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Thanks for the links. As for the second, not unheard of. We had all manner of parasites crawling out of the woodwork to run scams in the wake of 9/11 up here
in the States.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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As this has moved fully off the Legendary and onto the wildfires, I'm moving the thread to General.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Actually, no. Speaking as someone whose father is a firefighter, has been for nearly thirty years, and now oversees the operations that take place in Victoria
(He didn't this time, as he's still on long service leave after my brothers death), this is the sort of rant he and his co workers have been having for
at least the last decade. Every single bushland region in Victoria was dangerously overloaded with dead trees, fallen branches, thick dead grass... and they
weren't allowed to do anything about it, because of what is commonly called the green vote. To make matters worse, people love to build houses in bushland
or with it coming right up to their back door, and the laws regarding the construction materials is incredibly moronic (People build homes out of ceder, and
wonder why they burn out in no time.). That's what happened in my region. The fires started in grassland, went through bushland in no time, and hit the
houses in its way.
It's not the only cause of the fires (Incredibly high winds, hottest day on record, arsonist fuckers...), but when the fires came? It sure as hell
didn't help.
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And probably messes up the forest lifecycle. They discovered that one some years back in California -- some of the trees out there had evolved to the point that they needed wildfires to reproduce. The first both cleared out low growth to provide open ground for new seedlings, and the trees themselves had cones or other seed containers that wouldn't open without the heat of a fire hitting them first. So now they do annual controlled burns to keep the ecosystem running properly.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.