Our darkest day (The Age: Melbourne)

[depakid]

Vechicles on the Yea Road near Kinglake came to grief during the firestorm.
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Terror, loss and acts of quiet courage have marked Australia's worst natural disaster.

VICTORIA has witnessed this country's greatest natural disaster. Worse than Black Friday. Worse than Ash Wednesday. That is the grim sum of a catastrophe that already exceeds all others — and which threatens to grow worse.

The towns of Kinglake and Marysville have been wiped out and around the state more people have died than in any previous natural catastrophe — one so lethal that authorities are treating it like a major terrorist attack.

The first of several interstate victim identification teams arrived yesterday to assist Victoria Police under a national terrorist contingency plan.

More than 70 people died in the Black Friday fires of 1939 — and 75 on Ash Wednesday in 1983, 47 of them Victorians. But as the official death list topped 93 last night, senior police sources told The Age they feared the final figure would be much greater.

So many bodies are scattered in fire zones around the state that it could take days to find and retrieve them all.

The names of those killed are only just starting to emerge. Among them were former Channel Nine newsreader Brian Naylor and his wife Moiree, at Kinglake West.

Victoria's morgue was full last night — with hospitals and universities being asked to store bodies until formal identifications could be made. Some of the many injured people in hospital were not expected to survive.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday promised help from the army, which has sent bedding to Warragul and heavy equipment to cut fire breaks near Yea.

More: http://www.theage.com.au/national/our-darkest-day-20090208-810q.html

[XemaSab]

1. Australia sends firefighters here during our summers

Why don't we have American firefighters helping those people? :cry:

[depakid]

2. The Kiwis help out, too

NZ Firefighters Deployed to Northern California

Hutt City fire manager Alan Thomson says the nine New Zealanders sent to the United States to fight bushfires have all been deployed in Butte County in northern California.

The fire fighters arrived in the county's main town of Chico at the weekend, the Chico Enterprise-Record newspaper reported.
Another 31 Australians have gone to fire lines and command centres in Mendocino, Shasta and Trinity counties.
Thousands of people have been evacuated as fires have burned nearly 23,000ha, destroying dozens of homes, and killing at least one person.

Mr Thomson is serving as the New Zealand liaison officer at the fire incident command centre at the town's Silver Dollar Fairgrounds.
The wildfires were originally sparked by hundreds of lightning strikes on June 21. Mr Thomson said they were all eager to help out and that hundreds of New Zealand firefighters had wanted to volunteer.

http://www3.fire.org.nz/cms.php?page=18495

[XemaSab]

3. June 21 was a BAD day... I've never seen anything like it

:scared:

But why not have an international team of wildland firefighters?

Our summer is the bad season here, your summer is the bad season there, why not fly people back and forth? :shrug:

Most of the wildland firefighters I know would love another season of firefighting. (I mean, not another season of horrible fires, but another season of getting paid? Sure. ;) )

[depakid]

4. We were in Crescent City that day

June 21st.

We looked back on the mountains where we'd camped (you may have been to Taylor Lake)- to see dry lightening striking. I knew there'd be fires- like Yellow Jacket Ridge in the 1990's.

Yet we weren't prepared for such long lasting conflagrations.

Australian bush fires spread much faster- rapidly. People get caught up in their cars- and get burnt up because, like good people anywhere in the world- they stay to fight the flames, rather than regroup.

You and yours probably know so much more about that than most anyone on this board.

[XemaSab]

5. I haven't been to Taylor Lake

but it's now on the itinerary. ;)

We're in Redding, and our dog Pip is VERY scared of loud noises. Every time there was a thunderclap she would bark and cry, and there were thunderclaps every 5 or so minutes FROM 4 AM TO 8 PM. I spent half the day on the kitchen floor trying to get her to drink some beer, 'cause I'd already given her two doggie valiums and I didn't want her to have an adverse reaction to the valium. (She eventually drank the beer and mellowed WAY out, but it was a long day.)

I have bad asthma, so I spent the next few weeks inside the house. I am so impressed with our firefighters. We were scared that the fires would burn until winter, and if they had, it would have been a long wait.

We did go up to see one of the fires near Shasta Dam, and watching whole trees crown out within seconds... wow.

We weren't worried about those fires so much because we are in town near the river, but there was a big fire burning down the river corridor a few months later that scared us. Flaming embers were landing on the roof and I know that's how most homes get destroyed. That was one of the most abrupt awakenings I've ever had: 5 minutes from asleep in bed to watering the roof with the hose! Somehow I thought we were "safe" from fire here, but you never know where it's going to come from. The fire never crossed the river, so we were safe, but it was scary.

I knew a guy who died in his car in the Oakland Hills Fire, Bob Cox. He was trying to evacuate. My mom and I had moved from Oakland a month before the fire, and apparently all our old neighbors sat out by our house and watched it come down the hill. It was beaten back about a mile from our house, but there was a fear that it would burn all the way to the bay.

I lived near Yosemite for a while, and in picking a place to live I definitely wanted to live within a few blocks of a major road in case there was a fire. In Santa Barbara I chose to live in town because the hills there are a death trap.

Both of my uncles used to work for the California Department of Forestry, and I have friends and ex-boyfriends who are foresters and fight fire, so I'm probably more wildland-fire aware than most people. One of my uncles was in a lookout tower doing fire mapping when the winds shifted, and he had to be rescued by helicopter.

I'm sure Australian bush fires are explosive. I just read in the Sydney Morning Herald that some towns were overcome within an hour. You think you have time, and you think you have a warning, but you really don't.

It's impossible to imagine. :cry: