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RESIDENTS ALONG AUSTRALIA’S east coast have been told it’s now too late to leave their homes as out of control bushfires continued to burn in the region.
Thousands of firefighters have been deployed across New South Wales in anticipation of “catastrophic” conditions today, but were unable to prevent some fires from breaching containment lines.
Authorities told residents in fire-stricken regions to seek shelter, warning that they had no time to escape before their communities were engulfed.
Eleven of the more than 100 bushfires from Sydney to Brisbane have been declared as emergencies, with numerous towns under direct threat.
“Plenty of people have heeded the warnings and have left early,” said New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons. “Obviously, others have chosen not to.”
“Our advice to those who still may be there is that it is too late to leave on most of these fires, and sheltering is now your only option.”
Experts have described the conditions as the worst on record, as spring temperatures climbed toward 40 degrees Celsius and winds topped 80km/h across a zone which has been plagued by persistent drought.
Even before unfavourable weather hit, the fires killed three people and destroyed at least 150 homes.
Strong west-to-east winds have spread existing blazes from dusty bushland to urban areas closer to the coast.
“The conditions are expected to get worse,” Fitzsimmons said, warning residents in adjacent areas to stay alert. “Complacency kills.”
Up to 600 schools were closed in the region, as well as many national parks, while a total fire ban was also introduced.
The military has also been brought in to help firefighters with logistics and water-dropping sorties, with more than 100 aircraft deployed.
In Sydney, authorities do not expect the city’s four-plus million people to be under direct threat, but a health warning was issued as a cloak of smoke haze drifted into the country’s biggest city.
This bushfire season is in its infancy but is already on track to be one of Australia’s worst on record.
In New South Wales alone more than a million hectares – roughly the area of Jamaica – have already burned, three times more than the whole of the last season.
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The mindless distruction of Wood Quay by Dublin City Council deprived future generations of what was possibly the most important archaeological site in western Europe and a major lucrative tourist attraction. Instead we have possibly the ugliest building in Europe.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: Agreed. http://www.historyireland.com/volume-22/heritage-outrage-wood-quay/
@Honeybadger197: I was on that march, thanks for the link.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: Good man, no problem.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: Absolutely 110% correct. This was mindless vandalism by Dublin City Council and if The Minister of Arts and Heritage has her way they will destroy the Moore Street 1916 Battlefield site too. Our future generations heritage is in the hands of mindless individuals who’s motivations are seriously suspect.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: didn’t the Danish government lobby the oiks here in trying to realize the significant nature of woodquay
What happened at Wood Quay is one of the greatest scandals in modern Irish history, the largest Viking Settlement in Europe discovered in our capital city, the revenue that could have been made from tourism, and they built that horrendous obscenity on top of it. The DCC offices should be torn down and the site preserved.
During the time of Brown Envelopes
@Mick Cullen: you say that as if somehow it were in the past Mick. It isn’t. It’s the same as ever and with NAMA getting worse no doubt. Unaccountable, enormously wealthy NAMA. The ultimate ‘hong bao’ (red packet) as they say in China. But plenty more besides it.
Caffrey (my own mother’s surname) stems from the son of Godfred (Viking). McAuliffe, from son of Olaf. McAuley, also from Olaf. In the Irish language, we have margadh, scilling, bád, garraí, seol, etc. They left a very rich heritage in our history. Doyle, Gallagher, etc. have also been linked to the Vikings, but we’re not 100% certain
We know one thing. Sam Stephenson proved them bones dem bones dem dry bones make great hardcore for office block foundations.
Amazing really. To look at those bones and reflect that when they were animated it was in a world so far removed from ours, topographically and geographically the same but in every other aspect far removed as ours as the next habitable planet from us is. To look at their goods and see they’re not so different from ours yet though. Those are the goods of civilized people, at least civilized towards each other and perfectly barbaric to everyone else. And are we so different today, with our foreign wars and colonisations (as in we in the West)? But we absorbed them, despite two hundred years of largely turning the other cheek it seems to me, booted them out at Clontarf and kept what they left behind. So they’re us too. We should have respect for them even if they, setting fires at the bottom of round towers and smashing up the altar vessels while robbing the gold and silver, killing the monks and burning their books of knowledge that were the only things preserved the accumulated wisdom of the Classical Age, did not much respect us. Suppose few hundred years from now archaeologists will be excavating the ruins of Anglo-Irish houses and churchyards and we’ll be saying the same and holding no heart hearts towards their descendants in England no more than we do to the Vikings now. Time heals all as it erodes all.
@John O’Driscoll: well written
It was the Vikings that brought red hair to this country, now every c#nt on the planet thinks everyone with red hair is Irish. Thanks a bunch Vikings
@Blue Moon rising: And the cancer gene as some believe? But is red hair not Celts???
@Blue Moon rising: Did you mean to say blue eyed and blond?
@Alois Irlmaier: I had that perception too until a visit to Denmark; I was expecting blonde & fair but was surprised to discover that red hair & freckles predominates
Those two buildings should be to torn down what lies beneath is worth more to Dublin now and in the future than for office space for civil servants
Very interesting, thank you. A word of caution though. Radiocarbon dating has a pretty wide potential error margin. During the Early Medieval period written historical evidence is usually far more reliable for chronological stuff in Ireland in particular. Wish it weren’t so, to cast doubt on such a good story, but lets enjoy the possibility anyway…..
Well their hardly going to meander into the national history museum and say pull a chair up we have something to tell you lovely people of Ireland. The Vikings were savage they played a part in this world but there gone.
The part about the man getting on with it in spite of having a bad back is definitely appropriate to me. Since 2015 I’m waiting for help with a bad back and still waiting under the HSE. I guess I’ll take it to to my grave like this guy. The only difference is my grave won’t be robbed because the Viking dies with more possessions than I have.
The Viking’s were not really see off there were other settlements around the place apart from Dublin
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