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How are you guys holding up?

Hope you guys are safe and sound! I heard a "Megafire" broke out today. I wasn't sure how they would even gauge the fires at this point. Just horrifying to think of so much death and destruction. Hope there is some relief soon.

Our company established a matching funds donation effort to benefit the Australian Red Cross. The goal was $15,000 AUD and we exceeded that goal in less than 4 hours. We have roughly 2000 employees worldwide.
You are definitely in our thoughts and prayers.

scr8p wrote: ↑Fri Jan 10, 2020 7:15 pm How are you guys holding up?

We are safe, in outer suburban Melbourne, but there are still plenty of fires out there. We've been lucky, in that the only way we've been directly impacted is by awful air quality.

Most of the fires are burning in remote bushland areas, which are very difficult to get into. They're now saying that a lot of the fires in the north-east of Victoria will be burning for a number of weeks to come, with fire services focusing on control and impact minimisation.... not over yet, by a long way.

They're saying the fires have now killed more than one billion animals.....

Alex

In South Australia, we had a devastating fire in the Adelaide Hills that destroyed a number of homes and claimed a couple lives, but our biggest issue has definitely been on Kangaroo Island, where the healthiest population of Koalas has apparently been lost by more than half. And more than half of the islands land area has been affected by fire.

Our volunteer fire fighters do an amazing job with the limited ability they actually have to really make an impact on some of these fires as as Alex says, it’s impossible to actually fight most of these fire fronts, and trying to contain the fires is the only option.

We appreciate your thoughts people, cheers

Ugh. Keep safe all. I know the devastation is really bad but that's one tough place. I have hope all that wildlife will bounce back.

jwscab wrote: ↑Sat Jan 11, 2020 6:01 pm I have hope all that wildlife will bounce back.

That depends on how far you want to go with your conspiracy theories......

All safe here for the moment, but things can change in an instant.

Australia is far from over with the "peak" of the fire season still ahead of us. Another firefighter was killed just yesterday fingers crossed they get on top of the fires in these milder conditions before it heats up again.

Like Kym said, many of these fires are too big to fight, so it's about trying to manage them and protect life and property.

In my 12 seasons in wildland fire suppression, even when conditions were ripe for extreme fire behavior and rapid fire growth, there still needed to be an ignition source.

Something I haven't been able to find any information on is the ignition source(s) of these fires. Is it lightning, human, combination of both?

I am not familiar with the predominant weather patterns down there except that it's the "opposite" of up here.

Truly a disaster regardless of cause. Stay safe.

it's pretty crazy. im down in melbourne is its blanketed in smoke from the fires up north....cant imagine what its like closer to the fires.

A couple of factors came into play that caused the fires to become so deadly.

A dry lightning storm came through and lit nearly 1/4 of the state on fire. Couple that with the current drought, hot dry winds from the center of the country and poof. It was the lowest monthly rainfall on record, hottest day recorded record broken twice in one week.

Arson does play a role but they don't think that it was a factor this time.

We're due to get rain and thunderstorms tomorrow night, we'll see what happens. Just about every time a cool change comes through there is a risk of dry lightning.

After the fires there comes a new threat......

Monkeys need no toilet paper.

People in that pic never experienced not having any toilet paper when you need it the most... haha