Kikapu wrote:Paphitis wrote:The fires are ferocious right now. The country is literally on fire.
And today, I just lost a good mate (pilot) who was fighting the fires.
I have told you few months ago that Australia needs another 100 million people to manage the country, because it is so large. This fire speaks to that argument. Where most of these fires started where only relatively few people lived there, therefore, they did not have the manpower, the equipment or the experience to fight such fires. The country is undermanned to handle these terrible fires. It is a simple arithmetic. Most people in Australia live along the coastal towns and cities, and even then, they are well spread apart from each other. When fires start at remote places away from the coast, who is going to know or fight these fires. Sorry to say this, but if climate change is the main cause of the droughts in Australia, you will see bigger and worse fires in the future.
Sorry to hear about your friend giving up his life in trying to fight these fires. He was a pilot and not a trained firefighter. After the way the PM Morrison treated these voluntary fire fighters where they are financially having difficulties because they are not getting a paycheque from their jobs during their absence from their jobs, most likely some will not signup to remain a volunteer firefighter in the future. PM Morrison sound like a real CUNT, for first going to Hawaii to vacation while the country was on fire and now for not taking care for all those who are having a financial hardship because of the fires. He really is a dick head.
It's got nothing to do with population.
The US with 350 million people has fierce bush fires as well. I refer you to the California fires a year ago.
What has happened this year is that the Greenies and conservationists prevented the Fire Services from conducted their winter back burn operations to reduce the amount of fuel. Plus we have had some storms and a few fires were deliberately lit.
Our Fire Services are very well resourced as bush fires are a very definite risk in our country as we have them regularly and due to the native Eucalypic nature of our forrest areas. The amount of resources we have to fight these fires is also massive. Our fire services are among the best in the world. We have hundreds of fire fighting aircraft here, including a lot of hardware from the USA. Australia helped the US when they had fires as we sent fire fighters to California, and the Americans have done the same for us and our Government isn't sparing any money to the effort. We have the best technology in Australia right now fighting these fires.
But it isn't enough. It will never be enough due to the enormity of the fires and their volume.
We need mother natures intervention (rain) to put these fires out. It doesn't matter if our population was 500 million. It still wouldn't be enough.
Also, our Australian Defence Forces are probably the most advance military in the world. On par with Israel in terms of the hardware we have and on par with the UK in terms of logistical support. Plus their professionalism, our boys and girls can do amazing things. They have joined the effort and the Fire Services is able to respond very quickly and mobilize to any area with our Globemaster, C130 Hercules and Spartan fleets which are capable of air lifting thousands of tonnes of equipment and personnel.
Our Fire Service is one of the best in the world, but the fires have been very difficult to control. However, the fire service has done a great job protecting towns and property as well as preserve as much life as possible with the assistance of other emergency services and our police agencies. That is where most of the effort is concentrated right now. To protect people, towns, farms, and schools. You simply just can't go and fight these fires. They are massive and the only thing our firefighters can do is tactically retreat for their safety and guard towns and property and just let the fires rage because if you look at the photos, they are raging infernos and and when it gets like that, they can't do a thing,
No we don't want 100 million people. You keep those people in Europe thanks. We have the best and cleanest cities in the world, and we as Australians enjoy a much better lifestyle than any citizen of ANY European country or the USA. Countries like ours and Canada are the 2 best countries in the world so we won't be taking any advice from the EU, Europe or USA on how we live or what population we should have because we want things to stay the way they are and Australia as a country is strong enough to make anyone notice. F-35s, Poseidon's, EW-18G, F-18F, Air Warfare Destroyers with AEGIS, and 12 state of the art French Barricuda Class submarines (worlds biggest Defence procurement in the world only eclipse by the 10 new US Aircraft carriers that are being built), Cruise Missiles, and the most advance surveillance networks on the planet. So no, we are not exactly a weak country. When we buy, we buy well and we buy from the top shelf always. We don't skimp on costs.
We are a power similar to Israel. All the best technology and hardware and we make a massive impact globally which isn't to be overlooked. Israel has a population of 11 million and carries enormous firepower, which isn't to be messed with and we are 25 million. When we need more muscle, we have our brothers in the USA which we have always right behind us and that is the way we want it. They say we are a state of the USA, so that makes our population 375 million anyway and the strongest super power in the world, before we get to Israel which is another State of the USA, Canada, NZ and the UK. So is you add all them up our population is 490 million.
We want to protect our amazing flora and fauna and forrests as well as our environment and lifestlye.
We don't need cities of 10 million or more.
Even if you lives in our 2 largest cities, you would have an amazing lifestyle, even with their fast lane pace and there is no one in London, Paris, New York or LA who has the same lifestyle and quality of life as we do.
In addition to that, but we have a very socially cohesive and peaceful society. We only allow the immigrants we want who are carefully selected to contribute to that society either socially, economically because they are wealthy, or professionally because they carry the qualifications and expertise we are short on locally.
Oh yeh, we have a volunteer fire fighting service as well and I am not sure how many firefighters that is, but it's in the order of 200,000 firefighters. This service works well, and they are all very well trained by our professional units. They also have trucks and cars as every small town has its own appliances which are manned by volunteers who go on weekends to train and educate the public. We also have hundreds of pilots flying water bombers and helicopters who are contracted from private firms and we have a number of foreign units as well.
Our volunteers are happy to volunteer and if we changed that our volunteer ranks would be decimated as they would no longer be able do their community service. It is far better for our Government to open positions in the CFS and MFS and allow anyone to apply and join the professional ranks and resource them better. Our Fire Fighting and Emergency Serrvice budgets are several Billions and are already at the cutting edge as is everything Australia does because we are arguably the wealthiest country in the world.
But as I said before. it wouldn't matter if we had a million firefighters, or hundreds of billions spent, we as humans are unable to fight these fires. It's like taking a knife to a gun fight. All we would achieve is kill more firefighters. And yeh, First of all, they can't even get close enough from the sheer heat. They would die in seconds.
