TheBanyanTree: Fireworks for New Year

[Peter Macinnis]

Sydney starts each year with fireworks at 9 pm (for small people), then 
a bigger show at midnight.  You can see something of it at 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4571048.stm
or  http://tinyurl.com/a3m7p

Fireworks of a different sort can be expected today.

We are starting the New Year battened down, with 41C (106F) predicted, 
and dry hot gusty winds to fan any blaze that gets away.  Much of the 
control burning that is needed to establish firebreaks has not happened, 
and today might just be the day to see a return to the madness of early 
1994.

If it does, you can find some background at 
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/fireweek.htm -- as I explain 
there, I spent a short period in bushfire research.  I was co-opted from 
the entomology lab when they needed extra bodies, and we shared a tea 
room with the fire people and the seeds people -- the tea room is a 
little understood central part of any research facility, a combination 
of a bit of imbibing, a lot of building social cohesion and a great deal 
of training and indoctrination of young workers.

This was some 40 years ago, but like any well-trained Australian 
botanist, I have a strong interest in fires and how they may be 
prevented.  I also worked in national parks for a while, but my interest 
is only in reducing the damage fires cause.

Unfortunately, there are also many nut cases who have a less healthy and 
more involved interest in fires, so they go out and light them.

We used to light fires as well, but only for research, and within a 
prescribed perimeter, with two tankers and a gang of trained workers 
(and a few trainees like me).  Our aim was to study the early stages of 
a fire, how it spread, what effect fuel moisture and wind had -- and our 
fires were professionally dowsed when they reached the perimeter.  In 
the process, the researchers for whom I gophered managed to build quite 
an effective control line, and they gave us all a better fire prediction 
system.

Hopefully it won't happen, but the potential is there for as many as 
4000 homes to be destroyed if the upper reaches of Middle Harbour go -- 
and if a few fires happen at once, resources will be split.  Then again, 
a lot has changed in the last 12 years, and water-bombing is now an 
effective control, with big, specialised and ugly helicopters brought in 
from the US, where the forest fire season is over, at least in theory.

Many of the people who fight the fires are volunteers who are funded by 
the government.  Hopefully, they will all survive, and hopefully the 
people most at risk have already packed up their key memories, ready to 
haul them to safety.  The greatest loss in a fire is of the precious 
keepsakes, the items that define you.

We live two houses away from a pocket of bush, one that is too small to 
ever endanger our house, but the neighbours across the road could be at 
risk, so the suitable clothes, boots and extension hoses are ready to be 
run out, right over the next-door neighbour's yard and over to the area 
where water will be needed.  We are too urban to have a volunteer 
brigade, so we have to rely on the professionals, who have little idea 
of how to deal with burning bush.  Our aim will be to have the fire out 
before they arrive.  If we do, we will lead 3-nil!

-- 
   _--|\    Peter Macinnis         petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au
  /     \   manufacturer of automated parakeet flensing systems
  \.--._* <-at Manly NSW, the birthplace of Australian surfing
       v    http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/index.htm