Wildfire 2011 Third Announcement 18.08.10

Southern Rural Life article - high country burning 16.08.10

Video of Russians caught in fire 16.08.10
The four men, from the town of Vyksa, had driven to a nearby village by car last week to try and help locals protect their homes from the approaching forest fires. Equipped with spades and water they abandoned the plan as the fire had already swallowed a whole field and some nearby houses. The speed at which the fires were spreading meant the road they subsequently accessed to return to Vyksa was in parts already engulfed in smoke and flames.

The video shows the four drive down the road initially surrounded by thick, black smoke when one of them is heard saying: 'It's already burning here. Go back. Now the wood is on fire.' The camera pans to the passenger window to show trees in flames. The vehicle continues some way down the road and the fire gradually intensifies. At one point, one of them men is heard in the video as shouting: 'Stop! Go back. Turn our car around... It's dangerous to go.' The vehicle comes to a halt and the four are heard shouting in fear as flames begin to surround their car. They are all seen looking out through the windows to find a safe exit route. One of the men is heard saying: 'I can't see anything.'

The video shows the vehicle slowly reversing, and eventually getting back onto a clear route away from the fires. Wildfires are burning across 309,000 acres (125,000 hectares), mostly in central and western Russia, and have already killed 34 people. About 1,500 homes have been wiped out by fires, spurred by the heat wave that has dried forests and fields to a crisp.

Victorian Government responds to bushfires royal commission report 16.08.10

Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission Findings: Update 16.08.10

Forest Fire Litigation in British Columbia 16.08.10
A recent case of interest regarding forestry work.

Russian fires inevitable 13.08.10
Heat and smoke from the vast forest fires near Moscow had led to the doubling of the city’s normal death rate to 700 a day. Muscovites had fled the city as firefighters in the countryside battled wildfires covering 1740 sq km. Weekend concentrations of carbon monoxide and other poisonous substances were seven times above what was considered safe. “Extreme weather conditions … appear to have compounded a man-made disaster waiting to happen, and there is now growing anger over the Government’s response and the parlous state of both fire and forestry services,” The Irish Times (Dublin) says in an editorial. “When the wildfires broke out, the media reported, firefighters discovered forest roads overgrown and in poor repair, ponds intended to provide water for their tanks filled with sludge and fire trucks broken down or in a state of disrepair.” The newspapers blamed a reform in 2006 of the country’s forest code that allowed logging companies to contract out firefighting. “It also dismantled the national fire service’s effective network of monitors, replacing them with satellite and aerial-based technology that has proved unable to detect fires early before they spread,” the editorial says. When the fires broke out contractors were unprepared and poorly equipped. “A paper from the Academy of Sciences’ Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics three years ago warned prophetically that ‘the first dry year after the liquidation of the system of forest protection would become a catastrophe’ for Russia.” – The Irish Times

One year after the Stations Fire 6.08.10
Controversy still rages over this 2009 Californian fire

Victorian fires cost at least AU$4.4 billion  6.08.10
The Victorian bushfires royal commission estimates the Black Saturday fires cost AU$4.4 billion, but believes the true figure is likely to be much more. Amongst the costs, the Insurance Council of Australia has reported claims of approximately AU$1.2 billion for destroyed property. The commissioners said the government had spent AU$593 million fighting the fires, but the contribution of volunteers from the CFA and other groups "cannot be valued with any reasonable precision".

VicForests had also according to the Sydney Morning Herald conservatively estimated the "mill door" value of standing timber burnt at approximately AU$600 million and Telstra estimates AU$20 million in damage was done to its infrastructure.

2010 National Rural Fire Competition - notice  5.05.10