Slashdot Mirror
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."
"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."
/. story?
Did the fire that destroyed the site happen before or after the
This is an interesting article about why some forest fires are more destructive than they could be.
"Let's give a good Slashdotting before the Observatory passed away..."
Let's all bow our heads and press F5 for a 21-megabit salute.
The area outside Canberra, Australia's equivalent of Washington, has been on fire for a few days. Yesterday things got much worse and the fires spread over a huge area, eventually reaching the urban areas.
Atleast 400 homes have been destroyed, and 3 people are known to be dead.
I myself was watching the fires during the day as they got closer and closer to urban areas. (The City of Canberra was designed before it was built and there are lots of bush areas between suburbs). When the wind picked up the fires were spreading over huge areas, and I could see flames about 30ft high, taller than the trees they were burning down.
The sky was completely covered in smoke all day, and it was very dark even at 3:30pm. Traffic was frantic and everyone had their lights on. At the supermarket people were desperately stocking up on food supplies.
A few hours later the dried-grassy area right next to my suburb (Monash) caught fire.. some people were evacuating their homes, while others were desperately putting water on their roofs.
After watching the fires get closer and closer to our homes for about 10 minutes, a group of about 40 of us decided to cross the road and put out the fire ourselves. Some people had buckets of water and the rest used branches ripped off nearby trees.
As we got near the flames we realised how hot the fire was. I could hear people yelling "God that's hot" and "fuck that burns".
We hit the flames with our branches and put out the fire bit by bit. At the same time people ran across with water, tipping it on the fire quickly but surely. Once we'd cleared a certain amount we could get through to the lake just beyond the fire, and some people ran down and filled up their bottles etc and then continued fighting the fire with the water from the lake.
It was difficult to breathe and most people were wearing a tshirt or cloth over their faces. Every few minutes I had to stop and get some breath and try to clear my eyes. There was a sense of communion and group-effort.. everyone working together towards the same ends. We had gone from people who wouldn't notice each other walking down the street to people who were going out of their way to save their homes.
After a while we had cleared all the fire, and we stood around relieved.. I was covered in sweat from the heat, and I had ashes all over my clothes. The others who had also been running back and forth stomping out the fires were in a similar condition.
Once we were sure all the fire was out, as we were looking at ourselves and surveying the charred grounds, someone amongst us triumphantly said "Better than watching our houses burn down!". I agreed.
The fire started when some of the lab's employees got drunk and decided to see who could burn more ants using the telescope.
Professor Frink was in the lead with 13 when they all made another alcohol run and accidently bumped the telescope leaving it pointed at a pile of oily rags in their rush to get "shotgun".
The fires have been burning for weeks in one form or another, yesterday a combination of old fires and new ones reached Canberra. Canberra is often called "the bush capital", it's a city embedded in bushland. So things could have been a LOT worse.
...
The weather was hot hot hot - 37 Celsius. Strong dry winds coming in off a thousand kilometres of desert to the northwest. It hasn't rained here for about 9 months, Australia is currently in the worst drought for generations, so all the forest is tinder dry. Australian eucalypt leaves have a relatively high oil content, when they start buring the canopy can literally explode.
I was driving earlier in the day, and all I could see to the west was a bank of smoke covering the entire horizon. As the day progressed the smoke covered the city downwind of the fires. It was a thick black cloud, like a heavy thunderstorm. At my house the smoke was pretty high up, so the air at groundlevel was fine, just a little smoke smell.
Things could still be pretty bad. Although hundreds of houses were lost, and fire stations, schools, medical centres and so on, all this is really just on the western edge of the city. The city has many other areas which are just as susceptible given the current drought. We're right in the middle of the hot part of summer, and even hopes for rain depend on El Nino ending around about March. If it doesn't, and we don't get rain for another year,
Getting back to the observatory, Mount Stromlo observatory is on the outskirts of the city, on a medium sized hill called, um, Mount Stromlo. Mount Stromlo had a heavy forest cover. The observatory area on the top of the hill was cleared for some distance around the domes, but I guess the fireball from tens of thousands of tons of wood all going up at once must have been overwhelming.
There were a number of houses on top of the mountain for astronomer families and support staff, I guess they must have been evacuated early on, there's only one way down from the mountain.
It's a big historic loss. The observatory has been of reducing importance in past years due to the encroaching city, but measures such as replacing street lighting with observatory friendly lighting were being undertaken. I doubt it will be rebuilt because of this.
Jamie
This is the email running around amongst the Australian Astronomers ..
... Stromlo Observatory is effectively destroyed. All people are
...
Subject: Update on Stromlo Destruction
I have just gotten off the phone with Gary Da Costa and can confirm the
worst
accounted for which is the most important thing. All of the residential
houses, bar two, are gone, as are the 50", Yale-Columbia, Oddie, Old Admin
Building, Workshops, etc. The 74" and Visitor Centre are unaccounted for
right now, but are on the worst side of the mountain and are probably
lost. Gary is hearing that the Woolley building suffered water damage,
but may be salvageable. Nothing reported on the Duffield. In terms of
practicalities, the loss of the Workshop may be hardest to deal with.
NIFS, the instrument soon to be delivered to Gemini, is lost, and what the
loss of the workshop means for the one they had just been commissioned to
build is yet to be sorted.
More news as I hear it
Brad
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 12:11:30 +1100 (EST)
From: Brad Gibson
Subject: Stromlo Observatory Destroyed
As most of you are by now aware, most of south-west Canberra has been lost
to the raging bushfires. 2500 people have been evacuated thus far with
400 homes destroyed as of this morning. I am now hearing that all of
Stromlo Observatory has been destroyed. As best as I have been able to
find out, no one on the mountain has lost their lives, although at least
one person died in the Stromlo Forest Settlement. I'll pass on updats as
I hear them.
BKG
Prof. Brad K. Gibson
Why Read CNN when you can read the real australian news at the ABC site.
-- RTFM:Slackware::Beer:Saturday
For those interested, most of the damage was caused not by regular fires, but by a "firestorm", burning embers raining down from the sky. This caused hundreds of spot fires around the suburbs, and in inaccessible areas, gaps between houses and fences, in power poles. This type of fire (this large) has never happened in Australia before.
m .au/National/story_45108.asp
For those blaming fire services for not being fast enough, some facts:
* The Canberra fire forces are equipped to deal with SIX house fires at the same time.
* Over FOUR HUNDRED homes have been destroyed.
Many more fires have burned and been put out by residents using garden hoses and garden tools.
Even those of you without a calculator can probably see where the problem lies.
Some suburbs have lost access to water completely, with water station pumps burned out.
One power station has been completely razed, residents in that area may be without power for a month or more.
Several fire engines and police cars have been lost, roads are blocked by fallen trees and power lines, some of which are on fire.
Firefighters have been out saving other people's homes while their own burned to the ground.
A fire station itself caught fire, and no engines went to put it out, as people's homes were still in danger.
Give them some credit for putting their lives and homes on the line, to save others.
_______________________
News links:
Residents are posting in a Canberra community at LiveJournal.
Canberra Communtiy
Google news about Canberra:
Google news
Canberra Connect Government Website (sometimes is not loading)
Canberra Connect
ACT Bushfire Status
www.esb.act.gov.au/media/bushfire.htm
Red Cross locating evacuees
www.news.com.au
Make a donation to the Red Cross
RedCross.org.au
_______________________
There's news from Observatory astronomers here
_______________________
http://news.ninemsn.co
Fires destroy Stromlo observatory
Irreplaceable equipment worth millions of dollars was destroyed when the Canberra bushfires ravaged the historic Mount Stromlo Observatory.
Research officer Vince Ford, a 38-year veteran of the observatory, told AAP staff were given 20 minutes' notice to evacuate as a fire storm on Mount Stromlo caught authorities by surprise.
A single road through pine forests links the observatory, established by the Commonwealth in 1924, with suburban Canberra.
"There's no way we could have saved it," Mr Ford said.
The fire storm destroyed all the observatory's telescopes and the original observatory building, which dated back to 1924.
"It's gone, it's all gone," Mr Ford said.
"We've lost all the telescopes, the administration building, which was the original observatory back in 1924.
"The first telescope has actually been there since 1910, it's gone.
"The main research telescopes, the 74-inch and 50-inch, they're gone. I've just seen pictures of it from the air and we don't have a telescope left."
The Australian National University (ANU) facility was one the premier astronomy training and research centres in Australia.
"(It's a huge loss) from a historical point of view, from a cultural point of view, from a scientific point of view," Mr Ford said.
"It's an absolute disaster."
Observatory staff still hope they may be able to salvage some of their research, stored on computers in office buildings that might have escaped the worst of the blaze.
The observatory offices are believed to be standing, but have been water damaged.
"At least we should be able to recover the hard disks from some of the computers, but at this stage we're guessing," Mr Ford said.
"All we know is the observatory is gone."
Some back-up files would also have been stored at the main ANU campus in Canberra.
"But a lot of the work will be at the observatory," Mr Ford said.
"Some of us, being suspicious sods, have stuff at home, but most of it would have been on the computers or in the offices up at the observatory."
ANU vice-chancellor Ian Chubb was due to meet observatory chiefs to be briefed on the extent of the damage. ©AAP 2003