The hills are on fire

[G'day Mate]

The current big news here in Australia is that there's a pretty large bushfire that's been burning out of control (although I think it's mostly contained now) for a few days in the Adelaide hills (including areas I often go riding). The perimeter is about 240km (150mi) and it's been burning in all directions. My sister and her husband are both volunteer firefighters and have been doing this sort of stuff since Saturday:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALPStjWN9TY

[Rikadyn]

the hills are on fire is the name of my speed metal band that only covers sound of music songs

[Rare White Ape]

Can you tell them they missed a spot?

[G'day Mate]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/v/t1.0-9/10933737_10155197281850160_3166236311614245462_n.j pg?oh=e27a3185bd00e1b6056448253077302d&oe=556A0DAF&__gda__=1433033722_7a2867384325770f21c6cb5fa1e48ab 4

[LHutton]

Are burnt trees completely dead, or can they grow leaves again after a while?

[G'day Mate]

Hmmm, I've seen bush fire trees with green sprouts once before, but I don't really know.

[KillerB]

I know a place where the hills are literally on fire...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

[thesameguy]

Me too.

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0jfg6K5wk1qb16wz.jpg

[speedpimp]

The hills are on fire...with the sound of music!!!

[Random]

Are burnt trees completely dead, or can they grow leaves again after a while?


Hmmm, I've seen bush fire trees with green sprouts once before, but I don't really know.

Depends on the tree variety and how hot the fire was.

[Rare White Ape]

It takes a while to burn a trunk of a tree right through, particularly the hard dense wood of a gum. It'll still be good only an inch under the burnt outer layer, and they can usually sprout from there.

A lot of Australian species have evolved to handle fire, and some ecosystems require it for survival. There are even areas on the Whitsunday islands (Great Barrier Reef) that evolved to adjust to fire that was introduced by aboriginals over 60,000 years ago, but since the time of European settlement those tribes aren't around to keep up their burning, so the parks and wildlife service have to conduct prescribed burns just to keep those areas alive.

It's common for big (2ft+) stumps to smoulder away for weeks after a big fire and cause reignition and another fire later on. And tree roots can pose a problem, they'll burn underground and start a fire on the other side of a fire break, such as a road or a waterway.

Those things are impossible to prevent, it just requires monitoring in the days and weeks after a fire. Mt Kosciusko had a fire a while ago and teams were going out for a month to keep blacking out the burned areas. They're all volunteers as well. That's a big effort.

[Rikadyn]

The hills are on fire...with the sound of music!!!

ahem


the hills are on fire is the name of my speed metal band that only covers sound of music songs

[George]

http://img.pandawhale.com/post-39889-sound-of-music-uzi-machine-gun-65P0.gif

[LHutton]

It takes a while to burn a trunk of a tree right through, particularly the hard dense wood of a gum. It'll still be good only an inch under the burnt outer layer, and they can usually sprout from there.

A lot of Australian species have evolved to handle fire, and some ecosystems require it for survival. There are even areas on the Whitsunday islands (Great Barrier Reef) that evolved to adjust to fire that was introduced by aboriginals over 60,000 years ago, but since the time of European settlement those tribes aren't around to keep up their burning, so the parks and wildlife service have to conduct prescribed burns just to keep those areas alive.

It's common for big (2ft+) stumps to smoulder away for weeks after a big fire and cause reignition and another fire later on. And tree roots can pose a problem, they'll burn underground and start a fire on the other side of a fire break, such as a road or a waterway.

Those things are impossible to prevent, it just requires monitoring in the days and weeks after a fire. Mt Kosciusko had a fire a while ago and teams were going out for a month to keep blacking out the burned areas. They're all volunteers as well. That's a big effort.
:up:

[G'day Mate]

Looks like I've started a few threads on bushfires since moving to the hills. We had to abandon ship again last night thanks to some fuckhead starting fires about 20kms from us. We're all good now but it's still pretty serious elsewhere. Rain coming this afternoon thankfully.

[Crazed_Insanity]

SoCal got burned recently too due to dry and windy conditions, but also luckily we later on have rain too.

It’s happening so frequently now at least I’m feel kinda numbed about these fires now...

[Dicknose]

Nothing on last year - but we had a fire about 15km from us yesterday. Could see the helicopters doing water bombing runs from the dam.
Lots of long dry grass after a very wet spring. Now summer has finally hit. About a week ago it was 4C in the morning, now we are hitting 30+C

and good luck in SA!

[G'day Mate]

Yeah, nothing compared to last year.

[Phil_SS]

When I saw the title of this thread, all I could think of was this.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OBs6S1lW_Q