Vacation at the Wildfire. *short*

[Blue Ginger]

In the Black Saturday disaster, we - hopefully the whole world - learned that no matter what humans do, some fires cannot be prevented, contained, or defended against.

Please, no matter how safe you think your home is, everyone everywhere should have an evacuation plan, and an emergency radio which is independant of mains power.

Yep this, this and more this.

We were driving from Queensland to home in Victoria during the Canberra fires in 2003 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Canberra_bushfires). We were driving through the centre of New South Wales (approx 200kms away from the fires) with the wind blowing from us towards Canberra and we had places where it was difficult to breath and the smoke was obscuring vision.

But the Black Saturday fires were just a whole other nightmare. It's still hard to believe what happened. One thing everyone learnt was that it's never too early to leave when there is a bushfire.

[Seshat]

If I recall, the Canberra fires not only got into the suburbs, but spawned a firestorm.

(Checks)

Ah yes. A fire tornado, spawned from the pyrocumulus clouds, and it apparently exceeded F3 on the Fujita scale.


Short form, to quote Buffy: "Fire bad. Tree pretty."

[dendawg]

Fire bad.

Is it just me, or does anyone else flashback to Phil Hartman upon hearing those two words?

[Valentinian]

Yep this, this and more this.

We were driving from Queensland to home in Victoria during the Canberra fires in 2003 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Canberra_bushfires). We were driving through the centre of New South Wales (approx 200kms away from the fires) with the wind blowing from us towards Canberra and we had places where it was difficult to breath and the smoke was obscuring vision.

But the Black Saturday fires were just a whole other nightmare. It's still hard to believe what happened. One thing everyone learnt was that it's never too early to leave when there is a bushfire.

I was in Japan during the Canberra bushfires - my mother woke me up with a phone call that started "So, just letting you know your house is probably going to burn down" and my housemates/renters got forcibly evacuated twice. Do have a look at the animated map on the Wiki page, it's freaking scary.

[paxillated]

DH and I both have red eyes and runny noses from the smoke... north of Denver.

Please, God, bring rain.

[Aria]

Holy crap, are you serious? The smoke from those fires reached Alberta!

Some people are crazy.