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Incredible photo from Australian wildfires

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zridling:


This picture of a fireman giving water to a parched koala bear speaks volumes. Look at the koala's tongue, and the koala's paw on the fireman's hand! The koala seems so polite and so grateful. This makes me want to truckjack a water truck and drive through the ocean to Australia. [backstory] The koala friend was rescued by firefighters after it was found roaming a burned up forest 90 miles from Melbourne. The koala friend had burnt paws, but she's doing better now and will hopefully be released back into the wild in about 5 months.

Edvard:
What's really amazing is that (so I've heard...) wild Koalas are just that... wild.
They'll happily make an attempt at ripping your face off if they feel threatened. Obviously this poor little lady had more pressing needs than exercising her fight or flight reflexes.

Heart-string-pulling pic, BTW. I've heard the fires were started by arsonists.  >:(

Edvard:
More of the story plus pics and video here and here.

Okay everybody say "Aaawww..." in 5... 4... 3...

Incredible photo from Australian wildfires

Ehtyar:
The fireman is lucky he didn't have his face torn off, though it's good so see wildlife coming out of the fires alive.

To give some facts before too much speculation is provided, the current death tole stands at 181, higher than that of the Ash Wednesday and Black Friday bushfires combined. Currently, upward of 1,000 homes have been destroyed and over 300,000 hectares of land has been burned, which is considerably less than that which was destroyed in the Ash Wednesday or Black Friday fires. The fires are largely burning in the south-eastern state of Victoria and primarily in rural areas, as was the case with Ash Wednesday and Black Friday.

As you can see here:
there is no one "fire", but a large number of fires that makes up this disaster. A small number of the more ferocious fires are suspected to have been lit by arsonists. There are also a number of fires than are suspected to have been lit by "tossers", or people who dispose of lit cigarette butts out their car window. The government is considering whether it will be possible to charge them with murder for each of the deaths their fire caused.

To add a personal note, the Australian State and Federal Governments are largely responsible for this, having significantly lessened the amount of controlled burning taking place in exchange for preferences from the green party. This kind of political pandering is costing many lives and cannot continue any longer.

Ehtyar.

tomos:
To add a personal note, the Australian State and Federal Governments are largely responsible for this, having significantly lessened the amount of controlled burning taking place in exchange for preferences from the green party. This kind of political pandering is costing many lives and cannot continue any longer.
-Ehtyar (February 11, 2009, 04:23 PM)
--- End quote ---

what are controlled burnings Ethyar ?
 - I have an idea what they are, but I'm dont know why they in turn should be controlled (or why some people think they should).
AFAIK in Ireland people are allowed burn land -mainly to cut back gorse bushes- not in summer naturally - but OTOH it rains there a lot ...

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