They're doing a hazard reduction burn on 23 Hectares of bush today - which is excellent because that will help prevent a dangerous bushfire later in the summer - but the wind is coming from the WNW, so those of us who are downwind of it are coughing our lungs out.
Can confirm first-hand that it's really big now. I hope they have air assets available this early in the season 😬
Note: It won't get to us because there's are a lot of built-up area in between. The smoke's very bad, but.
Interesting. The smoke from the fire is the only thing showing up on the weather radar.
Fortunately, they appear to have their Hueys available, but they typically send the bigger helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft over to North America to help there while we're in winter, so I don't know if they're back yet 🤞
The fire as seen from Long Reef/Dee Why Beach
Photo credit: Andrew Quilty
This, here, is the thing that worries me about it.
If we want to have green areas in the city, a few houses are gonna be threatened by fires every now and then.
But they've been building a bunch of these retirement villages up that way for a couple of decades now, and this fire is heading in their direction.
They say they have the fire under control today, but it's still really smoky around here, and I can hear the helicopters constantly.
I was struck by this pic in The Guardian taken yesterday from south of Sydney Harbour that shows the scale of the thing:
Credit: Farid Farid/AAP
Yeah, it ain't great. Those places make people sell their houses to pay for living there, and if they burn I don't know what protections they have.
It'll vary, but I know for a fact some of the operators are less than thorough about insurance because they believe they have higher protection 😬
@DyDave "Don't worry about insurance, God will protect you." is a sales pitch that'd have me running away faster than Usain Bolt, and I actually *believe* in him!
Yes. While I'd like to make my living from music, I can't, and therefore make it from doing contract work for financial advisors, so I've looked into these places.
They are actually pretty cool, lifestyle-wise, but the operators - some of whom would shock people - can be terribly unscrupulous and then turn around and rely on 'faith' to both excuse themselves and beg the government from whom they already get tax-free status for help when stuff goes awry 🤷♂️
@DyDave Oof! I hate companies who do this to the elderly. It's just wrong however you look at it.
Me too. The thing is, a surprising number of the companies that do it are actually owned by some otherwise respected entities that most of us happily tolerate.
Some of us might even throw a few coins into their charity can occasionally without realising that some sketchy stuff is going on 🤷♂️
@DyDave It's too bad Halons are so bad for the environment, because I'm pretty sure a water bomber full of Halon would absolutely annihilate fire in a way water can't even come close to...
But alas, with how environmentally destructive Halon is, we'll never see what that would look like in practice - nor should we.
I wonder if anyone will ever develop a green equivalent to Halon, that's equally as effective.
It's also far more practical in the moment to simply hover over a body of water, suck some up, and go deploy it, then repeat without fussing with additives.
@DyDave Depends on the circumstances. Have you ever seen Halon in action? It's like magic... whereas water simply absorbs heat and displaces oxygen, Halon (in addition to those two things) also actively interrupts the chain reaction. It takes very little to kill a surprisingly large fire dead.
Highly recommend looking up some videos, it's amazing.
I dare say it is amazing, but fires rarely happen where a vat of something cool is handy. Rather, they happen where lightning strikes, or an idiot throws a ciggie butt out of a car, or - like this one - when firefighters stuff up. They're also happening on huge fronts, so you need to address a big area.
It'd be nice to have a magic ingredient available, but the ability to quickly and repeatedly fill vehicles with large amounts of water and throw that at the problem is key.
@DyDave True, however if a green alternative to Halon was found, and it was stable, fire trucks and water bombers could be kept loaded with the stuff when on standby... so during the initial response, they'd have better odds of stopping the fire in its tracks.
That could end up being enough to put out a pretty good subset of fires right away - and for those it didn't, subsequent loads could then be in-situ sourced water as per usual.
Good news.
They are typically very good at getting control of these things, especially when the professional firefighters go in to help the volunteer ones.