More than 30 homes are feared destroyed in South Australia as crews continue to battle out-of-control bushfires. More than 800 firefighters are tackling the blazes, which have been burning for several days in the hills around the city of Adelaide. Officials say the fires are the worst in the area since the Ash Wednesday bushfires in 1983, which left 75 dead.
Cooler weather may help firefighters tame the flames, which have been fanned by high winds and temperatures.
But South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill said the situation remained critical.
“We’re by no means through this particular emergency,” he said.
The two large air tankers under contract in Australia were recently relocated from Avalon to Edinburgh, presumably to be closer to the fires near Adelaide.
New South Wales firefighters en route to assist in South Australia.
Thousands of Australians fled their homes Saturday as strong winds pushed bushfires across vast stretches of South Australia and Victoria.
From the BBC:
Firefighters are battling out-of-control bushfires threatening homes in South Australia and Victoria.
Police have declared a major emergency and told residents that their lives are at risk.
South Australia’s fire chief said the blazes in the Adelaide Hills, northeast of Adelaide city, were the worst since the Ash Wednesday bushfires in 1983.
Those fires left 75 people dead and caused devastation across parts of Victoria and South Australia.
“At the moment, we have a fire which is extremely dangerous and it is burning under extremely adverse conditions,” South Australia fire chief Greg Nettleton was quoted as saying.
“Right at this moment, residents in the Adelaide Hills are being confronted by a fire which hasn’t been seen in the hills since the 1983 bushfires of Ash Wednesday,” Nettleton said.
Crews have also been fighting bushfires in Victoria but all warnings have now been downgraded as a cold front moves into the area.
“Hopefully tomorrow and the next few days the fire danger will ease as this cold front passes through Victoria,” a spokesman from the area’s fire authority told ABC news.
So far about five homes have been confirmed destroyed but authorities said that dozens more were feared lost.
A firefighter was killed December 9 in South Australia. Below is an excerpt from an article at news.com.au:
Country Fire Service volunteer Brian Johnston would have marked 50 years of fighting fires in 2015 — a heroic milestone cut short by a tragic accident Tuesday afternoon.
The 65-year-old, who was a member of the Millicent Brigade and Deputy Group Officer of Wattle Range, was killed when he was hit by a truck while preparing to fight a grass fire at Rendelsham in the state’s Southeast late yesterday afternoon.
Mr Johnston was standing behind the CFS utility he had been driving on the Southern Ports Highway, about 12km northwest of Millicent, and preparing to fight a fire when another truck attending the blaze crashed into him.
Shortly before the crash, at about 4.30pm on Tuesday, CFS fire trucks had been called to a grass fire in the area.
Mr Johnston, who had retired just 12 months ago from an extensive career at the Kimberley Clark mill in Millicent was the second CFS volunteer to be killed this year, after father-of-two Andrew Harrison was killed while fighting a fire at Nantawarra in October.
CFS chief officer Greg Nettleton said the tragedy had happened in low visibility, due to smoke from a the nearby fire Mr Johnston was fighting.
Our sincere condolences go out to Mr. Johnston’s family and co-workers.
An out of control bushfire on South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula is believed to have been started by an angle grinder.
The Country Fire Service on Monday made 71 aerial water drops on the 280-hectare fire near Mt Terrible Road and Louds Hill Road which was travelling in a westerly direction towards Sellicks Hill. By Monday evening the fire had shifted northwest towards Plains Road, Chaff Mill Road, Culley Road and Rogers Road.
Outlook for Victoria bushfire season upgraded
From the AAP:
Victoria’s bushfire season has been upgraded from above normal to major for 2014-15 following record warm October weather. Record-breaking heat and an ongoing warming trend in southern Australia have worsened the state’s fire warning, a new Climate Council report released on Tuesday said.
“These types of conditions drive up the likelihood of very high fire danger weather in Victoria this season,” report author Lesley Hughes said.
Residents of Victoria: “leave and live”
From ABC:
A new safety campaign has been launched for this year’s Victorian bushfire season. The campaign, titled ‘Leave and Live’, encourages Victorians to leave their homes early instead of taking a wait-and-see approach. Premier Daniel Andrews said the expert advice was it would be a long, hot, dry and dangerous summer.
He said nobody could expect Country Fire Authority crews to be door knocking homes when they were trying to fight fires.
“This campaign we’re about to launch is an attempt, and I think it will be successful, in driving home the message that the Government and its agencies have a job to do and will get on and do that but the community has a responsibility as well,” he said.
He said lives were lost by those who left too late.
The City of Bunbury has changed its bushfire message to warn all residents they are at risk of an ember attack.
[…]
City’s spokesman Chris Widmer said Bunbury was not immune from the threat of fires.
“I guess the critical change to the message we have this year is that everyone is at risk from ember attack but if you are within 100 metres of any bushland, then you need to be concerned about the addition to radiated and convected heat from bushfires nearby,” he said.
“We’ve now done some assessments on bushfires risk using Australian standards and we can tell everyone in the City of Bunbury they are at risk from ember attack, which means they could lose their homes through embers from a nearby fire.
FDNY Incident Management Team deploys to Buffalo, NY
The New York City Fire Department’s Incident Management Team has deployed to Buffalo, New York to assist in the organization and management of snow removal efforts following this week’s record snowfall. Friday morning at 5:45 the team departed from the Randalls Island Fire Academy after being requested by the New York State Division of Homeland Security and in coordination with the New York City Office of Emergency Management.
The FDNY saw the benefits of an IMT when they received help from Type 1 interagency IMTs after the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Soon thereafter they began training personnel to fill the positions for a team. Since then, the FDNY IMT has responded to multiple national emergencies including forest fires; to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina; in Broome County, NY following Hurricane Irene and in New York after Hurricane Sandy.
Leaf burning leads to felony charge
A 74-year old man was charged with a felony after his leaf burning caused a wildfire north of Allentown, Pennsylvania on November 4. A police officer used a fire extinguisher to keep the fire, which had spread to within eight feet of a neighbor’s garage, from burning the structure.
“[Dale] Schaeffer failed to call the police or fire department, and continued to let the fire burn out of control in a reckless and dangerous manner,” the officer wrote in his affidavit of probable cause.
Mr. Schaeffer was arraigned Thursday before District Judge Robert Hawke on a felony charge of reckless burning and summary dangerous burning.
Firefighters suppressed a wildfire at the Sunny Rest Lodge on Thursday, in Carbon County, Pennsylvania.
Country Fire Service to cease aerial firefighting if a drone is spotted
State aviation operations manager David Pearce said South Australia’s Country Fire Service will cease all aerial operations at bushfires if an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is spotted in the area.
“Helicopters are particularly susceptible,” Mr Pearce said.
“If the drone is sucked into the intake of the jet engines, or goes into the tail rotor, then it’s probably curtains for the helicopter.”
Gyrocopter crash kills pilot, starts fire
The crash of a gyrocopter near Gatton in Queensland, Australia killed the pilot and started a bushfire on Friday.
Queensland helicopters to go high tech
QGAir Rescue. Photo: Queensland Fire and Emergency Services.
The Queensland (Australia) Government has invested $1 million to install screen sharing technology in its Kedron emergency services hub as well as five helicopter bases across the state.
The new kit – based on Cruiser Interactive technology – will allow Queensland Government Air (QGAir) teams across the six sites to share the same view of incoming data and emergency monitoring, and to switch between different screen views with a flick of the wrist.
Interactive screens have been set up in the co-ordination sites, onto which information from phones, tablets and PCs can be displayed.
Aero-Flite moving to Spokane
The company that operates Avro RJ-85 air tankers is moving from Kingman, Arizona to the airport at Spokane, Washington. Aero-Flite announced Thursday that it is moving its corporate headquarters and air tanker fleet to Spokane International Airport.
More information about Aero-Flite’s move is at Fire Aviation.
A woman in South Australia who dealt with soiled toilet paper by burning it, was given a two-month suspended sentence for the one-acre bushfire she started near Murphy’s Haystacks last December.
…[Melissa Jane] Carmody was camping for several days near Murphy’s Haystacks, which resulted in a pile of debris forming, which a member of the public became concerned about.
This alerted Ms Carmody to set fire to the pile of toilet paper she had accumulated from not having a bathroom.
“You burnt soiled toilet paper in a situation where you thought that that was something that you ought to do,” Judge [Simon] Stretton said.
“What you should of realised is on that December 2, 2013 you were right in the middle of bushfire season and there is an obvious risk that burning paper outdoors is going to cause a grass fire,” he said.
We are aware of at least four other fires started by the same behavior, and documented three of them here. A fourth was in the 1980s in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in southern California during the annual big horn sheep count. There are other reports of fires with the same cause in George Creek Canyon on the Inyo National Forest in 1979, and the Narrows Fire on the Angeles NF in 1997. (Check out the comments below this article at Wildfire Today.)
