On 18.01.20 00:08, Gene Heskett wrote: > With all the fires down under, he hasn't posted since 12 October. > > Wondering if he and his new place is ok?
Many thanks, Gene, for the thoughts. (I only come back to town, and the internet two weekends per month, while trying to push the build along - insulating, then painting in Nov/Dec.) So far, the only strife at the farm is choking smoke when the wind's in the wrong direction - but that is also colouring New Zealand glaciers and making the sky grey in Chile, so it's pretty useless to bitch when I'm only 60 km from the western edge of the big patch (1.4 million hectares (3.5 million acres¹) of fires around Mallacoota, Sarsfield, etc. (I am a bit stiff from putting in 150 m of 40 mm poly pipe for a fire main with hydrants at the building corners, and a demountable petrol driven fire pump, so it's harder to pinch. I've bought a Grundfos electric variable speed boost pump for domestic supply from 21,000 gallons of tanks (when they're filled - arrived yesterday, just _after_ we had over 100 mm of rain in 2 days, a third of what we had all last year, or the year before. The electric pump can be cranked up to 62m head, hopefully enough for standing off hours of ember attack prior to fire arrival. I'm adding a valve so it can feed the fire main instead of the house. A fire fighting pump must have continuous flow to keep it cool, which is not good with a finite water supply, but the electric one shuts down when you close off the nozzle on the fire hose. We'll see how it works out.) Even several weeks after the fire peak, the only way through on the only highway between the east of Victoria and the rest of the state is with the military in Bushmaster armoured cars, as the clearing of fallen and dangerous trees is ongoing. An escorted convoy was allowed out to the north, into New South Wales, then back via Canberra for those wanting back to Victoria - a helluva drive. Today we lost a 3-man retardant-bombing crew from USA when a C130 went in. Quite a few firefighters have given their all and then some this season, one when a fire tornado flipped an 8 tonne firetruck onto its roof. I think we have about a hundred really experienced American firefighters here to rotate with our strike team leaders and managers. The glorious rain didn't put the fires out, but it really reduces the rate of spread. Much of the burnt country is forest, but there's a lot of stock with nothing but charcoal and ash to eat, so there's a lot of stock feed going past our farm on the highway. I was in town on Saturday, and a convoy of 30 semitrailers loaded to the gunwales with hay went east, and at the petrol station they said another of 15 semitrailers had gone through earlier in the day. A few days before I met a convoy of 15 loads of donated hay. How much is going through the rest of the time? The rain makes the rest of us at a distance much safer. Heck, for the first time in a year, there's a foot of water in the bottom of the best dam on the property, and there's green grass shooting up all over. If there's a bit of follow-up rain here and there, we could start farming again. (The only animals on the place are kangaroos, wallabies, and wombats, now. One of the latter started digging a 2 foot diameter burrow in the soft sand of the fill pad under the new build. I've twice chased him across the paddock after midnight at 25 km/h in the ute, with headlights on high beam and honking the horn. I didn't know they could run that fast on those stubby little legs.) Erik ¹ Add in NSW and the other states, and the total is over 10 million hectares (25 million acres) nationally so far this season. Current estimates for the CO2 emissions is over 900 million tonnes. It's a climate disaster which doubles or triples our national emissions. (Not finished yet.) _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
