Help Australia with forest fires

[Turbof1]

Hello,

 

Not my usual post around here, but I wanted to bring attention to this as a good buddy of mine is Australian. He has been deeply troubled by what is happening in his home country. I am not going to pretend that I fully grasp the situation, so it's best I quote him directly. If you want, please make a donation. The service(s) you are donating to are verified and we know for sure the money will be directly used to fighting the fires, or helping those who are affected by it. Thank you.

 

A message to all members,

 

The Californian Bushfires
Total Size: 1,900,000 acres

The Amazon Fires
Total Size: 2,250,000 acres

The CURRENT Australian Bushfires
12,000,000 acres... and rising every day

 

I do not think that people understand what is happening right now.

These are not normal Australian bushfires. The entire country is on fire. Most people have no conceptual understanding about just how big Australia is... and therefore, just how bad these fires are. They also just cannot fathom how terrifying and unstoppable a real bushfire is... Have you ever heard of, let alone seen, a fire tornado rip through nature?

Being an Aerodynamicist, and therefore having a knowledge of how air (oxygen for the fire) moves and how heat causes it to, means that I have some understanding of how these fires flare up fast enough, that you cannot our-drive them, let alone out-run them, simply when the wind blows... which they generate for themselves by the extreme temperatures they scorch the ground and air with (see the video I linked below to see what I mean).

The fact that only 15 people are dead is astonishingly low, but the half a billion (yes, with a "b") animals are dead, should give you some perspective. We have the worst air quality in the world now. Our Prime Minister has left the country, its wildlife, and nature to burn. He ignored the warnings of potential catastrophic fires, and his response to societies call to action, was to cut funding to the fire services by 70%, crippling the fire services across the nation. Fire-fighters have flown in from around the globe, to help us in this time of crisis.

So, not only are our incredibly brave fire-fighters under resourced, but they are also fighting fires that the world has never seen before, dwarfing even the great Californian and Amazonian fires of the past.

I live in Europe now, and so my ability to help my fellow Australians is limitted, however, I do have a reasonable amount of reach within this site, and in my friendship circles.

I have linked the NSW Rural Fire Service website, who are trying to fight this on the front lines of the hardest hit areas, and need all the support they can get.
https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/about-us/fundraising

Secondly, to the Australian Red Cross. They are supporting people at evacuation centres by providing psychological support, first aid, emergency assistance (cash grants to people who have lost homes), supporting volunteers, and more.
https://www.redcross.org.au/

And finally, to the World Wilflife Fund. They are housing and supporting injured animals from the bushfires aswell as rescuing others that are still in harms way. They will also be making an effort to rebuild the habitats and re-populate the species killed in these fires.
https://www.wwf.org.au/get-involved/bushfire-emergency

Any support that you may be willing to offer, is not only very much appreciated, but desperately needed.

My sunburnt country...
my... home...
is burning to the ground, in an inferno...
and we are absolutely powerless to stop it...

[wasab]

Australia is mostly desert. I'm pretty sure everything is fine. Who cares if a desert is on fire? 

[Arika]

12 minutes ago, wasab said:

Australia is mostly desert. I'm pretty sure everything is fine. Who cares if a desert is on fire? 

please tell me you're kidding......

[mr moose]

24 minutes ago, Arika S said:

please tell me you're kidding......

not a very funny joke if it is,  even if people weren't dying and losing their homes,  trying to assimilate the words "bush" and "forrest" with "desert" to make a pun is incredibly lame.

[dizmo]

While it is devastating, and there's fires in quite a few places....saying all of Australia is on fire is being pretty melodramatic.

Realistically there isn't a whole lot that can be done fire wise; protect cities and towns, let the rest burn itself out.

The wildlife number, while extremely high...includes reptiles and birds. Housecats kill upwards of 4 billion birds a year. While also not a good thing, and yes, I get that certain species are at risk, it's still something that's simply being used for shock value.

 

What I find most stupid, is how everyone seems to be saying it's because of climate change, and then blaming the PM for not enacting climate measures sooner...as if enacting them in their country would help their country against this. Sorry, global climate doesn't work that way; you'd still be on fire, even if Australia did every climate measure they could, because there are much larger polluters out there.

 

At least they seem to be calming down now, hopefully they continue on that trend.

 

52 minutes ago, Arika S said:

please tell me you're kidding......

Well, I mean technically 30% is desert, and 70% is arid, which a lot of people would consider desert...but to not understand that people live along the coast in large numbers is pretty bad.

[Salv8 (sam)]

well we're in hell!

burn baby burn!

i love the smell of smoke in the morning!

 

but in all seriousness it's not that good, it's going to shit here, i've heard that some have even started leaving the country due to the fires in NSW and shit.

but with the grounded planes it's turned into even more chaos...

 

can i get an f in chat for my fallen gumtrees?

 

F

[Guest]

One of our HWBot team mates is dealing with this right now. It's stated there's nothing anyone can really do. There's so much fire and smoke everywhere......

 

His job has him outside quite a bit (delivery) and he was saying it's like having lung infections and getting sick (literally) trying to rough 20-30 out of 40 hour weeks in the smoke. It's horrible. 

 

Don't complain about donations. Not even realizing it, you donate to LTT everytime there's an ad in your face, just remember that. 

If something happened to you, Hopefully there's good hearted people to donate to your pain and suffering no matter what it could be.

 

In short, don't be a ****Head in this thread, I'll report every single crap post if need be. 

[Jarsky]

To give some perspective of how bad the bush fires are.

This is what the sky looked like @ 2pm in Auckland, New Zealand....over 4000km away from the closest point of Australia.

 

Deep orange and dark, like a dusk scene out of a mad max movie....except its summer in NZ and it shouldnt be that dark until about 9pm

 

 

Heres a normal day in Auckland for comparison

 

[WkdPaul]

* thread cleaned *

 

This is NOT a thread to throw you political stance in the mix, this is NOT a thread to "shame" others about what charity they give or not. If you're not interested in donating, then move along.

[WkdPaul]

* thread cleaned again *

 

Shitposting and trolling is against the Community Standards.

[TempestCatto]

4 hours ago, Jarsky said:

To give some perspective of how bad the bush fires are.

This is what the sky looked like @ 2pm in Auckland, New Zealand....over 4000km away from the closest point of Australia.

 

Deep orange and dark, like a dusk scene out of a mad max movie....except its summer in NZ and it shouldnt be that dark until about 9pm

Holy shit, that's insane.

 

Not only that, but I'm sure the air quality is really bad. A YouTuber I follow (Cleetus McFarland) is currently in Australia for Summernats (a wicked burnout competition) and they ended up going home early (United States) because of the poor air quality. 

 

So even people who are further away from the fires are still affected in a bad way. Makes me wonder how long the air quality will be poor after they're put out.

[mr moose]

10 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

Holy shit, that's insane.

 

Not only that, but I'm sure the air quality is really bad. A YouTuber I follow (Cleetus McFarland) is currently in Australia for Summernats (a wicked burnout competition) and they ended up going home early (United States) because of the poor air quality. 

 

So even people who are further away from the fires are still affected in a bad way. Makes me wonder how long the air quality will be poor after they're put out.

I'm near Melbourne,  a good 2-300K from the fire front,  My car smells like a camp fire from one days driving in it.  A couple of times it has been so thick I actually had to look up if there were any fires in my town or nearby.  It's a very surreal experience right now and I'm an ex firfighter.  

[minibois]

Australia's area that is burning is larger than the country I live in... This is something crazy and I just hate seeing the prime minister being such a ... Not great person about it.

I wish all the Australians the best and thanks to all firefighters in Australia right now!

 

4 minutes ago, Praesi said:

What kind of support are you expecting?

OP has a WWF and Red Cross links in their post, which have donation possibilities.

[Lurick]

Donated what I could. Hope everyone impacted stays safe and gets to safety quickly!

The company I work for has a donation matching policy so I would encourage people to ask their work if they'll consider matching donations to help amplify the impact if possible.

[mr moose]

7 hours ago, minibois said:

This is something crazy and I just hate seeing the prime minister being such a ... Not great person about it.

 

The government have been doing their job. Unfortunately people are using the fires as fodder for their personal ideals.  

 

The government have setup a new recovery agency with $2B to help people recover from these fires:

https://www.pm.gov.au/media/national-bushfire-recovery-agency

 

The government has set aside $20M more than requested to hire more water bombing planes.

 

They are ensuring people get access to these payments if they need it:

https://www.humanservices.gov.au/individuals/services/centrelink/victorian-bushfires-december-2019-australian-government-disaster-recovery-payment

 

Plus a whole lot more.  And I have to make it clear, this is not a political thing, any party in power at the time would have done it this way.  It's just a shame we have people who would use such a horrific event for political gain.   It disgusts me that the media no longer has any morals, they have been laping this up since it started.

 

 

 

[The Sloth]

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

The government have been doing their job. Unfortunately people are using the fires as fodder for their personal ideals.  

 

The government have setup a new recovery agency with $2B to help people recover from these fires:

https://www.pm.gov.au/media/national-bushfire-recovery-agency

 

The government has set aside $20M more than requested to hire more water bombing planes.

 

They are ensuring people get access to these payments if they need it:

https://www.humanservices.gov.au/individuals/services/centrelink/victorian-bushfires-december-2019-australian-government-disaster-recovery-payment

 

Plus a whole lot more.  And I have to make it clear, this is not a political thing, any party in power at the time would have done it this way.  It's just a shame we have people who would use such a horrific event for political gain.   It disgusts me that the media no longer has any morals, they have been laping this up since it started.

 

 

 

Hope everything works well, it's truly a tragedy. Lots of misinformation is spreading unfortunately. 

 

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

Unfortunately people are using the fires as fodder for their personal ideals.  

really don't follow Australian politics but, Didn't the government have a thing where they didn't believe in climate change? 

[mr moose]

2 hours ago, nerdslayer1 said:

 

Hope everything works well, it's truly a tragedy. Lots of misinformation is spreading unfortunately. 

 

 

really don't follow Australian politics but, Didn't the government have a thing where they didn't believe in climate change? 

 

Sent you a PM as politics isn't allowed and I don't want to derail this thread too much, suffice to say they have policies and an MO for climate change in place just like all the other parties,  Unfortunately for most of the population and like all things in politics,  it's easier to call someone ignorant (In this case a climate denier), than it is to prove you have a better solution.