Effect of Australia Bushfires on Local Climate

Saturday was dreadful. Leaving a friend to the airport with the temperature above 30 degrees and rising. Only able to really breathe properly in the air conditioned airport, everywhere outside the heat is a suffocating wall. Imagine a massive hot air blower right in front of your face - forever. You can feel the tar melt beneath your feet as you bake in the desert wind.

Driving back home, on the outskirts of town, getting close to the hills, see thick smoke. Reaching home, there's a fire on the edge of the highway about 500 metres away from the house, across the gully. Right now it's only a small one but there's a thick plume of yellow smoke and the flames are right beside the train line, on the edge of the quarry opposite. Because so many people live in the area, under the trees and in the hills, the firefighters are closing down the highway, the railway and all roads around. There's a roar in the sky as two helicopters wheel into view and fly straight into the smoke, waterbombing the flames. They come back over our heads as we look up in fear and awe as they go to suck water out of the lake down the back road behind us, and then fly back into the smoke.

I remember in Belfast city centre, a bomb going off and knowing instinctively I had to run in the opposite direction to the blast. As I was running, with everyone else, the police were racing towards the explosion. Stays with you, that kind of feeling.

As the temperature heads close to 40 degrees that instinct tells me that we have to get our things ready to leave. You're supposed to make a decision to stay and fight the fire, or leave early with as few things as possible. It's easier to think about this, or contemplate it, than to actually do it. I still feel calm and in one way I am confident of staying and fighting, but standing up on the hill and watching the flames race across the railway line I don't feel so sure. We'd better get our precious things and pets together, ready to go. Teddies and the dog. A favourite shirt and family photos. $132 in cash.

Temperature is now well past 40 degrees - over body heat and it's getting hard to breathe. Sweat is pouring down my face and I feel giddy going up the hill to where my guitars are. Apart from family and animals you realise very quickly how few things are very important. I take drawings from loved ones, some unpublished things, a couple of guitars and aubergine, and my double bass bow. It feels bad leavingthe double bass, an instrument made in 1840 which I've had since I was 17, but walking out of the room taking only the bow, I tread on a dry branch which cracks and explodes in a cloud of dust. There's been so little rain here for so long that nature is a desiccated thing. The bow is just another piece of wood - loved and strung with horsehair, but the essentially the same thing. It'll be a reminder of the bass I bought in London and brought to Belfast and which sailed from there to Australia through the Suez Canal last year.

Sweat pouring off me and the dog panting for air. the chickens will be the last thing to be put into the car. They're cowering by their water bowl, I think the water's too hot for them to drink The Teenager is taking photos which I will post here, and we're sweeping up as many sticks and twigs as we can, any of which could set alight if embers start being blown our way. Pieces of glass too, which can set the dry grasses alight. Filling buckets with water and leaving them round the house. The water tanks I thought were full are almost empty, a trickle of brown water comes out of one. All the time the radio is plays loud with constantly updated information on the fires, and sirens go off across the highway. News of our local fire has reached the airwaves and the helicopters step up their relentless waterbombing as the smoke gets thicker. The wind is still blowing away from this house, up the gully.

From the balcony at the front of the house you can see right down to the railway line, where the fire has crossed the tracks. The firefighters are sill right there, - lights flashing, pumping water into the flaming bush - the Country Fire Authority are the heroes of the whole emergency. If the fires cross the highway or the quarry then a lot of towns will be gone. The temperature hits 46.5 degrees and the radio says this is the highest temperature ever recorded in an Australian capital city.

The heat is Biblical, and the skeletons of blackened trees after the fire has gone through look like photos of Operation Barbarossa, or a plague of fire. They are otherworldly and could be as easily in winter as in summer - it's the absence of colour which is most shocking. It's the death of nature.

There has been a change in the weather promised all day. It's something which happens even on moderately hot days (30 something) and is called a 'cool change'. The temperature will drop 10 or more degrees very suddenly - from one minute to the next. The radio predicts this cool change for around 6 or 7 o'clock, and that's an hour or so away. The forecast also says that the wind is about to change direction, which could be good or bad. By now hectares are burnt and whole country towns are on fire. People are dying in their houses and cars, running away and in hiding places. I can't imagine what the wall of flame feels like close up, or how anyone could withstand it.

Watching, waiting, preparing. Listening. The change happens. The wind starts to blow cool air, and the temperature drops to the mid-thirties, The firemen are winning and the sirens have stopped. Helicopters circle without dropping water. It's strangely silent - no traffic but the helicopters. There is still smoke, but only small areas of flame, not the line of fire which swept up along the railway line earlier. We gather together for strength, it looks like everything is going to be alright.

*

That was 7 February. Now it's a few days later, and the temperature is down in the low twenties. Pictures of devastation have come through from the country towns, and people are grieving for the dead and for their lost homes and livelihoods. Everyone's rallying round to help each other and politicians cry on the national news. I am proud to have voted for a Prime Minister and a Deputy PM who cry in public - I like to watch them being honest. Now they've got to legislate for the environment not treat it as another company on the stock market. There are floods in Queensland, while the reservoirs in Victoria are 32% full - that's 5% down on last year, just as last year was below the year before that. At this rate this place has six or seven years left. What you gonna do when the river runs dry? If anyone tells you that climate change is a fiction, you can laugh until you cry, because it's a lie.

Things are OK right now on the side of this hill, in the outskirts of Melbourne, but not in the countryside where the big fires are. 170 dead and the number is rising. Unfortunately, I think it's the way things will be - Leonard's songs 'The Future' and 'Who By Fire' have been going through my head, after the concert last week, as well as this one of mine,

"You got to drive real fast and drive real far
Because the weather's going to get you, wherever you are.
Don't choose the wrong way ...'

...Whoever you vote for, make sure they're green - and if you see a firemen give him a smile.

-Andy White

To learn more about Andy White, hear his music, send him a message or look at his pictures, please go to www.myspace.com/andywhitemyspace 

Submitted by Global warming at: March 4, 2009

The heat is Biblical, and the skeletons of blackened trees after the fire has gone through look like photos of Operation Barbarossa, or a plague of fire. They are otherworldly and could be as easily in winter as in summer - it's the absence of colour which is most shocking. It's the death of nature.

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