither had I until Saturday, it's fucking nuts! It's scary enough on its own let alone a raging fire around you.
Hey Will, it's awful isn't it.
Thanks for your concern, I have friends and relatives in Bendigo and Melbourne so I appreciate it.
For the record, I'm fine, of course. Thingy is half-right, I come from Sydney but at the moment I'm residing in Brisbane, like Bob -- we're not affected by the flooding but we did have a cyclone forming off our coast not two weeks ago, it threatened but nothing happened. Just as well though, we've got more than enough to deal with already down here, hey?
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Well, welcome to the weird place in your head where stuff like that makes sense. I live just a short distance from New York City and I can tell you that I went through that after 9/11. The local paper set a policy of not running obituaries until at least one bit of DNA had been checked and even then, the usual half page of obits was running to four pages until after Christmas.
If there is anything amazing, it would have to be the fact that the human mind actually has some mechanism in it that lets us cope with the shock that can only exist in the modern world.
=
There was the destruction of Pompeii before that. And before that, we're likely descended from a population that suffered a severe bottleneck, so it may be that everyone who couldn't cope during such a reduction in population died, and the ones who could cope (more or less) are what we have left over.
Y'know, creatures who would survive at all costs, clever enough to kill anything (with enthusiasm to match), who have sex whenever they can, build their own shelter, and continue to do whatever they please in the face of near-extinction.
Yeah, that pretty much fits.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
I'd say so. Don't forget about the disasters looming on the horizon though. I bet Yellow Stone is going to be one hell of a shit storm.
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The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
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