The lovely smell of spring....not!

[SnowFella]

Well, spring is about to officially start here in a day or 2 and we are currently subjected to the normal springtime smell of smoke. To limit the risk of firestorms during the hot season the local councils are going nuts with hazard reductions, more or less leaving the whole area blanketed in smoke. I know it's needed but can't say it's all to comfortable living with it!

Not sure how this link will work but ought to give some kind of an idea, if you zoom in I'm just west of Sydney CBD...out in the Penrith area.
http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?cat_id=683

[Peterthecactusguy]

well, in the desert we have had a few "controlled burns" that weren't so well controlled.

[SnowFella]

Same here, add the fact that we only have had 2 inches of rain this month and it's a windy day and things can get out of hand quickly!
Here's an example from up the coast, luckily they got it back under control without loss of property.
Brisbane hazard reduction goes wrong

[Peterthecactusguy]

for some reason the video won't load but I see several things wrong in that area Brisbane. It appears that those homes are near a forest and have no defensible space at all. In wild fire prone areas this is always a problem. Sure the forests are beautiful, but having that much vegetation that close isn't smart. Also it was REALLY stupid to light them on fire.

A line should have been built to keep the fire from reaching where the houses were.

[SnowFella]

Never the less hazard reductions are badly needed down here, warm summers with a fair amount of rain from time to time just adds to much flammable material to be left unsupervised. Canberra in 2003 proved just how bad it can get if you don't keep ontop of it. Footage from the firestorm that swept into it's suburbs still blow my mind when I see it.

Canberra firestorm
Longer complete clip, 45 minutes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Canberra_bushfires

And it's silly hard to get rid of trees down here, to remove anything (on your property, outside you can forget about it) above 3 meters you need council approval. Workmate just had a tall DEAD gumtree removed from his backyard, cost him $150 in council application fee, a 2 week wait while the council decided on the matter and then $1000 to get council approved treeloppers in to cut it down.
Brother inlaws house backs onto the foothills of the mountains here, with trees all the way up to the border of the yard, and in the 2001 christmas bushfire the only thing that saved that house was an airdrop from an Erickson skycrane right along the fenceline.

[Peterthecactusguy]

wow sounds like they need to change some policies there. Defensible space, would mean not having any trees a certain distance from your house, AND the picture of the family in the article had trees way too close. The problem is that fires are natural over there and here too. We build our houses and stop the little fires from burning and that= HUGE fires. I watched the Cave Creek Fire and was sad. They stopped it from going towards a few rich people's houses and left one side undefended. Naturally some of the houses still burnt down AND the fire went out of control for another half million acres or so.. to put it in perspective the fire burnt almost 40 miles from south to north and burnt around 12 miles wide. (in metric that is (around 60KM north to south long by around 20KM wide give or take a little bit. I know a km is .62 miles but I suck at math in my head)

[SnowFella]

Well, the heatwave is upon us and with that comes the inevetable fires! Luckily nothing at the scale that Tasmania is seeing at the moment but there's potential, the Rural Fire Services webpage currently lists nearly 90 fires burning through NSW at the moment.
Quick screengrab from my IPhone's Fire app, every flag is a fire currently going.

[Peterthecactusguy]

Tis the season, right now it's our wet season so fires arent that bad. It's around June when they get bad here, thats when it stays dry for a month or so with almost no chance of rain. April-June are very dry but June is the worst month. Before the Monsoon storms get going they can create fires with dry lightening IE when lightening strikes the ground but no rain does.

[SnowFella]

Getting kinda out of hand in some areas now, still atleast 80 fires burning through the state with 15 currently out of control. Lots of rural communities down south are under threat at the moment, and we are again seeing heatwave conditions with strong winds.

Here's one photo taken earlier on in the week by an airline pilot, pretty massive smoke plume with enough generated updraft to ground the helo's working on containing it.

[gemhunter178]

That looks pretty cool, but ack, that doesn't look good.

[SnowFella]

Nope, more and more reports are starting to come in about houses lost and warning levels raised to "watch and act" status. Total fireban on across the state is in effect, that includes any outdoors welding, grinding or even running a solid fuel bbq.
The fire in the photo above apparently moved 10km overnight, totalling some 46000 hectares now

[Peterthecactusguy]

be careful that looks brutal

[SnowFella]

Going to get even worse too I fear, wind just did a snap change in direction! Temperatures are dropping rapidly but some areas are seeing 100km/h windgusts. What used to be the edge of the fire is now going to turn into the front!

[SnowFella]

Oh crap, it's going to be a long night for the guys and gals of the rural fire service I fear! Nothing in my area but it's going out of control throughout the state!

[gemhunter178]

That's a lot more signs than the last one. Oh my!