Wildfire Today

News and opinion about wildland fire

Wildfire Today

Tag: Australia

Firefighter dies in Australia

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , , ,
Peter Cramer
Peter Cramer, on the day he was presented an award for 20 years of CFA volunteer service, DSE photo

UPDATE: January 14, 2013. The deceased firefighter has been identified as Peter Ronald Cramer, 61, a 30-year volunteer from the town of Tyers, Victoria about 160km east of Melbourne. The latest information is that he been on foot identifying containment lines before he was found deceased on a track at 5pm on Sunday.

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A firefighter from Gippsland aged in his 60s died Sunday while working on a wildfire in Tasmania. The man was one of 70 from Victoria that had been sent to assist with the suppression of fires raging in the state. News.com.au reported that the firefighter was on foot conducting a backburning operation on the Forcett Fire when he was killed near Taranna, about 30 air miles southeast of Hobart (map).

The firefighter’s family has been notified but his name has not been released to the public.

The Forcett fire started on November 16 and has burned 24,040 hectares (59,404 acres) within a perimeter of 200km. It is being fought by 150 firefighters using 39 tankers and four aircraft.

Our sincere condolences go out to the firefighter’s family and co-workers.

Resource for teachers, fires in Australia

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags
Bush fire in Australia.
A photo of a bush fire in Australia shows interesting smoke behavior. Photo provided by New South Wales Rural Fire Service. (click to enlarge)

For a newspaper located in a country that is not ever plagued by huge vegetation fires, the UK-based Guardian does a surprisingly good job of covering them when they occur in North America or Australia.

On their Teacher Network the Guardian has a resource that could be of value for classes that want to learn about fires, and specifically, bush fires in Australia. The article has links to photos, videos, maps, news program transcripts, and PowerPoint presentations that should be able to capture the interest of students.

Several of their resources are about the family in Tasmania that was forced by an advancing fire into a saltwater bay. A PowerPoint presentation has several photos taken by a man of his grandchildren on a pier and in the water surrounded by smoke. If a teacher decides to cover this in a class, it will not be boring, and might even be scary. But the students will remember it.

New South Wales Operations Center

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,
NSW Operations Centre
NSW Operations Center. Photo: NSW Rural Fire Service

The New South Wales Rural Fire Service has a very impressive Operations Center in Sydney, Australia which they activated on January 7 when the bush fire activity increased. The Center provides support and assistance to local Fire Control Centers and Incident Management Teams across the state.

As you can see, it has a HUGE video wall, which is reported to be the largest in the southern hemisphere. It has 100 individual LCD screens which can display either one large visual, such as a map, or up to 32 different inputs including graphs, statistics, weather predictions, and live feeds from various sites.

Does the dispatch center in your local area look pretty much like this?

NSW video screen

 

Myths about bush fires

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , ,

Our friends in Australia seem to do a better job than we do in the United States of educating the public about being prepared for wildfires, or bush fires as they are known down under.

The Rural Fire Service of New South Wales in Australia has an interesting publication titled Myth Busters, covering some of the common myths about bush fires and bush fire safety. “Not knowing the facts can be life threatening for you and your family”.

Myths about wildfires, NSW RFSThe text on the image is a little hard to read, but here are the myths that are listed:

  • There will always be a fire truck available to fight a bush fire threatening my home.
  • It won’t happen to me.
  • Fire travels slower up hill.
  • I’ll be fine; the bush is a few streets away.
  • Standing on my roof and hosing it down with water will help.
  • Filling the bath tub when a fire is approaching is to sit in.
  • If I know the back streets in my suburb or town really well, it will be okay for me to leave at the very last minute.
  • A house can explode if it catches on fire.

HERE is a link to another publication about bush fire myths, this time from the state of Victoria. And another one from the Christmas Hills Fire Brigade in Victoria.

Astronaut’s photo of fire in Australia

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags
Australian bushfire near Burrinjuck Dam, photo from International Space Station
Australian bushfire near Burrinjuck Dam, photo by Commander Chris Hadfield, International Space Station, January 9, 2013. Click to enlarge.

Commander Chris Hadfield, serving as a flight engineer on the International Space Station, has been taking photos and making them available to the world by using Twitter. His Twitter handle is @Cmdr_Hadfield. You can check out some of his other photos here.

Tasmania cools, but fire threat continues

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,

This video about the fire situation in Australia has some excellent footage of driving at night through an area that is burning. It was uploaded to YouTube on January 9, 2013 by ITN with the description: “Australia’s record-breaking heatwave has sent temperatures soaring, melting road tar and setting off hundreds of wildfires. Report by Lindsay Brown.”

The next video was also uploaded to YouTube on January 9, 2013.