#victorian bushfires

[theycallmespidersquid]

Today was historic, but in the worst way possible. Today was the first time in recorded history that Victoria, Australia has reached a catastrophic fire. The Grampians are on fire. It is too late for our friends and family to leave areas in the Wimmera such as Belfield and Roses Gap, and we can not go and get them. We have to live with knowing that they are submerged in blazes across Vic.

For those that can leave, there has been little to no time to evacuate, and belongings have been left behind in the rush towards safe areas. The wind, partnered with the lightning storms and the heat has started fires that burn too hot to be stopped. Right now, even though I am on the coast, I can feel the wind shaking the house. It keeps changing direction, too. None of us can tell which way it will settle on, or whether something that has never been able to reach this far south before will be able to this time.

Each year it gets hotter and hotter, and it comes closer and closer.

On the way home from school, there was a giant cloud of dirt previously buried under plants floating across farms. The last time it was dry enough and the wind was strong enough to do so was over five years ago.

I’m afraid that in the coming days, I will wake up, go outside, and see smoke from the worst bushfires predicted since Black Saturday drifting over the horizon towards the Tasman sea. I’m scared that this time the south climate won’t be able to hold it back until autumn and winter.

Today there were four non-building fire incidents in our area. Yesterday there were three. There hasn’t even been one in previous years.

[moog-enthusiast]

basil’s love- my piece for the flower language zine 💚

[stickyfrogs]

Last year many kind people donated in Gumby’s memory to Zoos Victoria’s Amphibian Bushfire Recovery Centre. This week they have a fantastic update to share about one of the frogs that Gumby’s donation has been supporting!

70 Critically Endangered Spotted Tree Frogs have been released into the wild at Mt. Beauty in Victoria! They were bred at Melbourne Zoo's Amphibian Bushfire Recovery Centre and Healesville Sanctuary's Threatened Amphibian Biolab 🐸

[gwydionmisha]

Stay safe, folks.

[melbmemories]

1983 Melbourne dust storm.

The 1983 Melbourne dust storm was a meteorological phenomenon that occurred during the afternoon of 8 February 1983, throughout much of Victoria, Australia and affected the capital, Melbourne. Red soil, dust and sand from Central and Southeastern Australia was swept up in high winds and carried southeast through Victoria. The dust storm was one of the most dramatic consequences of the 1982/83 drought, at the time the worst in Australian history and is, in hindsight, viewed as a precursor to the Ash Wednesday bushfires which were to occur eight days later.

In late 1982 and early 1983, the El Niño weather cycle had brought record drought to almost all of eastern Australia, with Victoria's Mallee and northern Wimmera severely affected.

During the morning of Tuesday 8 February 1983, a strong but dry cold front began to cross Victoria, preceded by hot, gusty northerly winds. The loose topsoil in the Mallee and Wimmera was picked up by the wind and collected into a huge cloud of dust that heralded the cool change.

At Horsham in western Victoria, raised dust was observed by 11:00am. Within an hour, it had obscured the sky.

Fed by the strong northerly, the temperature in Melbourne rose quickly and by 2:35pm it had reached 43.2 °C (109.8 °F), at that time a record February maximum. Around the same time, a dramatic red-brown cloud could be seen approaching the city.

The dust storm hit Melbourne just before 3:00pm, accompanied by a rapid drop in temperature and a fierce wind change that uprooted trees and damaged houses. Within minutes, visibility in the capital had plunged to 100 metres (330 ft). City workers huddled in doorways, covering their mouths from the choking dust, and traffic came to a standstill.

The worst of the storm was over by 4:00pm, when the wind speed dropped. The dust cloud was approximately 320 metres (1,050 ft) high when it struck Melbourne, but in other areas of Victoria it extended thousands of metres into the atmosphere.

It was estimated that about 50,000 tonnes of topsoil were stripped from the Mallee (approximately 1,000 tonnes of it being dumped on the city). The combined effect of drought and dust storm inflicted damage on the land that, according to the then President of the Victorian Farmers and Graziers' Association, would take up to 10 years and tens of millions of dollars to repair.

The exact weather pattern that had caused the dust storm was repeated one week later, when the Ash Wednesday fires caused enormous destruction and loss of life.

source Tony Beyer

[owmyeyeballs]

One of the unexpected despairs of climate change: I now hate beautiful days.

The bushfires and floods are horrific, and will get worse and worse, but at least when they happen, it feels like we look at them together and feel the horror together.

It's Spring, and it's a beautiful day, and it shouldn't be a beautiful day. We should be still shaking off the chill of Winter, and wondering whether we need another layer of clothing just in case, and making plans around the rain.

I should be coddling my tomato seedlings like sickly Victorian children. I could plant them out today.

Everyone is so cheerful, enjoying the warmth and sunshine. Management send out insincere reminders to take a break and enjoy the beautiful sun.

It's beautiful because we're burning. It's too early for beautiful days, and people seem determined not to realise until it's too late.

[reverse-the-jellybaby]

^ yep! Aussie here, I was barely suburbs away from some of the Victorian bushfires in 2019/2020, and I remember I only managed to get respirators right at the tail-end of the bushfire season and promptly said “welp, looks like I won’t be needing these anymore!”

...then the pandemic happened. 

At least if this next summer is going to be a stinker as predicted, I’ll be ready for it.

Climate change is real and happening faster than scientists thought.

[whats-in-a-sentence]

When JC Rogers arrived in Gippsland in 1902, old hands told him of

the open, clean-bottomed, park-like state of the forests . . . it had been the accepted thing to burn the bush, to provide a new growth of shorter sweet feed for the cattle . . . The practice was to burn the country as often as possible, which would be every three or four years according to conditions. One went burning in the hottest and driest weather in January and February, so that the fire would be as fierce as possible, and thus make a clean burn . . . [This] resulted in a great increase of scrub in all timbered areas except the box country. The fires forced the trees and scrub to seed and coppice, and in time an almost impenetrable forest arose.²¹

21. Norman A Wakefield, 'Bushfire Frequency and Vegetational Change in South-Eastern Australian Forests', Victorian Naturalist, 87, 1970, pp. 152-8.

"Country: Future Fire, Future Farming" - Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe

[t-jfh]

Michaela Blyton, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Queensland, and her colleagues are working on ways to help koalas digest food better while on antibiotics.

A veterinary nurse treats an injured rainbow lorikeet at Currumbin Wildlife Hospital.

A veterinary nurse treats a koala infected with chlamydia at the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital in Currumbin, Australia.

Blinky, a patient at Moggill Koala Rehabilitation Center.

A koala being treated at the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital.

Chewing and sleeping at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. Koalas — sedentary and tree-dwelling — are tricky to spot in the wild.

Four Wild Ways to Save the Koala (That Just Might Work)

To protect Australia’s iconic animals, scientists are experimenting with vaccine implants, probiotics, tree-planting drones and solar-powered tracking tags.

By Emily Anthes

Photographs and Video by Chang W. Lee

This story is part of a series on wildlife conservation in Australia, which Emily Anthes reported from Australia and New York.

The New York Times - April 16, 2024

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Koala pelts from Queensland used to be sold on the international market.

(Photo: Unsplash / Photoholgic)

This truckload of koala pelts was taken during the 1927 open season in Queensland.

(Photo supplied: State Library of Queensland)

Victorian trapper Cyril Grant Lane hunted koalas for many years.

(Photo supplied: State Library of Victoria)

The backlash against the koala cull was fast – and intense, as seen in The Queenslander in September 1927.

(Photo supplied: State Library of Queensland)

We once killed 600,000 koalas in a year. Now they're Australia's 'teddy bears'. What changed?

Koalas are one of the world's most beloved animal species. They serve as symbols for everything from bushfire destruction to Australian tourism to caramel chocolate bars. These tree-dwelling marsupials get far more attention than many other endangered native species.

But Australians haven't always felt this way about our seemingly cuddly teddy-bear lookalikes. Far from it.

Almost a century ago, Queensland announced open season on koalas. Over the next month, well over 600,000 koalas were shot, trapped or poisoned in what has been dubbed "Black August".

By Ruby Ekkel

The Conversation & ABC News - 31 January 2024

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[0venatrix]

More than 15,000 hectares have burned. Fire trucks where heading out from my area, I’m about 200k away.

[stickyfrogs]

Today we are excited to announce that thanks to the kindness of so many people, a total of $6067 has been donated to the Amphibian Bushfire Recovery Centre at ZoosVictoria in Memory of Gumby!

Our donation will support the specialist keepers and three endangered Victorian frog species:

Spotted Tree Frog (Litoria spenceri)

Watson’s Tree Frog (Litoria watsoni) and

Giant Burrowing Frog (Heleioporus australiacus)

Here is leading amphibian specialist Damian Goodall working at the Recovery Centre and the 3 special frogs! Stay tuned for more! 🐸🐸🐸

[mapleschmaple]

A search of key words further proves this wrong, many news articles debunking myths and explaining cause for fires:

This article goes and debunks the idea of how prevent arson was in the 2019/2020 fires

This link further expands on that, citing the cause of fires in one state was predominantly lightning strikes

And this article here directly states the misinformation around ecoterrorism is being spread, and that it's false and incorrect

This link further debunks myths and lie about the fires, such as the fires were lit to remove bushland for a rail line

This article dies a further deep dive on the arson theory that Twitter constructed, further debunking the ecoterrorism myth

The only thing about a senator is about a random liberal (the right wing party) who is called echoing a conspiracy

This article goes more in depth, mentioning that the party leader and Prime Minister will likely distance himself from these claims

This article also mentions other senators have made claims similar to this, however from my quick search I found nothing. This was the only senator claiming this, she is no longer in office.

TLDR; No factual and accurate source ever claims that ecoterrorism was the cause of the 2019/2020 fires, the sources further expanding that arson itself caused very little of the fires, lightning strikes being the majority cause

[kesarijournal]

The Australian Seasonal Bushfire Outlook: A Warmer and Drier Spring Ahead

The Australian Seasonal Bushfire Outlook for Spring 2023 has been released, and the forecast is alarming. Victorians can expect a drier and warmer spring, with an early start to the fire season in the central, western, and northern parts of the state (Emergency Management Victoria, 2023). This outlook is a clear call to action for all residents to be prepared and vigilant.A Closer Look at the…

[unhingednovelist]

decay & desolation: a new concept

Between the empty train platforms of Flagstaff Station and the uncomfortably familiar halls of Melbourne Central Station - a two minute journey - an entire train carriage of passengers disappears. The rest of the train’s passengers, seemingly left unharmed, emerge on the other side completely unaware of what has gone so disastrously wrong.

Set in a dark, desolate future Melbourne, where the ash of the everlasting Victorian bushfires presses ever closer, the inexplicable disappearances of the 24 people inside of Carriage 3 pushes the city over the edge.

June, Mikhail, and Ariela find themselves on the other side of the platform, with their companions gone to the void. And now, there's a darker, more brutal shade of the government with their sights on the three survivors, desperate for answers.

And they'll do anything for those answers, no matter the cost.

-

hello besties. new concept i've got my eyes on. already in love with the vibes and characters i've got so far, but it'll take time... i hope you enjoy this little teaser of what i might end up working on after TAOB is published!!!