Australian Bush Fire

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/22/world/asia/australia-fires/

This article I found is on the wildfires in Australia from CNN.com. I thought this would be an interesting topic to blog about because we are learning about wildfires in our disaster class.

Unfortunately, Australia is suffering from over 70 wildfires across its states and 29 of the fires are uncontained. These fires are moving fast and are now threatening the western side of the state of Sydney. These fires are ranging across a 1,000-mile line. Australia’s Rural Fire Services are trying to stop the fires or at least make them less intense. One of the deputies even said that if they don’t succeed in their strategies to stop the fire or the weather worsens, it could be devastating. Hundreds of homes have been lost and more are expected to disappear. We learned in class how dangerous wildfires can be and how they are started. One of the ways wildfires are started is from the weather. When there is high relative humidity, strong winds, and high temperatures, wildfires are more likely to start up. This article talks about how bad the weather conditions are in Australia at this time. This wild fire has already caused one death; therefore, the fire officials are urging residents to evacuate. People are worried that these fires will join together and make one big mega-fire. People are also coming together as a community to help stop the fires. “The state of emergency issued by authorities gives firefighters and police the authority to carry out measures such as cutting off water, power and gas and ordering mandatory evacuations of areas at risk.”

Another way wildfires are started is by humans. This fire in particular is still under investigation by officials. We learned that humans start most wildfires and officials are saying that this fire could have been started by a military training exercise. Another unfortunate fact that this article reported was that an 11-year-old and a 15-year-old were arrested for started a bush fire that spread more than 12,000 acres.

Response to Parker Byun:

http://byunp.wordpress.com/

Parker,

I have not studied earthquakes and I feel like I don’t hear about them very often so it was interesting to read about the earthquake in the Philippines. I like how you formatted your blog post. First, you gave me a nice summary of the article. Then, you gave your own analysis of what you think of the earthquake and its damages. You gave a good argument and I definitely saw how passionate you were about this topic. Good job!