The Australian fires...

[Glenn]

Hi Dien,

Thanks for mentioning the fire down-under.

This makes me remember an article about WATER scarcity In saw in the Wall St Journal - to do with several Aussy cities.

I think some obscene 1/2 billion # was quoted to do with building Desalinization plants big enough to supply drinking water.

A - Do you get enough rain to supply drinking water - where you live?

B - What's the story of creating drinking water from salt water?

C - How in the heck do the fire fighters fight fire without H2O?

Glenn

Glenn,

Thanks for asking about Water.

My state - Queensland - has enough water in the dams. And as our dams get lower we are subjected to different types of water restrictions.

My city publishes the dam levels here
http://www.seqwater.com.au/content/s...AndMaintenance

While Somerset looks High, it is only a small dam. And when water is released from it, the water flows into the larger Wivenhoe dam.

This weather beruea rader image http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR663.shtml shows the weather as it approaches Brisbane. At around 9 o'clock t0 10:30 o'clock you can see both of these dams. And thus their relationship to Brisbane.

If you then go to Google Maps you'll have an idea on where to look.

To give you an idea on Scale, the Gold Coast (city) is south of Brisbane - which is marked on the map. Gold Coast is signified by Southport on that map. A little left and south you'll see Hinze Dam. That dam feeds the Gold Coast and no other City. The Gold Coast also gets some water from Brisbane. And the Gold Coast is where a Desalination Plant has been built.

In Brisbane, what people also don't know is, down near Cedar Grove a weir has been built on a small nondescript river. Water is Pumped from that weir into the city's water grid. When all construction is finished, that lowly weir will be fed by two LARGE holding pond reservoirs- and - another Dam out near Boonah (to the left of Hinze Dam).

With around 1,500 people a Week moving into the area, Brisbane and the Gold Coast need to find other sources of water. They may be fine now (just), but in the future is where the issues lay.

===

As for Distances. As Dien pointed out, our respective cities are around 1200 miles apart. Pull up a map of Australia with Google maps.

On the right about half way up is Brisbane - the city I live in. Dien live in the State of Victoria. Its capital (Melbourne) is roughly at the bottom of the state where is comes back up from the left and right.

The country itself is around the same size as the USA. But, as you can see, the Main Land is divided into six sections with one Island to the south of Victoria being number 7. Unlike the USA main 48 states with 2 out of the main land mass.

So we have the land mass of the USA with only 20 million people.

Michael Ross
Skype | Biz | Twitter | MySpace | E-mail

[Dien Rice]

Hi Glenn!

I'm fighting a flu at the moment... Sorry for the delay. Some days my head just isn't clear (it goes up and down)... But hopefully (cough) it will go away (sneeze) soon...!

Originally Posted by Glenn

This makes me remember an article about WATER scarcity In saw in the Wall St Journal - to do with several Aussy cities.

I think some obscene 1/2 billion # was quoted to do with building Desalinization plants big enough to supply drinking water.

Yes, the desalination plant is being built here in Melbourne, where I live.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbour...lination_plant

A - Do you get enough rain to supply drinking water - where you live?

There is water in the local reservoirs, but water levels have been low for a few years now. We've been in a drought (low rainfall) for a few years. We've also had "water restrictions" for a few years, to reduce water usage and make it stretch out a bit more.

That generally means limitations of use of water for watering gardens, washing cars, filling up swimming pools, etc.

The details are here...
http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/info.cfm?top=120&pg=997

By the way, this is true for Melbourne, but not necessarily for other Australian cities. Sydney does have water restrictions too, though - http://www.sydneywater.com.au/Saving...rRestrictions/ . I think they're also suffering drought.

B - What's the story of creating drinking water from salt water?

I don't know the details. All I know is that it's very expensive!

We're not the first. There are desalination plants in the Middle East. Apparently there's also one in Tampa Bay, Florida.
http://www.tampabaywater.org/watersu...loverview.aspx

Since I don't know much about it, I'll take the easy way out and link to a Wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination

C - How in the heck do the fire fighters fight fire without H2O

I don't know where all the water comes from for fire fighting. However, one difference might be that water for fire fighting doesn't have to be clean, drinkable water, I don't think. However, I don't know exactly where that water comes from.

Wow, tough questions!

Thanks for asking them... I hope I helped a little...

The update on the fires is that they're still blazing, and sadly, 181 lives have been confirmed to be lost...

I went to a store yesterday to buy supplies to feed my chocolate addiction. The lady behind the counter had apparently been affected by the fires - her house was okay, but apparently her garage had burned down. I'm not sure exactly where her house is located, but as I mentioned in my earlier post, two areas affected by relatively smaller fires (compared to some of the other infernos) are roughly 15 and 20 minutes drive away from me.

If you want to help the survivors of the fires, the Red Cross will take donations...
Here's a link (though the site seems to be extremely busy, and may be hard to load)...
https://www.redcross.org.au/Donation...eDonations.asp

- Dien