Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

Generali

GDB2222 wrote: »

I thought Canada is covered in snow and full of lakes. How come it has caught fire?

I suspect that southern Canada, which is about on the same level as the UK, gets roughly the same amount of snow as London at this time of year.

This looks an awful lot like the bushfires we get over here it's just that furreners, when not taking our jurbs and our wimmin, don't know how to deal with bushfires.

To use the traditional metric for measuring land size, Wales, the area burning is about 5% of the size of Wales. Alternatively it's about 60% of the size of Hertfordshire. That will burn very hot indeed.

Presumably this area will be pine which will be an advantage over fighting a fire in the gum trees as they don't burn as hot and a disadvantage as they catch fire at a lower temperature (eucalyptus oil notwithstanding). Pine needles make excellent kindling too.

Once a bushfire gets to this sort of size it will send embers well over a mile ahead of the fire front, each of which is perfectly capable of burning a house down. This stretches the fire-fighters' resources as they need to maintain a presence in town to fight property fires as well as trying to contain and then bring under control the main fire.

The other big problems with fighting a fire like this are:

- Exhaustion. The firies will be exhausted and probably in many cases now carrying minor injuries (burns, scrapes, muscle tears, strains etc). They will be dehydrated most likely (try jogging on the spot for 16 hours standing next to your gas fire on full in the middle of summer wearing ski gear) and also probably not eating well if at all. That makes good decision-making harder and a single wrong turn can see an entire crew dead if the wind changes suddenly for example.

- Terror. A bushfire is terrifying by all accounts and exerts a huge emotional toll on all concerned. Many of the local firies will be fighting the fire front while their or their mates' properties are in very real danger of being burned down. This is not easy to do.

- Water. Bringing a big fire under control takes a heck of a lot of water which is heavy and difficult to move quickly.

- Experience. Most Aussie firies have dealt with a lot of these sorts of fires but I doubt the Canadians have. Aus does a huge amount of research into how fires burn and spread and this information is probably not available to the on-the-ground Canadian firie.

I wish them well and I hope that Aussies have sent a load of firies over there as is normally the case.

chris_m

GDB2222 wrote: »

I thought Canada is covered in snow and full of lakes. How come it has caught fire?

The north is and the west gets a fair bit of snow due to the mountains - but the southern quarter to half, in the middle, is far from cold and snowy. For example, Canada is the sixth largest producer of wheat in the world.

chris_m

Generali wrote: »

To use the traditional metric for measuring land size, Wales, the area burning is about 5% of the size of Wales. Alternatively it's about 60% of the size of Hertfordshire.

For the benefit of BBC readers, how many football pitches, London buses or Nelson's Columns laid down would that be?
:rotfl:

SingleSue

hjd wrote: »

I totally agree re the taste of fruit.
Don't have any trouble getting Worcesters in season - Waitrose have them certainly.
I live close to Wisley, and often go down there in the autumn when they have loads of different varieties of apple/pear for sale, and will cut you a slab to taste of any you fancy.
Coxes - I'll eat them very early season when they still have some bite, but not after that.

We have an amazing farm shop about half a mile away, you can do pick your own of seasonal fruit and veg plus they also have stuff that has been pre picked.

Even better, their prices are not much more than you would spend in a supermarket, they have an amazing cafe for a cup of tea and time it right, it makes a great cheap afternoon out if you have little ones...or not so little ones, mine still love going there and picking their own fruit and veg.

vivatifosi

Generali wrote: »

To use the traditional metric for measuring land size, Wales, the area burning is about 5% of the size of Wales. Alternatively it's about 60% of the size of Hertfordshire. That will burn very hot indeed.

This Herts resident much appreciates your new choice of measurement:D.

Generali wrote: »

Presumably this area will be pine which will be an advantage over fighting a fire in the gum trees as they don't burn as hot and a disadvantage as they catch fire at a lower temperature (eucalyptus oil notwithstanding). Pine needles make excellent kindling too.

I saw a very brief article here saying that they have oil sands at the surface and they were worried about those catching fire:eek:. Though per this article, thankfully they haven't. The native trees are Aspen, Spruce and Pine:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/06/fort-mcmurray-oil-sands-wildfires-canada

(Interesting article about the place, worth a read)

Generali wrote: »

- Exhaustion. The firies will be exhausted and probably in many cases now carrying minor injuries (burns, scrapes, muscle tears, strains etc). They will be dehydrated most likely (try jogging on the spot for 16 hours standing next to your gas fire on full in the middle of summer wearing ski gear) and also probably not eating well if at all. That makes good decision-making harder and a single wrong turn can see an entire crew dead if the wind changes suddenly for example.

I saw a bit with a crew on a garden lawn, fast asleep. I cannot express how tired they looked, as though they'd almost fallen there. Poor sods. Let's hope that none perish or get badly hurt.

GDB2222

chris_m wrote: »

For the benefit of BBC readers, how many football pitches, London buses or Nelson's Columns laid down would that be?
:rotfl:

A football pitch is 0.25 microWales, or 250 nanoWales.

Pyxis

GDB2222 wrote: »

A football pitch is 0.25 microWales, or 250 nanoWales.

What's that in ml per hour?

Generali

vivatifosi wrote: »

This Herts resident much appreciates your new choice of measurement:D.



I saw a very brief article here saying that they have oil sands at the surface and they were worried about those catching fire:eek:. Though per this article, thankfully they haven't. The native trees are Aspen, Spruce and Pine:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/06/fort-mcmurray-oil-sands-wildfires-canada

(Interesting article about the place, worth a read)



I saw a bit with a crew on a garden lawn, fast asleep. I cannot express how tired they looked, as though they'd almost fallen there. Poor sods. Let's hope that none perish or get badly hurt.

Great article and I learned a new word: metonymy.

This picture stayed with me from the fires in the Blue Mountains a couple of years back:



If you look at the 'How the Fires Spread' picture on the BBC website:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36224767

you can see how some spot fires were started, probably by embers jumping across the river.

I guess in Aus we are much better at things like hazard reduction as I can't think of an incident with so much loss of property. Black Saturday and Ash Wednesday were both horrific in terms of life lost (Black Saturday happened a few months after I moved here and was just terrible) but it was small, isolated communities that were hit.

We have had mass evacuations in Sydney (Mrs Generali's uncle and family were evacuated from Hornsby a couple of decades ago) but no property loss on this scale. There is just too much back burning around large population centres (small fires set in cool conditions in order to burn off dead vegetation on the ground to remove potential fuel for bushfires) for something like this to be likely to happen in Australia.

We had a lot of back burning today: fires were set at 40 locations in and around Sydney and the smoke was terrible. Even sitting in the car with the aircon on recycle my eyes were burning and I was coughing. Apparently it was even setting the smoke detectors off in city apartments. It is the perfect conditions to do it though as we've had a few sunny, dry days with heavy rain predicted for tomorrow if any of the back burning gets out of control (20% of major bushfires start as a result of backburning!).

GDB2222

They have all those truly huge machines for mining the oil sands, but presumably they are unsuitable for carving fire breaks through the forests.

michaels

GDB2222 wrote: »

They need to appoint a party wall surveyor, apparently.

It is better than that, as well as appointing a party wall surveyor, if you desire, they also have to pay for a second surveyor of your choice, and it the two surveyors disagree then they have to pay for a third independent surveyor as well.