Posted on 12/30/2019 10:38:07 PM PST by Berlin_Freeper
THOUSANDS of people who were warned to flee an Aussie town are trapped on the beach ready to jump into the sea to escape the deadly bushfires.
Around 4,000 people are still in Mallacoota, in Victoria in the south east of the country which is battling terrifying infernos sparked by a record-breaking 40C heatwave, authorities said.
(Excerpt) Read more at thesun.co.uk ...
Was it still normal temperatures in Moscow? They could have just been having a drought.
It’s Dunkirk all over again.
Don’t they have any Boats in Australia?
Pictures or it never......never mind.
so, they had 4,000 life-jackets laying around just in case the entire population needed to jump in the sea?
Your kidding right? Even the north midwest hits 104. Big deal.
Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books.
residents were driven to the beach, not their homes
Yeah, you do not want a recreation today.
FORGOT the /s.
There is additionally Project Gutenberg Australia. They have some texts not available in the US. http://gutenberg.net.au/greatest-books-a.html
Greta will be quite pleased with him.
In that kind of heat, it’s all about finding shade (when outside) I lived in Corpus for a while. It was always pretty windy. Once you go inland a bit, my God!
I want to address this 40C/104F thing because people are missing the point.
It’s true that 40C/104F is not really all that hot. People in most of Australia are used to dealing with that temperature every summer.
But what happened in the last couple of day is very unusual - it’s not unprecedented, but it is very unusual.
And that it was at least 40C/104F in every single Australian capital city - even the one (Hobart) where that temperature is extremely rare.
Basically the entire continent was extremely hot over the last couple of days.
Normally cool places were 40C/104F.
The hot places were much hotter.
As I say, this has happened before - it’s rare but it does happen, so people trying to link it to climate change are drawing a long bow.
But when Australians complain about it being unusually hot, it does mean something.
Thanks !
Now to address the question of why these people were not evacuated by boat/ship/the Navy/Coast Guard.
Speaking as a retired officer of the Royal Australian Navy.
There’s a few issues there.
One - bear in mind Australia is a continent - the smallest continent, but a continent nonetheless. We’re talking about a huge amount of land - close to the same size as the contiguous 48 US states. And we only 25 million people in that space, most of whom are clustered around six major cities. There are a lot of isolated places a long way from nowhere.
And one of those places is where these people were stuck on the beach. Mallacoota is (by sea) roughly halfway between Melbourne and Sydney - over 300 miles from Melbourne, about 270 mile from Sydney. The Navy’s nearest base with ships is Sydney, but that’s still quite a long way off.
And at this time of year, a lot of the Navy is on leave. Of course, they can be recalled and quite quickly and if significant number of lives were in danger on those beaches, a recall would be issued and the Navy would surge everything it could as fast as possible - but that’s the other point.
These people on the beach were not actually in all that serious danger. Once they reached the beach, they were actually pretty safe. I’m sure they were terrified, but the break of the beach, and the fact that they did have the water to retreat into - and we’re talking about going a few yards offshore with the water up to your waist or so - means the danger level was really quite low.
Australia doesn’t have a standalone full time Coast Guard - that job is undertaken by part of the Navy operating Patrol Boats, and to some extent by Customs as well, but they patrol the north of Australia - the opposite side of the country from where this fire is. There’s no real need for a coast guard style patrol along the south side of the continent - we’re not worried about being overrun by penguins. We do have a volunteer coast guard who will turn out to rescue people at sea, but they are not equipped for evacuating large numbers of people - they can deal with fishing trawlers, and other small craft in distress - but they’re not set up for a big rescue operation.
But again, if these people were in genuine danger, they would turn out.
So would every single commercial fishing fleet on the south east coast. So would a huge number of people with personal craft that can handle open seas.
If the people were actually in serious danger.
But they weren’t. Once they reached the beach, although their situation was terrifying and uncomfortable, it wasn’t actually that dangerous.
By the way, I also see people mentioning sharks, stingers etc - yes, there’s some risk of that if you go into the sea, but it’s actually quite low in that part of the country. People do occasionally get taken by sharks and it’s a big story when it happens, but odds are these 4000 people would have gone into the sea, and there would have been no issues with sharks or anything.
I spent Sunday and Monday at the fires - I’m a volunteer firefighter and because I’m a schoolteacher and it’s school holidays, I’m easily free to be deployed. I got yesterday off but it looks like I’m going to be going back on duty this afternoon (it’s nearly noon here now) although it’s not clear if we’re being sent out again, or being held in reserve.
These fires are bad. But they’re not as bad as 2009 and hopefully won’t get that bad. This type of thing is a fact of life for Australia. It’s not new. Every few years, we get a bad season - this is one of them.
Prayers are appreciated, and we’ve asked for practical help and we’ve got it from the US, Canada, and New Zealand, so far. It’s appreciated.
But we’re going to get through this. Some lives have been lost. Some more will be in all probability. That’s not good, but everywhere in the world has its share of natural disasters. We don’t have to worry too much about earthquakes or tornadoes here...
Bushfire is our curse.
At least you can fight a bushfire.
My son was on tower/guard duty in Iraq where temperatures hit over 137F. Try that in heavy body armor and carrying a fully loaded M249.
59. Carefully and in asbestos underwear.
.... This great fire happened sometime between 1822 and 1824, so not caused by man-made “global warming” ....
That’s because, back then, there was no Mann-madeGW Industrial Complex-caused, “global warming.”
Just like now.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/142036584/15929232
Western Herald, 1935:
“The highest accepted shade temperature recorded in Australia is 127 degrees at Bourke New South Wales on January 16 1877. Since the installation of the Stevenson Screen which is the universally accepted cover for recording shade temperature, the highest reading is 125 degrees, also at Bourke, recorded on January 3 1909.”
The World’s Worst-ever heat-wave was recorded at Marble Bar, Western Australia between October 1923 and April 1924: More than 160 days over 100 Degrees. At its peak the hot spell saw many days of temperatures over 45C - 113F.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/21/worlds-worst-heatwave-the-marble-bar-heatwave-1923-24
So much for Goebbels Warmmongering.
My son was in the sandbox for
two tours, carrying a M249.
Thank you to your son for
his service.
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