The Australian fires...

[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