TheBanyanTree: Escape from New York

[Peter Macinnis]

In the clear for now. Good night.Indiglow <indiglow at sbcglobal.net> wrote:Oh dear God!  Any clue where/how Anita is?
Way behine on reading, so just catching this.  Hope all here have checke in.
Jana

--- On Mon, 1/7/13, Peter Macinnis <petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au> wrote:


From: Peter Macinnis <petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au>
Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: Escape from New York
To: "A comfortable place to meet other people and exchange your own *original* writings." <thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com>
Date: Monday, January 7, 2013, 1:04 PM


On 8/01/2013 03:42, Theta Brentnall wrote:
> What I am wondering about is Roger Pye and Robin-Tenant Woods, who are
> living in an area where the fire danger is labeled "catastrophic."  Even
> in California, a state given to burning itself up on a regular basis, I
> have never seen a threat level of catastrophic.  We all need to send
> them fire-proof mojo!

Right now, the air is still, here on the coast near Sydney.  That is ominous, because it is nearly 8 am here, and the sea breeze, a nor-easter should be stirring.  Out west, a body of hot dry air will soon start forcing through.  There will be winds up to 80 kph (50 mph) with single-digit humidity.

We are safe here, so I have time to provide a bit of background.  In 1967, the original five-point scale was being developed near Canberra, and each afternoon, the fire research people would round up all the holiday students working at the Forestry Research Institute and truck us out to a selected site near Canberra, either west of Black Mountain or on what is now Belconnen.

We went mob-handed, about 40 of us, with two tankers, Macleod tools (also called rake-hoes), knapsack sprays, sampling equipment, anemometer, you name it, we had it.

Then we would light a bushfire.  This is the background to my occasional overly-dramatic claim to have "lit a bushfire each afternoon". In fact it was only on the safer ones.

The reason?  Studying the first hour or two of a fire was almost impossible.

We spear carriers (I had an entomologist's hat at the time), stood around the edges of the fire, and each two minutes, on command, we dropped a numbered marker on the fire's edge.  In between, I was free to gather up as much insect material that was flushed out by the fire as I could, so I would start with 100 empty specimen tubes in my left patch pocket, and end up with 100 full ones on the other side.  Back at the lab, these were pickled and stored in case they were needed later for population studies.

When we finished, we cleared the edges, burned up to them, and then we spear carriers were set to work spraying everything down under the watchful eyes of experienced fireys.

Next day, the core team would go out and map the site in 2-minute contours, and correlate the growth pattern with fuel dryness (from samples), temperature,  wind speed and direction (and maybe one or two other things: I was just a spear carrier).

We kept the radios on in the tankers and listened for the watch towers on high points about 15 miles off (we hadn't gone fully metric back then) to call in the fire when they saw the smoke.  They gave range, bearing and estimated vegetation at the site, based on the smoke, and were amazing reliable.  And quick.  With cross-bearings, the locations were close enough to get a team in fast, had it been a real fire.  The spotters would suspect we were out, the timing (we were public servants and started right after lunch) would suggest it was one of ours--and their bosses knew where we would be and our boss called in as soon as he had checked the specified location by placing their bearings on the map.

All of this gave rise to the McArthur scale, created by our boss, Alan McArthur and his crew.  I have just discovered at <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcarthur-alan-grant-10889> that he was born close to where I am standing right now.  The scale extrapolated up to the most extreme conditions known and on that, there was a sensible scale of five categories.

Using the available data, the McArthur index is calculated for each area each day, and this is converted into words: low, moderate, high, very high and extreme.  People know those and understand them.

Then a few years back, there came a day, a bit like this, when the index went to 200.  We were WAY off-scale, in "perfect storm" category, and nobody was ready for it.  Using the wisdom of hindsight, such a high score is now called "catastrophic".

That word gets your attention.  So does the fire danger map you can see here: <http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?cat_id=1109>.

Back when the internet was young, I sent off some posts about the fires attacking the area around Sydney in 1993, and later, combined them into one of my first web pages.  It's still there at <http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/fireweek.htm> and is a useful background to bushfires 101.

I have yet to tell the tale of how, in 1970, I attended a fire which entailed chasing it up a cliff.  I was in the company of drunks and idiots, so for once I felt quite competent, but I damn near fell off that cliff, dodged several dislodged rocks and at one point, had to seize a burning stump to steady myself.

The scar on my hand lasted for years, but we caught the fire at the cliff top and knocked it out before it could spread far enough in from the edge to take off.  It's simple physics, really, but not a barrel of laughs.  Since then, I have restricted my interests to more distant observation, teaching kids the signs to look out for, and what to do if threatened.

They also serve who only stand and babble.  Or type.

The trees are stirring outside, so now the trial begins.  It will be 43C here today (107F), so it's time to go around, and close the windows, because lucky us, all we need do is stay cool and hydrated.  Hopefully, without using electricity, because others will need it desperately.

Good luck, Robin and Roger!

peter

-- Peter Macinnis            petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au
Cross-cultural watercraft maker, polymorphic monohulls
and Delphic coracles a specialty, also Tribo-economics
http://oldblockwriter.blogspot.com/