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Fires Near Melbourne?
Techleo
Member Posts: 1,984
I was just curious if any of the Mmorpg members were near the fires in Australia? I had a friend near the Melbourne area who just up and disappeared not that long ago. Was curious where the residents of the burn areas were headed. Anycase a little news from locals would be nice. Oh and to the folks there, my thoughts are with ya.
Comments
The Australian Open was just held in Melbourne last week and now they are suffering their worst fires in the nation's history. I watched a lot of the Open and the commentators regularly made mention of the high temperatures on the court. But it's not the heat alone that is responsible. Investigators are looking into the likelihood that at least some of the fires were started by arson. That would mean murder charges. Currently the number stands at 170 counts.
I dont know what causes these assholes to intentionally start fires like this. I live in Florida and every year we're plagued with brush fires. Occassionally it will spread to housing developments or businesses. Smoke carries across the entire state and at times is so thick they have to shut interstates down due to low visibility.
Last year they caugt a couple people just driving down the road and pitching different types of flamable liquids in bottles out of their cars into the scrub/brush on the shoulders. They figured one person would throw the agent, and another would drive by throwing something flamable to ignite the flames. The crazy thing is, these people live in the area. I dont know what drives the insane to fire like this, or what causes them to just catch the world on fire.
and a strange irony to this, I live in Melbourne Florida
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
Maybe throw some water on it. I've seen that work before. Just putting that out there. If someone can maybe get word to the higher-ups...
Not really that simple.
The first problem is that Australian vegetation is a bit different. Much of it acts as an accelerant. Something like eucalyptus, for instance, is highly flammable even in a healthy state.
The second problem was the raw heat. It was exceedingly hot weather.
And perhaps the worst thing was the wind. A lot of the people here couldn't even escape the flames in their cars. Just imagine that. A twenty-foot wall of flame chasing you at 60+ miles per hour. Others tried to escape in their vehicles, only to have their cars stall due to lack of oxygen to maintain combustion, since the inferno around them had consumed it all. This kind of thing sounds like a scene from a horror movie to some people, but to these people, it was a fatal reality.
The intensity and savagery of this fire can't really be underestimated. From the accounts I've heard of property destruction, the fire must have been intensely hot in some places. There was really no fighting this one. From what I'm hearing, if you stayed to defend your property, you either got lucky, or you died.