Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby Overlandman » Wed 23 Jan, 2019 7:39 pm

From ABC

Coulsons Boeing 737 is being used, & Air Tractors sucking up water from Lake Pedder.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-22/ ... r/10734312

I saw Coulsons Hercules fly from Avalon yesterday evening, drop it’s load near Miena then fly back to Avalon. (Flightradar24)
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby beardless » Wed 23 Jan, 2019 10:39 pm

Overlandman wrote:ABC news tonight reported that fire crews are setting up sprinkler systems in the Mt Anne / Pandani shelf area.

I am glad they are doing what they can to save the wondrous Pandani Shelf and Mt Anne area.

I wonder where they are getting the water from. Perhaps that body of water just below the main few shelfs.

Overlandman wrote:From ABC
Coulsons Boeing 737 is being used, & Air Tractors sucking up water from Lake Pedder.

It is perhaps some small consolation to the many that mourn the drowning of the real Lake Pedder that the vast waters of the Lake Pedder impoundment may in some way help protect surrounding World Heritage wilderness.
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby Rabid K9 » Thu 24 Jan, 2019 1:17 am

Overlandman wrote:ABC news tonight reported that fire crews are setting up sprinkler systems in the Mt Anne / Pandani shelf area.


Thats bad. Really bad.

The cut off low about to descend on Tassie went through us (South West WA) last night & today. Very vigorous summer system, felt like an ill wind. We got quite a bit of rain out of it, but would have gladly sent that south eastward.
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby Overlandman » Thu 24 Jan, 2019 8:18 am

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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby mikeb » Tue 29 Jan, 2019 6:35 am

Glad to see that fires around Mt Eliza appear to have died down. However very concerned about rapid spread of fires around Eastern Arthur’s, west of Mt Field West and Great Pine Tier. Lots of new Sentinel hotspots today.
https://sentinel.ga.gov.au/#/
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby north-north-west » Tue 29 Jan, 2019 7:18 am

Eastern Arthurs? That's new. Oh *&%$#!, what is going to be next?

Ahhhh, that's part of the Riveaux/Arve/Arthur Plaiins complex. Looks like it's about to take Piguenit and Hopetoun and trying for Bobs, with another front heading for Hartz. Blimey that thing has really taken off.
So many fronts on that thing that the TFS are labelliing "uncontrollable".

Moores Valley and Dolphin ridge fires look like they may join up as well.
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby tastrax » Tue 29 Jan, 2019 7:55 am

Yep - its a big beast now with no end in sight. It will take a good rain to extinguish this lot

https://maps.thelist.tas.gov.au/listmap ... kId=348422
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby Wherever I may roam » Tue 29 Jan, 2019 8:26 am

Is my understanding correct... Parks list the South Coats track as still open however the Huon Highway is closed to all south bound traffic. Are walkers potentially being flown into melaleuca but road transport is unable to go down to pick them up? Or at least vehicles are driving through areas affected by fire?
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby north-north-west » Tue 29 Jan, 2019 8:55 am

They may have to wait until the fire situation eases. Only way to get specific advice on that would be to contact TasPAWS directly.
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby doogs » Tue 29 Jan, 2019 9:54 am

The road was closed to south bound traffic yesterday, it was open for people wanting to leave the area. This could of course change rapidly and it could be closed completely for days...
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby mikeb » Wed 30 Jan, 2019 5:44 am

Luckman’s Lead, slopes of the Boiler Plates and The Dial, and Cracroft Valley now burnt. Lucifer Ridge up to 100m from Lake Roseanne? Has spotted into the headwaters of the New River. :cry:
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby tastrax » Wed 30 Jan, 2019 8:14 am

Boundaries TFS - 1800hrs 29th

EasternArthurs 2019-01-30-0800.png


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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby czechingoutofhere » Wed 30 Jan, 2019 11:47 am

Just saw this pic on Twitter from near Federation yesterday, fresh hotspots heading that way now too :(
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby Grindelwalddave » Wed 30 Jan, 2019 3:01 pm

Very heartbreaking looking through this. Lot of blame directed towards Greens/Greenies/Environmentalists on social media...
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby potato » Wed 30 Jan, 2019 3:17 pm

Very ill-informed blame.
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby north-north-west » Wed 30 Jan, 2019 5:20 pm

Grindelwalddave wrote:Very heartbreaking looking through this. Lot of blame directed towards Greens/Greenies/Environmentalists on social media...


None of which can be supported by facts. I've seen people saying that if cattle grazing hadn't been stopped (in the South West??) this wouldn't have happened, that natural forests are a hazard (actually,monoculture plantations are the biggest problem), that we should be raking the forest floor to remove fuel (yes, this one turned up here), all sorts of rubbish.
Then there's the old line about "the bush burns and it will all regrow in no time". But fires like this are not normal, the alpine and Gondwanan vegetation communities are not fire-adapted, dry lightning strikes in this quantity are unheard of in Tassie . . .

We need to get the real story out, but it seems most of the MSM is ignoring it.
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby tastrax » Wed 30 Jan, 2019 8:50 pm

Grindelwalddave wrote:Very heartbreaking looking through this. Lot of blame directed towards Greens/Greenies/Environmentalists on social media...


You get used to that in Tassie - lots of ill-informed opinions, lots of armchair experts, expectations of "hard and fast extinguishing of fires' in wild areas, folks that think retardants work well in forest, folks that think water bombing is the panacea for all the problems....... all part of the ongoing education process
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby Paul » Thu 31 Jan, 2019 7:33 am

My question is :

What fuel reduction burns have occured in the areas of these current fires, in the past 3 years ?

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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby czechingoutofhere » Thu 31 Jan, 2019 9:13 am

I just remembered this article from a couple of years ago, checked the TFS fire map and this site is less than a kilometer from the remote SW fires!! :cry:

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au ... -tasmania/
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby tastrax » Thu 31 Jan, 2019 9:32 am

Paul wrote:My question is :

What fuel reduction burns have occured in the areas of these current fires, in the past 3 years ?

Paul.


Here is the fire history for Tasmania - https://maps.thelist.tas.gov.au/listmap ... kId=349591
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby Nuts » Thu 31 Jan, 2019 10:02 am

I noticed with a previous link your layers don't seem to be saving for those List-ilnks (Phil)?:

Screen Shot 2019-01-31 at 10.46.20 am.png


There's some strong opinion on fire management from 'anti-green', some strong opinion from the 'green'.
I'm not finding anything much to support a strong opinion.
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby potato » Thu 31 Jan, 2019 10:33 am

None of the opinions are really going to matter as the impacts of climate change ramp up. We are seeing this now... no amount of hazard reduction or suppression activities will solve the problem. Hazard reduction only works on a small range of fires and suppression only works on small fires.
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby north-north-west » Thu 31 Jan, 2019 11:12 am

Any mainlanders wondering what it's like - I'm on the eastern side of Frederick Henry Bay (that's the one south of the airport). I can't see further than the headland a bit over 1km away due to the smoke being blown over from the Huon fires. The smell is getting stronger, and it's not just the smell of smoke, you can smell ash and burnt vegetation as well. I'm going to need a filter to breathe through if it stays like this for much longer. Or maybe just dig my O2 deco bottle and reg out of the shed and give the lungs a nice healthy dose. Or both.
We had a little rain with the electrical storm overnight (started about 2am) and a gentle shower has just started. But that's here. This morning BoM was not reporting any of that overnight rain going where it's needed, and the forecasts reckon this little break is temporary - it's business as usual tomorrow.

And the fire that started recently near Murdunna is, like those up near Blessington, suspected arson.
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby Paul » Thu 31 Jan, 2019 11:50 am

The LIST fire history of the past 5 years, is extremely light on for the current fire locations.
It therefore appears to me that fuel reduction burns in the current fire locations has not been occuring to any significant extent.

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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby devoswitch » Thu 31 Jan, 2019 12:29 pm

I dare say it wouldn’t be very feasible to get in and do fuel reduction burns in some of these remote areas. Also I believe a lot of the fires (not these ones) that end up starting and getting away are from fuel reduction burns themselves jumping containment lines.
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby czechingoutofhere » Thu 31 Jan, 2019 12:33 pm

You guys are pretty amazing at recognising the landscapes here. Is that the Needles on the right and Tim Shea on the left? The Sentinels and FIRMS maps show hotspots there that have crossed the Gordon River Road.
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby Nuts » Thu 31 Jan, 2019 12:41 pm

Paul wrote:The LIST fire history of the past 5 years, is extremely light on for the current fire locations.
It therefore appears to me that fuel reduction burns in the current fire locations has not been occuring to any significant extent.

Paul.



There were a few if you drill in with other layers. But true, not many. Similarly some current fires have burnt to the boundary of places that have, a few, not many.
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby blakey_ » Thu 31 Jan, 2019 1:09 pm

You can't permalink a listmap with layers AFAIK.

If you want to see the current fire boundary, add either of the Fire Boundaries layers (both the same):

Image

And this shows current fire burnt areas (solid grey) plus planned burns (all history, black yellow hatch):

Image
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby tastrax » Thu 31 Jan, 2019 1:46 pm

Paul wrote:The LIST fire history of the past 5 years, is extremely light on for the current fire locations.
It therefore appears to me that fuel reduction burns in the current fire locations has not been occuring to any significant extent.

Paul.


Here is a case where a fuel reduction burn from 2017/2018 was not enough to pull up a wildfire

AnneFRBurn.PNG
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Re: Gell River Fire - Lake Rhona Region

Postby tastrax » Thu 31 Jan, 2019 1:54 pm

blakey_ wrote:You can't permalink a listmap with layers AFAIK.


You certainly can, but in the last couple of days I think LISTMAP has been under quite a heavy load so that may be the reason layers are not showing up - I have noted it failing with bookmarks on a few occasions lately. Also if you are 'logged in" then the recipient of the bookmark will only see public layers (or those they have permissions to see)

Page 23 - http://listdata.thelist.tas.gov.au/publ ... aphelp.pdf
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