Saturday 18 January 2020
Friday 17 January 2020
And the drought continues across New South Wales....
There is no land in NSW which is not affected by drought.
CDI = Combined Drought Indicator. RI = Rainfall Index. SWI = Soil Water Index. PGI = Pasture Growth Index. DDI = Drought Direction Index
Data current to 11/1/2020 (AEDT)
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Australian Council of Social Service calls on Morrison to increase "seriously inadequate" emergency payments to bushfire victims
The Guardian, 13 January 2020:
Other recommendations include increasing the Disaster Recovery Allowance, which is paid at the same rate as Newstart, which the organisation said was inadequate to cover basic living costs, and providing additional relief for people on low incomes who could not afford insurance.....
Less in response to this ACOSS call and more as pushback against his poor numbers in the 12 January 2020 Newspoll which showed Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese as the preferred prime minister with a lead of 4 points, Prime Minister Morrison has announced an increase in the Disaster Recovery Payment for children to a total of $800 per child from 20 January 2020.
Families who have already received payments for children will automatically be paid an additional $400 according to media reports.
Thursday 16 January 2020
Clarence Valley Council receives $1 million in bushfire recovery funding
The NSW Berejiklian Government has received its state share of the $2 billion in bushfire recovery funding from the federal government and, has informed Clarence Valley Council to expect to have an extra $1 million in its coffers this week.
This money is in addition to grants already received from the NSW Government to assist with repair of certain road infrastructure damaged by the bushfires.
Council expects to use this $1 million grant to rebuild community assets such as sporting facilities and community halls, as well as creating infrastructure which will increase resilience in times of disaster.
The million dollar grant is welcome, however the financial cost of these devastating fires will be a strain on council and local communities for some time to come.
Wednesday 15 January 2020
Rain predicted across NSW from today but it's not all good news - may be landslips, fallen trees & flash flooding on land burnt by bushfire since August 2019
Weather Update: Heavy rain and the potential dangerous impacts to fire grounds in NSW and East Victoria.
— Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (@BOM_au) January 14, 2020
Video is current at 12pm AEDT 14 Jan 2020.
Info: https://t.co/t2CaglH2RW and follow advice from emergency services.#nswfires #vicfires #ausfires @NSWRFS @VicEmergency pic.twitter.com/zQrk6RAa4s
NSW Bushfire Emergency Declaration covering the Clarence Valley has been revoked as fires begin to diminsh
Bushfires in the Clarence Valley are diminishing.
So the Section 44 Bushfire Emergency declation declared in August 2019 when the NSW Rural Fire Service was battling around twenty fires a day - many caused by hazard reduction burns on private land which ran out of control - was revoked last week.
Although the fire grounds have contracted significantly, the Myall Creek Road and Washpool National Park fires are still burning and peat in the Shark Creek area is also still alight.
However, these fires have been listed as under control for some weeks.
Valley residents should still keep an eye open for new fire activity, because forewarned is forearmed for our scattered communities.
Since June 2019 an est. 548,698 hectares have burned in a local government area comprising a total of 1,044,996 hectares. That is almost 53 per cent of the Clarence Valley land mass affected by fire to date.
The fires kicked off in a big way in September when the Shark Creek fire entered Yuraygir National Park and spread to threaten Angourie and Wooloweyah with one spot fire burning as far north as the vicinity of the Yamba community pool before being controlled.
Then in October-November the Nymboida region began to blaze, quickly followed by the spread of the Myall Creek Road fire into the Valley, then Washpool National Park began to burn and Woombah through to the New Italy area as well as Bunjalung National Park lit up - creating even larger fire grounds.
Now on Wednesday 15 January 2020 the smoke has gone, the air is clean, in the Lower Clarence River the water remains clear and, popular beaches along the Clarence Coast are much as they were before the bushfire emergency began.
During the Christmas holidays the tourists came back, so there are small children in rashies, young women in sarongs & sandals and proud local grandparents showing off their visiting grandkids once more peopling our streets.
But all is not well.
We can easily count how many homes, sheds and how much community infrastructure we've lost in the Valley and, eventually money will rebuild much of what is gone.
Trying to gauge the degree of loss of natural landscapes, wildlife biodiversity and cultural sites - and what that means to us as regional communities - will be much harder.
The Clarence Valley may find itself changed forever.
Monday 13 January 2020
When even a high-end jeweller has a better understanding of climate change threat than the Australian Coalition Government
Advertisement placed in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on 11 November 2020:
Image: @BevanShields |
Tiffany & Co. was established in New York in 1837 by Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Long. In 1987 it became a public company.
Centrelink lives up to its growing reputation for incompetence
The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 January 2019:
Sunday 12 January 2020
Lies and misinformation about Australian fires being spread on social media in January 2020
"Arson is the act of intentionally and maliciously destroying or damaging property through the use of fire." [Australian Institute of Criminology, 9 November 2004]
This has begun to occur with a vengeance in 2020 with exaggerated claims concerning arson during the 2019-20 bushfire season.
ABC News, 8 January 2020:
Australia's bushfire emergency is being exploited on social media, as misinformation is spread through cyberspace via hundreds of thousands of posts.
Out-of-date photos of survivors and inaccurate fire maps have been widely shared, including by international celebrities.
As authorities fight the flames on firegrounds around the country, an ABC investigation has revealed a battle of a very different kind online.
One area of misinformation has been the hashtag #ArsonEmergency on Twitter.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) researcher Dr Timothy Graham analysed 315 accounts posting #ArsonEmergency and said a third of them displayed highly-automated and inauthentic behaviour.
He said the topic appeared to be attracting a "suspiciously high number of bot-like and troll-like accounts".
The ABC found many of the suspicious accounts were amplifying unproven suggestions arson had been the overwhelming cause of Australia's disastrous bushfire season.
Several Twitter users were misrepresenting a media report about police investigating whether some of the fires were deliberately lit, despite the same report noting the blazes on the NSW South Coast were likely caused by lightning strikes.
Some incorrectly quoted Australian police as having dismissed the link between the fires and climate change. An article posted by an American far-right figure went one step further, claiming left-wing ecoterrorists were responsible for lighting the blazes....
Read the full article here.
The Guardian, 8 January 2019:
Victoria police say there is no evidence any of the devastating bushfires in the state were caused by arson, contrary to the spread of global disinformation exaggerating arsonist arrests during the current crisis.
NSW recorded crime statistics for the 2019-20 financial year will not be available before July this year. However, arson statistics for the 24 months up to September 2019 are publicly available.
These statistics show that there was a -36.1% trend fall in the total number of persons taken to court on arson related charges in those 24 months.
As of end September 2019 the NSW arson rate was 62.8 per 100,000 head of population.
According to NSW Rural Fire Service spokesman Ben Shepherd the vast majority of major fires in the state since August 2019 were the result of lightning storms.
A more realistic picture of what has been happening on the ground since August 2019 can be found on the NSW Police website and in online media articles under The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian mastheads, rather than posts or tweets with the hashtag #ArsonEmergency.
In the 23 locations listed below only 8 had fires which met the definition of arson and, of these only 6 involved grass or bushland fires.
Wednesday 21 August 2019
* Three girls aged 12, 13 and 14 allegedly set fire to grasslands on thirteen occasions in the Kempsey area of the mid-North Coast, Grasslands which at the time were being controlled by NSWRFS.
Friday 10 January 2020
* 40 year old man allegedly set alight two metal drums filled with plastic at Schofields in Sydney’s western suburbs, during a total fire ban.
Saturday 11 January 2020
Friday 10 January 2020
Thursday 9 January 2020
NSW North Coast repaying South Coast firies who came to our aid in the 2019 bushfires
Macquarie Port News, 6 January 2020:
Wednesday 8 January 2020
#ScottyFromMarketing needs to grow up or find another job
#ScottyFromMarketing is simultaneously reminding us the crisis is still occurring & recovery has begun. He speaks as though all that is needed to recover is to replace bricks & mortar destroyed by fire and livestock lost. He just doesn't understand it will take more...1/4
..than $$$. Mother Nature isn't impressed by $$$. They do not make it rain, keep baked & exposed soils fixed to the earth, cause new trees to grow on burnt ground, keep the few healthy rivers we have left alive & free of ash pollution, clean the air or lower high air/soil...2/4
....temperatures. Even if Scotty & his climate change denying mates commenced right now to lower greenhouse gas emissions instead of just pretending to, there will be no environmental, social and economic recovery across his next set of precious foreward estimates....3/4
2020 will likely end as it began - with some of the remaining forests burning, farms still not capable of past levels of agricultural production and water scarcity still a fact of life across Australia. Scotty needs to grow up & face these facts or find another job. 4/4
Monday 6 January 2020
Think how many Australian lives, homes and forests could have been saved if Scotty From Marketing had done this in September-October 2019
Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison literally spent months denying the widespread mega fires were something that as a nation and as a people we had never experienced before.
He stubbornly and callously ignored the mounting death toll, the loss of so many homes and businesses, the environmental devastation, the crushing fatigue of volunteer firefighters, because he wanted to stay on message - coal is king and climate change is something 'greenies' use to scare the kids.
It wasn't until bushfire victims and firefighters began to get right in his face, when he realised that he might lose that lucrative prime ministerial paypacket, that he finally began to provide a decent level of federal assistance.
It's just a pity that this below is over four months too late for most of New South Wales from the Great Dividing Range to the Pacific Ocean.
We’re putting more Defence Force boots on the ground, more planes in the sky, more ships to sea, and more trucks to roll in to support the bushfire fighting effort and recovery as part of our co-ordinated response to these terrible #bushfires pic.twitter.com/UiOeYB2jnv— Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP) January 4, 2020
Sunday 5 January 2020
One bushfire refugee's perspective
EchoNetDaily, 2 January 2020:
Fire fighters battling flames at Woombah, Iluka Road in November 2019. Photo Ewan Willis
As one of many bushfire refugees in Australia and beyond this year, I was faced with that classic question – what do I take and what can be left behind? A houseful of stuff and a small car are very different sizes, but when time is short, it’s amazing how it sharpens the mind, and the Tetris skills.
Turns out, not much is really necessary, or even desirable when it comes down to it. Being human, quite a few sentimental things of no practical use during an apocalypse found their way into the car. A few books. Also lots of ones and zeroes on hard drives of various sizes. Pretty much everything else was excess to requirements.
This is something more of us are learning as we move into this new reality, which has been predicted for some time, but not many expected would arrive so soon.
But what should we call this over-cooked era? Anthropocene has been suggested (or Anthrocene, as Nick Cave prefers) – the age when humans are the main drivers of everything that happens. Then there’s the under-sevens favourite, Plasticene. You only have to walk along a beach anywhere in the world and see the colourful detritus of our species to understand that one.
For me though, the one that takes the cake (a bombe Alaska, naturally) is the Pyrocene, or the age of fire. That’s what international fire expert Stephen J Pyne calls this era we’re living in, and after 29 books on the subject including Fire: a Brief History, he should know.
Burning stuff (especially fossil fuels) got our civilisation cooking with gas, made a lot of people rich, and now it seems everything else has to burn as a consequence......
The words of an Australian prime minister who still hasn't grasped the reality of climate change
As Australia literally burned from the mountains to the sea*, with thousands fleeing the flames after being told to evacuate ahead of extreme fire conditions expected on the east coast for Saturday, 4 January 2020 .
This was Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott John Morrison, speaking at a press conference on the afternoon of 2 January 2020:
“Let me be clear to the Australian people, our emissions reductions policies will both protect our environment and seek to reduce the risk and hazards we are seeing today. At the same time, it will seek to ensure the viability of people’s jobs and livelihoods, all around the country.
“What we will do is ensure our policies remain sensible, that they don’t move towards either extreme, and stay focused on what Australians need for a vibrant and viable economy, as well as a vibrant and sustainable environment.”
NOTE
* According to Canadian field geophysicist and disaster researcher, Mika McKinnon, by Friday 2 January 2020 the combined size of burned areas across Australia was getting close to 40,000 sq km or 10 million acres - roughly the size of Switzerland. While the smoke plume was 5.5 million sq km or 1.3 billion acres - half the size of Europe.
Saturday 4 January 2020
Tweets of the Week
What, like, "on the other hand, it's ONLY 4.6 million hectares of Australia that are burning". A rare editorial engagement: go fuck yourself https://t.co/wcIaU7q2eQ— Laura Tingle (@latingle) December 31, 2019
Do Australia’s politicians feel that children should be huddled in cars fearing for their lives at all times?— Extinction Rebellion Australia (@XRebellionAus) December 31, 2019
It’s 2020. The time to act on climate is now.
#ExtinctionRebellion #auspol pic.twitter.com/wBczdwp0lk
How fabulous! Scott Morrison the most reviled man in Australia was forced to flee by car from #Cobargo due to the force of anger from #bushfirecrisis affected residents Whoever thought it was a good idea for PM to go out in public thought wrong
— SeditiousSarahđź’§VictoriousVictorian 🌱 (@WhistlingWhist) January 2, 2020
An angry protester has told Scott Morrison he should be "ashamed of himself" and that he's "left the country to burn" during a tour of the burnt out town of Cobargo late this afternoon. #auspol #NSWbushfires
— Victoria Pengilley (@vicpengilley) January 2, 2020
Disaster tourists Scott and Jenny Morrison have been booed out of Cobargo this afternoon.
— Susie (@TheSusieTweets) January 2, 2020
This. Is. The. Australia. I. LOVE! #WeAreAllCobargo#cobargo#AusPol#ScottMorrison
Yes, just saw a snippet on ABC24 news.
— Susie (@TheSusieTweets) January 2, 2020
Morrison was snarky when asked about it and Jenny looked rattled. #Cobargo #WeAreAllCobargo#NSWbushfires
YES just saw #Morrison having abuse hurled at him, victims venting at him, called him an idiot, he had to be hurried back to the car! #deserved #auspol
— đź’§The Angry Goddess (@Bishop64) January 2, 2020
Also @The_Nationals copped an absolute bollocking!@MadFckingWitch @slpng_giants_oz
Friday 3 January 2020
Weather conditions expected to worsen on Saturday 4 January 2020 as south-eastern Australia once again gears for widespread severe fire danger
A total of 18 people have died so far in Australia's 2019-20 bushfire season and, sadly this number may yet rise.
Tomorrow, Saturday 4 January 2020 is expected to see the same fire conditions as those experienced on 31 December 2019, when parts of the NSW South Coast and East Gippsland in Victoria burned to the sea and at least 8 lives were lost.
IMAGE: news.com.au, 1 January 2020 |
NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons stated on Wednesday:
“We’re expecting widespread severe fire dangers dominated by very hot conditions, up into the 40s, dry air coming out of the centre of Australia and westerly winds that will dominate.”
Fortunately for the NSW Northern Rivers region it is not expected that Saturday's heatwave conditions will affect us.
With the Australian Bureau of Meteorology predicting daytime temperatures from 29°C at Yamba to 33°C at Lismore.
In other news:
The Australian Defence Force scaled up its assistance on New Year’s Day with a Black Hawk helicopter rescuing three people from the New South Wales town of Moruya while another Black Hawk evacuated at least one person from Mallacoota in Victoria.
But a decision is yet to be taken on whether the military will be needed for large-scale evacuations from Mallacoota and other towns ringed by fire, amid forecasts that conditions will worsen on Saturday.
UPDATE
Naval evacuation of civilians going ahead with reports up to 1,000 Victorian bushfire refugees expected to board HMAS Choules and MV Sycamore by early morning on 3 January 2020.
The NSW Northern Rivers region's anger at Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is not going away
Byron Bay Shire resident, singer-songwriter Tex Perkins, performed at Sydney's New Year's Eve open-air event bringing in 2020.
Millions of people across the country and around the world saw his performance during the ABC TV live broadcast.
Tex dedicated the song The Honeymoon is Over to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Immediately and very publicly flipping him the bird while roughly facing Kirribilli House where the prime minister and his selected guests had gathered to watch the fireworks.
News Corp's main online media site reported on 1 January 2020:
He was hammering home his disgust at the PM’s alleged lack of action on climate change and leadership as wildfires lash large parts of the country
The jubilant crowd’s reaction would be painful enough, but Perkins’ aptly chosen song “The Honeymoon Is Over”, which he released as a member of the band The Cruel Sea, features on Mr Morrison’s Spotify playlist titled “How good is Oz Rock! (ScoMo’s Classics)”
IMAGE: The Daily Examiner, 1 January 2019 |