Bushfire Threatens Major Telescope

Thorfinn.au writes "Authorities are warning lives and property are under immediate threat as a large bushfire burns out of control near communities in northern New South Wales. The Rural Fire Service has issued an emergency warning for the large, fast moving blaze near Coonabarabran, which has already destroyed two properties. Siding Springs, the principal optical observatory is under threat. The MtStromlo observatory was destroyed in a bush fire in 2003."

Comments

NEVER FEAR!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Captain Periscope will rescue Major Telescope!

The good part

[fredan]

is that they got an telescope so they can actually see the bushfire!

Re:The good part

[fredan]

wait, what?

So they can't see the bushfire with their current telescope since the money for a new telescope to see the bushfire actually went to the fire brigade?!?!

Re:Threat Passed

[Tapewolf]

The threat has passed. Some minor out buildings were damaged, but otherwise the majority of the main equipment was unharmed.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/13/siding_spring_survives_firestorm/

Re:Where

[Threni]

Also, whenever London is mentioned I feel they should put "London, England" in case people confuse it with other Londons, such as London, Ohio (it's 2 miles south of Cowpoke).

Why so many bush fires?

[demonlapin]

Do they never do controlled burns to reduce the burden of undergrowth? Seems like they keep having large bush fires threaten important stuff.

Re:Why so many bush fires?

[dwywit]

2 reasons. The size of the area to be burnt, and funding.
 
When you have limited funds, you have to be very selective where you spend it doing this years' choice of burns. Rural Fire Brigades (at least here in Qld) have to do a lot of fundraising to stay afloat - they're volunteers, and one of the few charities I always support when the phone rings to sell me raffle tickets.

Re:Why so many bush fires?

[Megahard]

He lied so much his pants ignite often.

Re:Why so many bush fires?

[FirephoxRising]

We do have some fairly extreme weather here, and the last three years have been wet, making hazard reduction burns difficult. Now we have lots of fuel and this summer is dry and hot. As the temperature rises, the relative humidity falls and the fine fuels dry out in less than an hour. Then you have a very large fuel load with the fine fuels (grass, twigs, leaves) acting like tinder. All you need then is an ignition source and high winds and you have a major problem.

Re:Why so many bush fires?

[Nom du Keyboard]

Do they never do controlled burns to reduce the burden of undergrowth? Seems like they keep having large bush fires threaten important stuff.

One wonders if this is Environmentalism run amuck of putting out all fires until instead of number of small natural fires that don't do significant damage, the fuel builds up into inferno range that does great damage?

Or you could just clear the brush around your observatory regularly -- again if the Environmentalists let you. Australia is rather weird in this regard.
 

Re:Why so many bush fires?

[rolfwind]

When someone does call, make sure it's a local volunteer and not some firm outsourced for a percentage of the cut. Otherwise find a way to give directly.

Re:Why so many bush fires?

[tconnors]

Do they never do controlled burns to reduce the burden of undergrowth? Seems like they keep having large bush fires threaten important stuff.

One wonders if this is Environmentalism run amuck of putting out all fires until instead of number of small natural fires that don't do significant damage, the fuel builds up into inferno range that does great damage?

Or you could just clear the brush around your observatory regularly -- again if the Environmentalists let you. Australia is rather weird in this regard.

Well, 10 years ago to the week, Mount Stromlo Observatory burnt down. The owners of that also own Siding Spring, and put in place many measures. Like clearing trees, and installing fire mesh on all the windows.

Problem is, the flash point of eucalyptus oil is 47 degrees, so on hot days the country is basically guaranteed to erupt in a massive fireball. Fireballs have been observed rolling along bare earth for a km, just igniting the volatile oils above the ground layer in the air.

Other problem is that we've had record rains for 2/3 years so burnoffs couldn't really be done. And now we're back in a record hot spell, and everything has completely dried out in the past 6 months now that La Nina is back. It went from too wet to burn off to too volatile to burn off in a blink of the eye (and since there are government organisations involved, it could be argued they can't act that quickly :) .

Most buildings on the mountaintop are 1970's era. The main 3.9m dome has no active fire safety equipment in it, but it is clad in fire proof material and was always intended as the fire safety refuge for the entire mountaintop, since there's only a single winding road off the mountaintop (which always scared the hell out of me in Summer).

The lodge on the other hand had wooden doors, was quite up close to the bush (a feature, because it moderated the temperatures for the astronomers sleeping during the daytime), and was sorely lacking in maintenance (although when I worked there, I could hear workman on the roof often enough, so I presume they were clearing leaves and twigs from the roof).

Fortunately, yesterday was Sunday. The photos the guy on duty took just before leaving look awfully scary to me, but he's a firey, and knows what he's doing. Might have been interesting to get all 18 staff and x number of visiting astronomers off the mountain in a hurry if it was a week working day the bus was back in town and not available when the evac was called. Not much room to land a chopper (although it's been done before).

Re:Why so many bush fires?

[tconnors]

Well, 10 years ago to the week, Mount Stromlo Observatory burnt down. The owners of that also own Siding Spring, and put in place many measures. Like clearing trees, and installing fire mesh on all the windows.

Problem is, the flash point of eucalyptus oil is 47 degrees, so on hot days the country is basically guaranteed to erupt in a massive fireball. Fireballs have been observed rolling along bare earth for a km, just igniting the volatile oils above the ground layer in the air.

Other problem is that we've had record rains for 2/3 years so burnoffs couldn't really be done. And now we're back in a record hot spell, and everything has completely dried out in the past 6 months now that La Nina is back. It went from too wet to burn off to too volatile to burn off in a blink of the eye (and since there are government organisations involved, it could be argued they can't act that quickly :) .

Most buildings on the mountaintop are 1970's era. The main 3.9m dome has no active fire safety equipment in it, but it is clad in fire proof material and was always intended as the fire safety refuge for the entire mountaintop, since there's only a single winding road off the mountaintop (which always scared the hell out of me in Summer).

The lodge on the other hand had wooden doors, was quite up close to the bush (a feature, because it moderated the temperatures for the astronomers sleeping during the daytime), and was sorely lacking in maintenance (although when I worked there, I could hear workman on the roof often enough, so I presume they were clearing leaves and twigs from the roof).

Fortunately, yesterday was Sunday. The photos the guy on duty took just before leaving look awfully scary to me, but he's a firey, and knows what he's doing. Might have been interesting to get all 18 staff and x number of visiting astronomers off the mountain in a hurry if it was a week working day the bus was back in town and not available when the evac was called. Not much room to land a chopper (although it's been done before).

By the way, it was 40 degrees on the mountaintop yesterday according to the onsite met tower (prior to reading 104degC for a couple of minutes as the fire passed over). When I worked there, I found that if it was hot on the mountaintop, it was unbearable in town. The constant temperature inversion meant that it was always 10 or so degrees hotter in town. Yesterday was a frickin dangerous day. I haven't looked, but I suspect we made a lot of use of the new category of fire danger that was introduced after the Victorian Black Friday fires a few years ago - "Catastrophic (Code Red)". That's the new category they now use to say "get the fuck out, don't even try to defend your purpose built property. You will die.".

As to your question about burnoffs; of course burnoffs are regularly done onsite. There's a dedicated fire truck on site, large tanks of water, fire pumps, a trained staff fire team, assistance from the local RFS. Every few years they burn off different sections of the mountain and the surrounding national park. Using a coordinated, evidence based approach (ie, not the method you would use if you typically read The Daily Smellograph and other Is Your News Limited? publications).

Re:Why so many bush fires?

[HJED]

In fact environmentalists actively support backburning in Australia because a large part of our native trees and plant are dependent on being burnt every few years

Siding Spring Observatory

[hde226868]

This is a place to bring my favorite joke by Virginia Trimble: "It is Siding Spring Observatory, not Siding Springs, this being Australia, after all". I hope that the damage is small. This is the most beautiful observatory site I have been observing at. and it would be a shame to see the telescopes damaged. Not only the AAT, but also the smaller telescopes on that site have been very productive.

Re:Siding Spring Observatory

[Tapewolf]

I, too, hope for minor damage only. After first-hand experience of the bushfire that destroyed Mount Stromlo 18 Jan 2003 (and the ensuing shit fight with insurers) I would not wish a similar loss on the ANU and others again.

The Register had a link to this:

http://news.anu.edu.au/2013/01/08/fire-risk-information-for-anu-staff-and-students/

The Observatory has survived with some damage and some loss of buildings.

An initial assessment indicates that five buildings have been severely affected or damaged, including the Lodge used to accommodate visiting researchers and a number of cottages and sheds. A fire has been extinguished at the Visitors Centre this morning . We expect the Visitor Centre has been severely damaged.

An initial visual assessment indicated that no telescopes appear to have received major damage, but the impact of the fire on the instruments will not be known until later today.

Re:Where

[ChunderDownunder]

Don't they teach world history/geography in schools these days? :-)

NSW has existed on world maps for over two centuries, has a population larger than Washington State or Serbia and is bigger than Texas or Mozambique.

Re:Firebreaks are a simple solution.

[Lairdsville]

That helps, but in severe conditions, as we are having now, it is still no guarantee. The problem of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ember_attack after people are evacuated means that even building that are hundreds of meters from the fire can still burn down. The strategy in NSW is to evacuate if there is any risk to life, so we have the situation where many buildings have been lost but so far no lives.

Re:Firebreaks are a simple solution.

[jkflying]

We had an old house in a sandy, scrubby area that had plenty of room around it and still burnt down when a bushfire came through. The firefighter said that the air was so hot that it heated the wood under the corrugated iron roof until it spontaneously caught on fire.

Re:Where

[quenda]

I get from "bushfire", ".au", and "New South Wales" that we're talking about Australia, but not everyone will pick up on that. Country should be mentioned.

If you are part of the English-speaking world, how can you not know what New South Wales is?
Do you also want to be told that Texas is US, Scotland is UK, and Ontario is in Canada?

Re:Never the less

[dwywit]

An interesting strategy, and I hope it works out for you.
 
Coonabarabran doesn't have that sort of reliable rainfall - it's not in or near a rainforest, you see.

Re:Firebreaks are a simple solution.

[KeensMustard]

Conditions have been quite bad the last week or so, by which I mean fires have been spotting 20 kms ahead of the firefront - that means that your firebreak would need to be 20 kms wide to be effective. Also, the fire in question covers 40000 hectares. Check out this site (Click on Wambelong for the fire in question) http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?cat_id=683. The large blacked out patches on the map are what burnt last wednesday.

I don't think your chainsaw will cut it, pun intended.

Re:Firebreaks are a simple solution.

[jkflying]

It was brick walls and corrugated iron roofing, so I wouldn't say it was particularly susceptible to fire. There was some grass just outside the house that didn't burn, so clearly the heat was only higher up. The only weak point was that the wood inside the roof, under the metal, was ~70 years old so was extremely dry. The heat was so intense once the house caught alight that all the windowpanes melted.