Bushfires 2019/2020!

[Tropic]

My tenants in CBR tell me the ACs are now playing up due to smoke and the drapes and carpet smell and will need cleaning. Looking at flights but might wait a while longer

 

[get me outta here]

If they have aircon why is the smoke allowed to get in? Do the filters require cleaning,? I have been keeping the house closed to the poisonous outside air and there's no appreciable problem. There has been dust as well as smoke though. Is it reverse cycle, or evaporative cooling which needs to draw in air from outside?

My tenants in CBR tell me the ACs are now playing up due to smoke and the drapes and carpet smell and will need cleaning. Looking at flights but might wait a while longer

 

[Cossie]

DrRon, I certainly agree with you on biofuels and wind turbines, I won't buy E10 unless there is no other choice.
I'm not sure of the process, but I'm thinking that laws insisting on mandatory biofuel production were not thought through properly and no one envisaged wholesale destruction of rain forests and massive areas being given over to canola and soyabeans as has occurred. Do I make sense? Think cane toads and prickly pears.

Palm oil plantations are a curse, it doesn't help when companies like nutella continue to use large quanities of it, whatever their spin doctors say about it being eco friendly. We do try hard to buy products that are palm oil free.

A major problem for me and one that appears on this forum quite a lot is the "you are with us, or you are against us", "my country right or wrong" mentality, no middle ground, everything is black and white, when in reality this is so far from the truth.

I certainly don't think of myself as a greenie nor a lefty, I try to look at things from all angles and will admit to have voted conservative on occasions. I'm not some commie sympathiser that wants to kill the economy, just look at some of my posts regarding the largest communist country in the world.
If it wasn't funny, I would be amused by all the capitalists in this country selling their souls to the PRC even though they love free enterprise and hate communists.

For heavens sake there has to be some common sense about how we are destroying our planet.

 

[JessicaTam]

If they have aircon why is the smoke allowed to get in? Do the filters require cleaning,? I have been keeping the house closed to the poisonous outside air and there's no appreciable problem. There has been dust as well as smoke though. Is it reverse cycle or evaporative cooling which needs to draw in air from outside?

Evaporative is outside air, and reverse cycle uses the inside air.

 

[Hvr]

My tenants in CBR tell me the ACs are now playing up due to smoke and the drapes and carpet smell and will need cleaning. Looking at flights but might wait a while longer

So get them to clean the filter(s). It's a consumable so I reckon the tenant is responsible. Same as for cleaning.
Let the REA know so they can do an inspection and check it's all being done.

 

[Tropic]

Neighbour advises the tenants have been leaving patio doors open upstairs .. and running ACs ...

 

[Flying mermaid]

My tenants in CBR tell me the ACs are now playing up due to smoke and the drapes and carpet smell and will need cleaning. Looking at flights but might wait a while longer

I would wait at least until after the weekend - it’s supposed to be bad.

do you have evaporative? Most of my friends with evaporative are not using them as it brings too much smoke in.

 

[Flying mermaid]

Neighbour advises the tenants have been leaving patio doors open upstairs .. and running ACs ...

That’s crazy - I have hardly opened a door or window all month. You have to do that with evaporative but otherwise it’s a pointless exercise and especially stupid with smoke around!

 

[Tropic]

The joys of being landlord in the ACT. And the ACT "government" just changed the law to provide tenants further rights... AC are RC so filter clean should fix. More worried about smoke damage to furnishings... oh well there's a bond in place. See what weekend holds. Apparently they told neighbour before he went down the coast they thought leaving patio doors open upstairs would "let the smoke out...."

 

[get me outta here]

That’s what I thought I had said but perhaps I missed a vital comma that made it clearer. . Edit : Necessary comma now inserted.

Evaporative is outside air, and reverse cycle uses the inside air.

 

[get me outta here]

Some soft furnishings and curtains may well be fine once the place can get a good airing assuming that at some point the air clears. Who knows when that will be let’s hope we don’t have to wait until autumn and the bushfires are finished.

The joys of being landlord in the ACT. And the ACT "government" just changed the law to provide tenants further rights... AC are RC so filter clean should fix. More worried about smoke damage to furnishings... oh well there's a bond in place. See what weekend holds. Apparently they told neighbour before he went down the coast they thought leaving patio doors open upstairs would "let the smoke out...."

 

[drron]

Have been looking for this graph.
.

In 1961 WA had serious fatal fires in the South west.The Royal commission recommended a big increase in Hazard Reduction burns and to theit credit this was done-the Green line on the graph.
The area burnt by bushfires dropped.but as the HRBs reduced bushfires returned until again in 2018 the South west burnt again.

Prescribed burns fall but fires soar across SW

The amount of land across the South West destroyed by bushfires has soared this decade after years of faltering efforts to keep the threat of uncontrolled blazes under wraps.

thewest.com.au

 

[Flying mermaid]

Have been looking for this graph.
View attachment 202036.

In 1961 WA had serious fatal fires in the South west.The Royal commission recommended a big increase in Hazard Reduction burns and to theit credit this was done-the Green line on the graph.
The area burnt by bushfires dropped.but as the HRBs reduced bushfires returned until again in 2018 the South west burnt again.

Prescribed burns fall but fires soar across SW

The amount of land across the South West destroyed by bushfires has soared this decade after years of faltering efforts to keep the threat of uncontrolled blazes under wraps.

thewest.com.au

I thought one of the problems they were having with prescribed burns was that the window where they could safely do it was getting shorter because of longer summers/hotter springs. I read something from one of the National Park managers last year but can’t find it at the moment. The shorter window limited the amount of burning they could do rather than a deliberate decision not to do it?

 

[drron]

Not so.Look at the graph the fall off was from 1980 in HRBs.
In NSW the target of HZBs is ridiculously low-less than 2% of National Parks area.So 50 years of fuel build up.
And real; life in East Gippsland in 2018-
.

That used to be up on the ABC website until a week or so ago.And these are the people who should have a long look at themselves.
.

.

.

 

[Flying mermaid]

Not so.Look at the graph the fall off was from 1980 in HRBs.
In NSW the target of HZBs is ridiculously low-less than 2% of National Parks area.So 50 years of fuel build up.
And real; life in East Gippsland in 2018-
View attachment 202042.

That used to be up on the ABC website until a week or so ago.And these are the people who should have a long look at themselves.
View attachment 202043.

View attachment 202044.

View attachment 202045.

Yes about 2% n NSW - I just found this page. Presumably in order to do more they would need a lot more resources given to them, given the narrow window that they mention.

Conservation: Hazard reduction | NSW National Parks

To protect lives, properties and NSW national parks, NPWS conducts planned hazard reduction activities like controlled burning and mowing to minimise the threat of bushfires.

www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au

ACT does a lot of hazard reduction - they burn a section of our reserve every two years and go round all the other reserves as well. I know some of our neighbours get cranky about it, but no protesting just a bit of huffing and puffing on the neighbourhood email.

 

[JohnM]

Have been looking for this graph.
View attachment 202036.

In 1961 WA had serious fatal fires in the South west.The Royal commission recommended a big increase in Hazard Reduction burns and to theit credit this was done-the Green line on the graph.
The area burnt by bushfires dropped.but as the HRBs reduced bushfires returned until again in 2018 the South west burnt again.

Prescribed burns fall but fires soar across SW

The amount of land across the South West destroyed by bushfires has soared this decade after years of faltering efforts to keep the threat of uncontrolled blazes under wraps.

thewest.com.au

@drron, it looks like you may have obtained that graph from a secondary source. Here's the site you may have been looking for: Bushfire Front – Bushfire management in Western Australia. Roger Underwood has been pushing excrement uphill for years.

I was a tacker when Dwellingup burned in January 1961 and staying with my grannie in Norseman, in the WA goldfields (1961 Western Australian bushfires - Wikipedia). It was about 500 km due E of Dwellingup and we were showered in ash and I think we could see the red glow in the sky even from that distance.

This whole sorry issue is fundamentally about quantity of fuel - aggravated by increased population density and people building in or close to dense forest and, in SE Australia, allied to the unique fire ecology of mountain ash We have still not lived long enough | Tom Griffiths (WA karri is similar, whereas the likes of jarrah and marri have epicormic regrowth and mallee eucalypts coppice from lignotubers, so do not need ash-beds to regenerate from seed).

I vividly recall, a few years back driving with a friend down from Canberra along the S coast of NSW (Bateman's Bay-Moruya sort of area) and just being horrified at the houses built among the forest, and saying "This is a f* disaster waiting to happen." My friend is a builder and was equally horrified. How insurance companies even insured people there for fire surprises me.

Don't take me wrong, peeps, I feel incredibly sorry for the folks there, but there is no way of stopping those fires once they get going in raging weather conditions. People who call for bigger water bombers, for example, just have no * idea.

This will happen again in another 20 or so years and the same old hand-wringing will go on again...

 

[JohnM]

As a supplement, I'll draw particular attention to this recent article by Roger Underwood: The Eastern States Bushfires 2019 – Bushfire Front

Says it all, in my view...

 

[Flying mermaid]

As a supplement, I'll draw particular attention to this recent article by Roger Underwood: The Eastern States Bushfires 2019 – Bushfire Front

Says it all, in my view...

just been reading that - it seems fairly pragmatic - rather than get into a fight to the death about climate change it looks at prescribed burns as a way of reducing fires whatever the other factors are. Hopefully after this disastrous summer more resources will be put into enabling that.

 

[JohnM]

It seems a

just been reading that - it seems fairly pragmatic - rather than get into a fight to the death about climate change it looks at prescribed burns as a way of reducing fires whatever the other factors are. Hopefully after this disastrous summer more resources will be put into enabling that.

It's completely pragmatic. Roger and his group are all extremely experienced and rational people. And we've lived with aerial prescribed burning in WA since before the naysayers got activated. It's a part of life here.

Nothing is ecologically perfect, but cool burns that reduce the fuel load are arguably a better option than the sorts of conflagrations we're currently seeing with the associated deaths and immense property destruction.

But I think your hope is futile. The horse has long bolted on rational responses in the east.

 

[Denali]

Lots of clips emerging of Scomo approaching people and they're refusing to shake his hand. One Firey refused, stood up and walked away.