Black Saturday

In yesterday's blog I mentioned Mountain ash (E. regnans), the tallest tree ever grown, and how the Back Friday 1939 trees were already pushing 80 metres. The above, from where it came I have no recollection now but I think it was from our morning daily paper The Age, is a man blacking out at the base of tree after the great bushfires passed through that country during the weeks after the 7th February 2009 fires-now known as Black Saturday in keeping with a very long tradition that goes back to 1851 when Black Thursday -February 6th-when a bush fire burnt an estimated 5 million hectares, 12 million acres or about 19000 sq. miles.

Wikipedia says of that day: "The year preceeding the fires was exceptionally hot and dry and this trend continued into the summer of 1851. On Black Thursday, a northerly wind set in early and the temperature in Melbourne was reported to have peaked at 47.2 degrees C (117 degrees F) at 11:00am. This is the hottest temperature ever recorded in the city—although it has never been an official record, as the Bureau of Meteorology had not been established at the time.^[2] The north wind was so strong that thick black smoke reached northern Tasmania, creating a murky mist, resembling a combination of smoke and fog.^[3] A ship 20 miles (32km) out to sea came under burning ember attack and was covered in cinders and dust. In the evening, a cool change brought with it cooler conditions and light rain." Below is an image from the firezone, square miles of sticks and ash, a blue haze.
This description is almost exactly of what happened on 7th February 2009. Except we had had 3 or 4 days the previous week where the temperature was in the 40s, which had dried everything out. When Eucalypts are stressed by drought or lack of water they adopt a somewhat deciduous life style dropping leaves, bark and limbs, and falling over as their roots strees past breaking. (This happened to a tree in the front yard of the apartment where I was staying that Saturday and we had to remove it from the road. The day was like standing next to a very hot forge). The air temperature was over 46C and the the flash point of eucalyptus oil is about 50C. The hills were an alarmingly beautiful tinge of blue, in other words the air was full of volatiles. When the flash came the place went up. THESE FIRES ARE HOT: 1200C. They were moving in places at up to 100km an hour. From my doorstep nothing much seemed to be happening, a bit of smoke to the north and to the east, unlike other days other years when the place was bathed in smoke for weeks.

This man is looking at the effect of a bushfire on the aluminium bits in his car. His rims have melted and flowed away. What would happen to an engine block in the same circumstances? Firetrucks these days don't have much aluminium, after the Linton fires of 2 December 1998 where two trucks were trapped and the aluminium cabin burnt, killing five firemen.

Someone I heard talking on the wireless during the fires said they had seen a small car -mainly plastic and aluminium alloys-almost melt in front of them, and on the news on tv one night I saw a four wheel drive with part of the bumper bar melted off.

These pictures were found mainly on the Guardian, The Age, and ePosVriende's blog. There is a lot of material and images on this disaster on the net. And we are having a Royal Commission into the fires, so there will be a lot more.