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Bushfires Destroy Historic Mt. Stromlo Observatory
Anthony writes "The historic Mt Stromlo observatory has been destroyed by fires. Unfortunately Google cache and similar archives are the only available detailed information. Looks like the web site was housed at the observatory. Telescopes housed there were 74" and 50" reflectors along with the "Oddie" 9" refractor used by the Canberra Astronomical Society. Also destroyed were a number of student houses and workshops. The view from the air is one of molten domes and twisted metal. These fires have already destroyed 388 houses in the suburbs of Canberra. Luckily the winds have not picked up today, but the danger is still high."
I looked around at sites like ircache.net, vancouver-webpages.com, and elsewhere looking for a way to get pages from caches besides of course hitting them from the side of the served network (i.e. with a browser or a spider like wget or wwwwoffle).
There is a hierarchical cache at U. of Melbourne for students there, so if anyone is reading this from a dorm there you might be able to spider the cache of the site to preserve it on your hard drive.
If anyone is familiar with caching protocol and how to query other caches on the net, why not share them here. Much of the data may be on the net. Likewise if anyone knows how much is replicated on other sites it will save people the trouble. I'm just worried that the contents of these caches may expire one day soon..
I don't know if it's the worst in terms of loss of life. I think Ash Wednesday still holds the lead there.
But yes, it does seem to be one of the worst fires ever in terms of property loss.
The other week there was a fire here that threatened our town, it was the biggest fire I've ever seen in real life. I couldn't believe how quickly it raced up the hill that I'd been standing on only a week or two before taking photos. Simply, I would have been incinerated - there was no outrunning it. I watched the CFS chase after the front in vain, then minutes later it spread to the adjacent hill and went out of control in a gust of wind and little firefighters were running for their lives from tornadoes of flame. I could see occasional clouds of black smoke mixed in amongst the rest of the smoke, which my neighbor (retired CFS) said were from feral olive trees exploding! Yes, he (and others) say they explode like bombs! The firies said it was nothing compared to Ash Wednesday or the Sydney fires - if our 'little' fire seemed so huge in real life I can't imagine how big those fires were, as huge as they looked on TV.
The other day I was talking to my boss about the fire here and he told me he was in the CFS during Ash Wednesday... he said that he watched a whole hill explode into flames in less than a minute, how he'd watched houses literally explode and burn to the ground in only a couple of minutes.
I think that people overseas don't understand the ferociousness of bush fires... these fires become so intense that they turn into storms... they generate ferocious winds of cyclonic/hurricane strength as they suck up oxygen, which further fuels them out of control and sends smoke and embers kilometers into the air. Embers fall back to earth kilometers away, sparking other fires as they touch the tinder-dry bush. When I say storms I mean storms... it's like being plunged into the depths of hell where there's fire everywhere and as well as burning around you, it rains down from the sky. Flames reach 10's of metres into the air and rush forwards like a massive tidal wave. They say that they're so hot that trees explode into flames before the fire reaches them.
Yet for some reason people never learn the lessons. I feel so angry and sick to the stomach when I drive through the hills that were annihilated on Ash Wednesday and see houses with roofs covered with dead leaves and trees growing alongside and overhanging houses. Houses without sprinkler systems on their roofs... people disregarding simple things like clearing all vegetation for 20m from around your house and keeping gutters and roofs clean - things that I remember being drilled into me at primary school (which was, I admit, a few years after Ash Wednesday). These people behave like this then *expect* *volunteer* firefighters to put their lives on the line to save their houses when disaster strikes! How can people be so complacent?
Every year now the CFS warns us that we're facing a greater and greater risk of another Ash Wednesday because there's been no fires since and the fuel load is higher than ever - so high that it's suicide to do back burning - they just have to leave it now. It's only a matter of time before it happens again, yet people *still* don't keep their houses in shape!
I'm not religious, but God help us all should we have another Ash Wednesday.