Here’s a gif that summarises Earth these past few weeks, with fires that seems to be everywhere.
And I’m not just saying this because you feel hot despite the air-con blowing at you right now. I’m talking Earth, not just S’pore:
- 3 vegetation fires in S’pore, one having the size of 10 football fields (caused by dry weather)
- Amazon fires (man-made)
- Record-breaking wildfire in the frigging Arctics (wildfire)
- Russia’s worst year on record for wildfire
- Greenland’s fire approaching inhabited areas that started in July
Honestly, I can list more, but here’s what you need to know about the fires I’ve searched for. They are all in the past month.
Right now you might be panicking, but relax, because now there’s also one more fire right across the JB checkpoint.
And it’s still ongoing.
16 Hectares of Forest Destroyed Near Legoland Malaysia in Iskandar Puteri
On 23 Aug 2019, 4.25 p.m., firefighters were alerted to a fire that destroyed 16 hectares of forest.
After ten hours, the fire, which was believed to be caused by dry weather, was brought under control at about 3.15 a.m. on 24 Aug 2019.
Just kidding. If you were paying attention, I said the fire is still ongoing.
The fire spread to 98 hectares
Bernama reports that the fire actually spread to 98 hectares on 25 Aug 2019, from Kampung Pekajang, because of strong winds.
For an idea how big that is, here’s a map:
Yeah, that’s really close to us, in case you still think that has nothing to do with us.
In total, 79 members, including senior officers from 10 stations in Zone 1 Johor and one station in Zone 2 Johor was in the operation.
The article reports that 45% of the fire has been extinguished so far, and it would take four days to fully extinguish the fire.
We’re talking about a fire so huge the Johor Fire and Rescue Department said that a nearby river “could not accommodate the extinguishing operation”.
It’s like having an automatic machine gun in a gunfight, only to realise the gunfight involves using tanks.
For water sources to extinguish the fire, they had to use five 20,000 litre capacity water tankers transporting water from nearby fire hydrants.
Possibility of Extinguishing Soon
Though they did say if the ‘flooding’ technique can be completed, the fire could be extinguished pretty soon.
Cloud seeding activities (how this works is basically they throw chemical salt at clouds to make it rain) was also suggested, but low cloud moisture meant that this is likely only to be 50% successful.
It’s not known if the suggested techniques were used, but the fire is definitely still ongoing.
So uh, we’ve been hearing a lot of wildfires, dry weather fires kind of thing.
This global warming and climate change thing… Just maybe we need to look at it a little deeper?
Maybe just building polders isn’t exactly enough?
Guys?
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