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See these flames, a powerful wall of fire.
It sweeps down and through, racing through,
Too fast it roars along, it cannot consume everything,
But lays a blanket of grey and black upon the earth.
There are trees that it leaves, with one side burnt and one side not.
A leaf blown miles on hot westerly winds, perfectly intact but burnt black
At great leagues you feel it, in the heat of the day that sucks life away.
The sun does bleed, an orange or red boiling sphere.
And the winds whip it onwards, onwards still till it might finally fall exhausted to ash.
Yet this Maelstrom is ours, our lands fierce lover and destroyer
~
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/19/1042911271082.html - Canberra Fires (General)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/auspac/01/19/austrailia.bush.fire/index.html - CNN report on the Fires
This weekend, fires ripped through the Australian Capital Territory, destorying homes in some of Canberra's southern suburbs. I'd been in Canberra the weekend before, I was driving down to see the art gallery. As we approached the outskirts we could see ash clouds on the horizon, four randomly arrayed plumes which curved in an arc behind one of the mountain ranges. On the news on my radio I'd heard that Mount Kosciuszko was stuggling with a fire that was burning through areas that do not normally burn, areas that have not seen fire through them for hundreds of years. By midweek it was relatively quiet, there was a mention that the fires near Canberra were worsening, as they were in inaccessible areas to fight and one national park area had been given up as lost. This weekend on Saturday things turned for the worse. On Saturday afternoon in Canberra the sky turned to night by the thick black ash blanketing the city. In Sydney the sky was a sort of Mid Grey ash blanket cover, not from the wind pushing it up towards us, but simply that that was how a 4 hours+ drive distance to Canberra appeared from our horizon. Mount Kosciuskzo fires are still burning through the snowy mountains, some of the alpine grasslands have also burnt and they never burn, the fires are starting towards the ski resorts of Thredbo now. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/19/1042911270982.html - Snowy Mountain fires
In the after effects of all this, what happens next. I can only hope that John Howard forgets about pandering to America for awhile with Iraq war talk and thinks about fixing things that are going to be troublesome. I can't find the related website address for the SMH article that talks about the very serious pollution problems Canberra will now face. Destoryed in the fires as well as numerous houses was Mount Stromlo observatory, the RSPCA shelter ((I had heard all the animals were being evacuated so they are all alive just homeless, no idea where they took them all)) and the Water Treatment plant. The last is particularly worrying in the immediate future, people in Canberra have already been asked not to use their sinks, drains, showers, toilets etc. Yet the damage will already be done as the sewarge water treatment plant was destroyed in the fires and already the untreated sewage from it is flowing down to one of the tributary rivers that flows into the ACT's main water supply. I have no idea what they are trying to do to stop it.
Another long term concern would be Mount Stromlo observatory, this was a really important thing for Australia in the field of Science, and many of our hopes are going to be crushed with it. I hope Howard finds some wisdom enough to divert his energies away from kicking out refugees onto pacific islands and into re-establishing this to its former glory and then even more beyond that, but I doubt that will happen. The article here is also worth reading as to exactly what damage was done - http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/19/1042911270982.html
And Finally an article I also found on CNN, not about these fires but the earlier pre-Christmas ones I mentioned in Sydney, it is also of some interest -
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/auspac/12/06/sydney.fires.analysis/index.html
