Hi,
Paul - we are fine. Our beautiful part of the world is scarred and beaten, but the suffering here due to the Bunyip State Forest Fire almost pales to insignificance...what has happened further afield in Victoria has us all shellshocked and broken-hearted. Sadly we know people who know people who have perished...
Conditions on Saturday were "so perfect" for fire. In fact Saturday's fires have been named "superfires".
As much as I am not a fan of cut and paste...I just can't paraphrase this:
Drought, strong winds and heat combined to produce Victoria fires Article from Herald Sun February 11, 2009 by Alice Coster
CONDITIONS for a perfect firestorm led to Australia's greatest natural disaster at the weekend.
Drought, hurricane-force wind and record temperatures after a record heatwave combined to create Victoria's deadly Black Saturday bushfires.
The University of Melbourne's senior lecturer in fire ecology and management, Kevin Tolhurst, said conditions on Black Saturday were some of the worst the world had seen for a potential outbreak.
He said the fires were so hot the energy they released could have supplied Victoria with electricity for at least two years.
Up to 80,000 kilowatts per metre of heat was expelled as the fires raged on Saturday.
Dr Tolhurst said this equalled about 500 atomic bombs landing on Hiroshima.
"Eyewitness accounts said they didn't see evidence of fire and then all of a sudden they felt the area around them was exploding," Dr Tolhurst said.
The unprecedented bushfires were so savage because of the previous week's heatwave. He said this sapped up the vegetation's moisture, making the land tinder dry.
"What was quite unusual and unique about it was the fires took so readily and developed so quickly. The conditions were so dry the fuel ignited," Dr Tolhurst said.
Department of Sustainability and Environment fire behaviour specialist Peter Billing said spot fires, travelling up to 15km from the fire front, rapidly accelerated the blaze.
"Spotting defeats the control of the fire,' Mr Billing said.
The front then fragmented, creating fingers and tongues of fire rapidly spreading up spurs and gullies.
"Bits and pieces of a very ugly fire will go all over the place," he said. "The original fire, the parent fire, can fragment so it is not a clean edge and you cannot determine exactly where it is."
He said prevailing wind, with gusts reaching hurricane force levels up to 120km/h, initially drove the fire.
"But once it is established it becomes a monster of its own physics," he said.
CSIRO senior fire researcher Andrew Sullivan said Victoria was ideally placed for bad fires because of its climate, vegetation, topography and the phenomenon of hot and dry wind from the continent's centre.
"The conditions on Saturday were typical of bad fire days like Black Friday in 1939 and Ash Wednesday in 1983," Mr Sullivan said.
"Victoria is the perfect spot to have really bad fires."