Dear All,
The fires in my home state of Victoria are now (after almost a month)
just about under control. There are only three fires still burning out
of the 300 that were burning on February 7 and the remaining three are
not threatening any towns and they are surrounded by fire breaks.
Overall:
210 lives were lost,
2029 properties were destroyed,
78 townships were affected, and
400 000 + hectares were burned.
All reporting of all fires was done using metric units only. If you
were given any other figures (say by news media in the USA) then these
were dumbed down by the news media reporters. In a sense, you are
being treated like little children who need to be protected from the
big bad metric world! Hhhrrrmmmph! In all Australian fire services
metric units are mandatory. It is far too dangerous to try to use
multiple measuring methods when your life is immediately threatened by
fire. Multiple measures mean death! In the NSW fire service (see
below) to use an old pre-metric measure in training or at a fire has
been regarded as a 'reportable offence' since the early 1970s.
Here is a report from 'The Age' newspaper (http://www.theage.com.au/national/heavens-open-and-a-hellish-season-ends-20090304-8oif.html
) that shows some of the New South Wales (NSW) fire fighters on
their way home last night giving the 'thumbs-up' sign of success.
These are a small part of the 1000 fire fighters who came from other
states to help us here in Victoria. There are many fire fighters from
New Zealand, Canada, and the USA (usually from the states of
California and Washington) who will also begin to go home soon.
The management of the remaining fires will be done by the Country Fire
Authority (CFA) of Victoria. The CFA is one of the world's largest
volunteer fire fighting organisations. It services more than 150 000
square kilometres and about 3 million people. The CFA has
approximately 58 000 active volunteers with almost 1200 career fire
fighters and support staff.
Note that we use hectares to measure the size of fires here. This
means that a small fire 100 metres by 100 metres is a one hectare fire
and all other fires are given in simple whole numbers of hectares.
There are no fractions (no vulgar or common fractions and no decimal
fractions) when you are measuring bush fires in Australia.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
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