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![]() | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on January 18, 2005, January 18, 2006, January 18, 2007, January 18, 2008, January 18, 2009, and January 18, 2010. |
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This is a very important part of Australian history, considering its impact on the nation's capital, that's why I've upgraded its importance. Atlantis Hawk 04:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Should the ongoing inquiry go in this article or have its own?--nixie 13:19, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Bushfire Recovery Taskforce links
--nixie 05:21, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The lead section reads "...the fires entered the suburbs of Canberra on 18 January. Over the next ten days, four people died and more than 500 homes and thousands of hectares of forest were destroyed, requiring a massive relief and reconstruction effort."
I am not sure where the "Over the next ten days.." reference comes from as I was under the understanding that no houses where burnt in Canberra after the evening/night of the 18th. Martyman 00:11, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I found these possibly useful references on the ACT local ABC radio website. Martyman 06:29, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The ABC site has removed this discussion board that was active in 2003. I recall at the time that it contained a large collection of useful information and lessons learned from the firestroms that hit the Canberra urban areas. Things like parking yor car to drive out of the driveway without reversing, using brass fitting on garden hoses that will not melt, having connectors to create longer hoses. ABC can you retrieve this site from the archive? Celcom 11:24, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
I removed the see also section linking to Cedar fire which doesn't exist and as far as I can tell has no relavence to Canberra at all. Martyman 12:03, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I was wondering whether the sub-heading "Black Saturday" is appropriate. It is not a term that I have heard previously as a Canberran. Other bushfires have been referred to as "Ash Wednesday" or "Black Thursday" or whatever but not this one, or certainly not that it has come to my attention as a local. I appreciate that the fires were on a Saturday and the place certainly darkened dramatically! The events of the Saturday were key but the tension of the following week was significant, people I worked with could not concentrate and had to go home to check - particularly around Gunghalin. Advice of threats was, it seems in hindsight, not related to real risk. AYArktos 07:10, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Jack Waterford (Editor-at-Large, Canberra Times) tried to get people to call it "The Great Fire", but I'm not sure it ever caught on. 'January 18' seems to be the common nickname. Yowie 210.9.143.127 14:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Many social and economic impacts arose in the wake of the Canberra Bushfires of Jan 2003 (Black Sunday). These were;
:The fire was mainly on Saturday
Homelessness: Due to the destruction of 530 properties; people were left homeless as their houses were completely destroyed or unsafe to live in.
Anarchy and confusion Once the fire struck, people began to panic; and confusion quickly followed. Some people took advantage of the situation and began to loot peoples homes in the middle of the evacuation.
Death Some people died in the firestorm as a result of being trapped in burning building and of smoke inhalation.
Depression and Despair Some people had lost their families; lives and homes in the tragic bushfire and fell into depression as they could not live their lives normally anymore.
The environmental impacts of the Canberra Bushfires were:
Pollution Because of the fires which had burned for many days; a lot of carbon dioxide was released in to the air, causing smogs and reducing air quality in that region.
Regeneration The fire allowed seeds from gums and other similar vegetation to escape from their seed pods and allowing them to form new trees.
Damage to the built environment Fires caused extensive damages to property all around Canberra; and destroyed much of the built environment. When re-construction began; the natural environment was disturbed further due to removal and pollution of vegetation.
Destruction of flora and fauna According to scientists, the natural ecosystem was disturbed greatly due to the burning of grasslands and food sources of wild animals. This; no doubt will take years to recover.
--AYArktos 23:49, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
I think the details on the inquiry should be merged back into this article, what do other people think?--nixie 13:16, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Should this be renamed 2003 Canberra Bushfires to conform with Wikipedia's naming conventions? Brisvegas 09:47, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I have just reverted some additions made by 210.84.3.119. They may be correct, but I would like to see these additions referenced before being re-added as especially the second one doesn't read very NPOV. --Martyman-(talk) 07:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Reverted edits:
A total of 470 homes were destroyed.
When two fire fronts met, the result was surprising. The Canberra fires rewrote the way bushfires behaved. Firefighters tried to contain the fire by water bombing.
and cumming on itlololllllolol — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.27.53.74 (talk) 05:20, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
By what criteria are these the "worst fires" as per our opening section? I don't think the amount of compensation offered by insurance companies could serve as the basis of valid comparison between fires at different times. There have been some other major fires, particularly the fire in 1952 when there were heavy losses of stock and of some houses; I am not sure if anyone died. I believe that fire nearly reached Civic. It was after that fire that local volunteer bushfire brigades were started. --A Y Arktos 10:33, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I have added a map showing the total area effected and colour coding suburbs by number of houses damaged. It could still do a with a bit of tweaking, but I am fairly happy with it. As Nixie has suggested, I am also going to look into producing a less detailed series of maps to show the progression of the fire over the days leading up to the firestorm. This series of maps is available in the report thingy. --Martyman-(talk) 10:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I have generated an animated map showing the progress of the fires from the 8th through to after the 18th. The data is from the report. I think there may be a problem with resizing Gifs on wikipedia so I may have to re-upload again at the intended display size. --Martyman-(talk) 10:04, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
If you look at the maps in the coroners report you will see that the detail is not very high. I would pretty much have to add the suburb encroachment stuff from memory, so yes that is why the suburbs are placed on a higher layer than the fire. Hey, I have a frame for the 19th as well I must have missed including it. The data for the 18th and 19th was from an even worse source (that only tracked fire fronts not burnt area) and actually the 21st data is not even from the 21st at all.. Turns out I remembered the date wrong, it is from a satelite photo from the 26th. I will see what it looks like with the last frame changed to grey. I think the printing isssue is a non-issue, even if I did know how to pick a specific fram to force to print, it would only really be a duplication of the other map in the article anyway. The mention about it you linked to is mainly saying don't use animations to show multiple photos (to save space) because they won't print. This is using animation to show movement so I think it is fine. What do people think about the animation speed? I think it might be a little fast (altough that help give the impression of movement) I might make it pause on the last frame for a bit before repeating. --Martyman-(talk) 00:37, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
There are a couple of excellent before-and-after satellite images here:
They come from this page at Geosciences Australia (hover your cursor over the photo to see the change: 152.91.9.115 02:41, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I've just stumbled on this page today, and this bit stuck out:
By 4pm houses were alight in the suburbs of Duffy and Giralang, with the loss of a home in Holder soon after…
The fires in Giralang were related to the weather — too hot and windy; environmental factors — untrimmed trees too close to powerlines; and other factors such as faulty/poorly maintained powerlines. It was simply a coincidence that it was on the same day.
As for verification, it was my partner's parents' house and their neighbour's that went up and we were inside at the time.
Should I/we/someone just remove 'Giralang' from that paragraph and the rest of the article? While I believe that we should be mentioned, currently it isn't correct. What are your ideas on how to fix it?
Thanks!
P.S. please be patient with me, I'm a wiki n00b!
203.31.48.3 01:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi, welcome to Wikipedia. You should consider registering an account. Thanks for poiting out that error, indeed the McLeod inquiry says that the fires ar Giralang were not related to the bushfire. But they should probably be mentioned in the article somewhere else since they further diverted the strained fire fighting resources.--nixie 01:44, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I got over to the memorial this afternoon and took some photos. They are available on my website. Pretty hard to photograph the memorial as a whole. Let me know if anyone wants any uploaded for use on wikipedia. --Martyman-(talk) 07:45, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
How many houses were destroyed by the fires exactly? There are four different figures in four different articles. This article says 816 (including damaged ones), according to Canberra there were 500 destroyed houses and according to History of Canberra 491. In History of the Australian Capital Territory we have 67 rural houses and 414 in the suburbs (totalling 481). The result is confusion... --Voyager 15:55, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
AYArktos is right. Unless references of "Black Saturday" can be cited it should not be included. Wikipedia is not for writing your own spin on things nor coming up with new information/ideas. This whole article just comes across as trying to drum up the fires into something bigger than they were. I'm a Canberran and was around at the time of the fires and the only way I would have known that this article was talking about the fires is because of the place names. This was a natural disaster - not a social one. There was an air of uncertainty during the event and there was a bit of shock at the whole thing. It certainly was not a terrifying event (people were volunteering to help move the zoo animals - not something you do when you're terrified). The biggest social impact that the fires had was to (briefly) give Canberra a sense of community. After the event there was talk about blame and sorrow but this did not compare to the greater sense of whatever happened it happened to all of us and we all needed to chip in to get things sorted. Of course it's a bit harder to site references to a sense of community because you can't measure that.
As a (now) former resident of Duffy who experienced the January 18 fires, I am not so sure I agree with the comment that the fires were not a social disaster. There was, and still is, a consensus amongst those who were present, that the scale of the disaster was almost directly attributable to human and bureaucratic failure at key points in the weeks and then finally the hours leading up to what was, take it from me, one of the most terrifying experiences for ordinary suburban dwellers - an experience so far out of the ordinary, that even today, five years later, it makes me shaky to even think - let alone - write about.
Evidence uncovered in the months of analysis afterwards indicates that the fires which eventually hit Canberra, could have been readily extinguished if, instead of observing and commenting, people had actually applied water. That was one lesson for the urban, fires will burn if you don't put them out!
Second lesson and this was a tough one for Canberra - if you lose your local news services - you can burn to death in your own home while watching the tennis or the cricket - it is just that fast, that deadly and if you are indoors glued to a screen - a big surprise!
Third lesson - never apply financial and accounting models to the management of Nature - reducing the strength of volunteer firefighters by a process of metered attrition to save a few bucks on a small town budget - big mistake which Nature will treat with the contempt it deserves. On the numbers alone - prevention would have definitely been better than the cost of the 'cure'.
Fourth lesson - no matter what the reputation Canberra may have as a souless city of bureaucracy on January 18 the residents of Duffy, with only the heroic assistance of one fire crew acting on their own cognisance stepped up in a big way - the stories of indivudual heroism have only been partially captured in publications after the fact - but, personally, I witnessed ordinary people standing firm and saving their neighbours at the risk of their own lives - that is a lesson I will never forget. The fact that that lesson was vitiated by the actions of the bureacrats responsible for managing the official emergency response to fires - is one of the reasons Canberra gets the reputation it has...at home they may be heroes in the office....they are fools...
Fifth and final lesson - never take Nature for granted. Never lose your ability to react - as I did - standing dumb and stupid watching the advance of a 60 foot high wall of flame, waiting to be rescued as my 18 year old son shouted at me and my husband over the roar of the flames that if we didn't get a move on - we would all die! how's that for out of the mouths?
While I agree with AYArktos' opinion about the labelling, I cannot subscribe to the opinion that it was really not a big deal. For any rational person, it was a huge deal. On the topic of animals - it was actually the RSPCA which was successfully evacuated - but one local vet hospital burned to the ground, taking all the animals with it and nearly taking the staff - people still leave flowers at that site.
The loss of Stromlo is kind of glossed over. For those of us who knew it and loved it, the Mt Stromlo Observatory was a symbol of the beauty and majesty of Nature and Science. Gleaming domes, silent, fragrant pines, photographic plates from the 1930s showing galaxies beyond number - all burned away - they will never be replaced - another small fragment of unique history lost forever - and only mourned by a few....
Moving on is important - but so is remembering. Fidelia (talk) 03:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
This article could almost be nominated for WP:GA, with a few adjustments here and there. Just a basic copyedit and standardising the references should be at least a good start for you. lincalinca 06:22, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Whilst reading the article I noticed these sentences: "Swimming pools were evacuated of which kids were in. One of which was Michael Ireland, who managed to survive these fearsome fires."
This is bad is grammatically and seems to refer to an individuals personal experience of the fires which, whilst perhaps interesting in and of itself, does not actually contribute to the article.
Not being a regular Wikipedia editor, I though I'd best check with the professionals rather than just going in and deleting these lines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.220.91.20 (talk) 14:18, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
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The lead sentence says "over 490" injured, but the infobox says 435. They can't both be right. (Neither has a reference that I can check.) Mitch Ames (talk) 12:45, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
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