AussieChef
New member
- Feb 10, 2009
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This is more a statement than a question.
I'm a volunteer fire fighter from Queensland, Australia & I'm seeing alot of questions from people out side of Australia as to why the bush fires in Australia are so bad. I'm hopeing this will shed a little light on the situation.
The problem is most of these fires burn through eucaliptus trees. Eucalipts are extremely high in oil content, infact, if you look at a mountain range in the distance covered with eucalipts, it'll look blue. That's because those trees release eucaliptus oil & it creates a blue haze above the canapy. So when realy bad fires burn through them, the air litteraly explodes. These fires don't even touch the ground, they jump from canapy to canapy at astonishing speeds, some fires have been recorded at moving up to 25m per second. I've herd of some reports from the current fires in Victoria of homes being engulfed by flames in less than 3 seconds.
The oil rich leaves from the eucaliptus trees fly off into the air, so it litteraly rains fire, these burning embers can be carried over 50km from the original fire, causing other fires to sprout up.
This is why strategies such as back burning doesn't work. Back burning clears the litter from the ground, when these fires don't touch the ground, back burning has very little effect. (If your thinking that the back burns could clear the leaves in the canapy... well, if our back burns reached the canapy, we just lost controll of our own fire)
This is also the reason why Australian fire fighters normaly don't ask for assistance from international fire fighting agency's, their strategies & techniques don't work with these types of fires.
The Australian bush had addapted over many thousands of years to be able to handle these fires, infact some species of trees can't re-produce without fire having gone through 1st. For all the people worried about the environment, the area's being burnt at the moment will make a full recovery within 5 years, without the intervention of humans.
I hope that helped.
Misty Blue:
Yes, absolutly there is more chance at more fires, the risk won't drop until they recieve some decent rain.
As for you son in Melbourne, the outer suberbs of Melbourne may be affected if the fires get close enough, but from my understanding, the fire's arn't close enough to pose a risk to Melbourne itself.
If the fires do reach the city, the fire would slow down, & become more manageable, it's highly unlightly that the fire would make any significant damage to Melbourne as a whole. Your son should be fine.
I'm a volunteer fire fighter from Queensland, Australia & I'm seeing alot of questions from people out side of Australia as to why the bush fires in Australia are so bad. I'm hopeing this will shed a little light on the situation.
The problem is most of these fires burn through eucaliptus trees. Eucalipts are extremely high in oil content, infact, if you look at a mountain range in the distance covered with eucalipts, it'll look blue. That's because those trees release eucaliptus oil & it creates a blue haze above the canapy. So when realy bad fires burn through them, the air litteraly explodes. These fires don't even touch the ground, they jump from canapy to canapy at astonishing speeds, some fires have been recorded at moving up to 25m per second. I've herd of some reports from the current fires in Victoria of homes being engulfed by flames in less than 3 seconds.
The oil rich leaves from the eucaliptus trees fly off into the air, so it litteraly rains fire, these burning embers can be carried over 50km from the original fire, causing other fires to sprout up.
This is why strategies such as back burning doesn't work. Back burning clears the litter from the ground, when these fires don't touch the ground, back burning has very little effect. (If your thinking that the back burns could clear the leaves in the canapy... well, if our back burns reached the canapy, we just lost controll of our own fire)
This is also the reason why Australian fire fighters normaly don't ask for assistance from international fire fighting agency's, their strategies & techniques don't work with these types of fires.
The Australian bush had addapted over many thousands of years to be able to handle these fires, infact some species of trees can't re-produce without fire having gone through 1st. For all the people worried about the environment, the area's being burnt at the moment will make a full recovery within 5 years, without the intervention of humans.
I hope that helped.
Misty Blue:
Yes, absolutly there is more chance at more fires, the risk won't drop until they recieve some decent rain.
As for you son in Melbourne, the outer suberbs of Melbourne may be affected if the fires get close enough, but from my understanding, the fire's arn't close enough to pose a risk to Melbourne itself.
If the fires do reach the city, the fire would slow down, & become more manageable, it's highly unlightly that the fire would make any significant damage to Melbourne as a whole. Your son should be fine.