Dear All,
The good news is that the temperatures have dropped markedly in the
last few days and forecasts are for similar lower temperatures, from
the mid 20s to the low 30s, for the next week. There are even a few
areas that might have 5 millimetres to 10 millimetres in the next 24
hours. This will give the fire fighters from our Country Fire
Authority (CFA) a chance to first of all contain and then to 'blacken'
the fires that are still active. Wendy and I and our son, his wife,
and grandchildren are all fine and well out of the range of any of the
initial 200 fire outbreaks; the closest was about 70 kilometres away.
Our only family worry is that Wendy's sister and her family have a
fruit orchard and a vineyard in a valley near one of the major fires
and they have been immersed in smoke since Saturday; the worry is that
the smoke will effect the fruit and the grapes as some of these were
almost ready for harvest.
Of these 200 original fires 11 of them were regarded as major fires
and the 'urgent' messages coming from the radio emergency service were
more or less continuous through 24 hours of the day. Currently we
still have about 35 fire locations that are still active and 3 of
these are still major fires. There are still 'urgent' messages and
'alert' messages being issued from the CFA on a regular basis. Senior
fire officers are now delivering hopeful messages of confidence that
they will be able to control the remaining fires within the next week
or two. As usual our CFA has done a fantastic job. As have all of our
other community groups who have supported the work of the fire
fighters. People like the Country Women's Association (CWA), who
suddenly turn up at remote locations in the middle of the bush on the
edge of a major fires with generators for electricity, urns to boil
water for tea and coffee, and the wherewithal for making thousands of
sandwiches to give the fire fighters sustenance during the meal breaks
that can happen at any time of day or night.
Could I suggest that you tune to the streaming radio station of the
Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). This is a government radio
station that normally broadcasts popular music and talk-back radio on
political and legal issues, but when we have bush fires it changes to
our emergency radio service. You will find this radio service at http://www.abc.net.au/melbourne
and the reason I am suggesting that you do this is so that you can
appreciate at a personal level the outpouring of support that has not
only come from ordinary people in the Australian community but also
from the international community. The stories that you will hear will
amaze and inspire you. I feel immensely proud to be part of the
community of Victoria at this sad time.
As you probably know, the CFA of the state of Victoria has very good
relationships with the states of California and Washington in the USA.
It is not unusual for fire fighters from California and Washington to
come here to help us with extended fires and for some of our 'fireys'
to help out in the USA.
Another feature of this emergency fire service is that the reports
from ordinary citizens are invariably given in metric units. It has
been the policy of fire fighters here to use metric units since the
1970s and the stated reason for this was fire fighters' safety. In the
Rural Fire Service (RFS) of the state of New South Wales it has been a
'reportable offence' to use old pre-metric measures at a fire location
since the early 1970s. It took longer for the general community to
adopt this practice but this in now widely accepted.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Geelong, Australia
On 2009/02/08, at 11:18 AM, Pat Naughtin wrote:
Dear All,
As I advised yesterday we were in for a hot dry day with low
humidity yesterday; the prediction was for 44 °C. It turned out that
the temperature at the Avalon airport near Geelong was the hottest
place in the state. The temperature there reached 46.9°C at 15:00
with winds gusting between 10 km/h and 60 km/h. See http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDV60801/IDV60801.94854.shtml
Fortunately for us there were no bush fires within 50 kilometres of
Geelong, but more than 200 fires were reported from other parts of
the state of Victoria — 11 of these are regarded as major fires
burning areas of up to 30 000 hectares — these fires are still active.
One of the government owned radio stations (Australian Broadcasting
Commission or ABC 774) becomes an emergency information service
under these circumstances. You can listen to a streaming of this
service from http://www.abc.net.au/melbourne where you will notice
that almost all dimensions supplied use metric units including
hectares for the size of fires. The exceptions come from some few
people who phone in to the talk-back components. The fire services
have, since the 1970s, regarded using old pre-metric measures as a
reportable offence since it puts volunteer fire fighters lives at
risk to use multiple methods of measurement. I think that the ABC
does an excellent job of providing this emergency bush fire
information - you might like to listen for a while to see how we
manage this kind of service in Australia.
By the way, as I listen to the radio, I think of hectares like this:
1 I hear of a fire that is estimated as 165 hectares
2 I take the square root of the number: sqrt (165) = 13 (approx.)
3 Multiply 13 by 100 = 1300 metres.
4 I think of this is a fire that, as a square, would be about 1.3
kilometres by 1.3 kilometres.
Let me repeat this for one of the larger fire that is estimated to
be 30 000 hectares
1 I hear of a fire that is estimated as 30 000 hectares
2 I take the square root of the number: sqrt (30 000) = 170 (approx.)
3 Multiply 170 by 100 = 17 000 metres.
4 I think of this is a fire that, as a square, would be about 17
kilometres by 17 kilometres.
A square in this particular case works well enough because these
fires were burning with north-westerly winds before a cool change
arrived from the south-west in such a way that one edge of some
large fires changed to the front of the fire. We are fortunate that
the south-westerly change has meant that the temperature today has
dropped for the western half of the state to the mid 20s. The lower
temperatures mean higher humidity so these weather factors should be
helpful to the roughly 3000 mostly volunteer fire fighters.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
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