Aussie bushfire crisis worsening...

...eight homes lost, over one million hectares burnt in Victoria.

Fire crosses into New South Wales, ski resort town evacuated, National Parks closed.


Photo: Angela Wylie. Sydney Morning Herald

Residents of Thredbo were given the bad news this afternoon that bushfires 10 times worse than the 2003 blaze may threaten their properties, but with a typical steely resolve most were determined to remain and fight to save their homes and resorts should the need arise.

All visitors at the town have been evacuated, and entry is closed.

And in Victoria, also fighting the beast:

David Heffer and his partner Andy Corwe watched in horror last night as fire came to the doorstep of their Steiglitz home.

The couple managed to save their home near the tiny township, 80km west of Melbourne, but their neighbours weren't so lucky.

Mark Wilkinson, his wife Helen and their two young children lost their home in the blaze last night.

Today, Mr Heffer's red-brick home is untouched by fire, but the yard and surrounds are scorched and still smouldering. All that is left of the garden, once full of tussocks and native grasses, is stumps and ash.

'Bugger it, this is my place'

Pauline Lorenz and her family were preparing for the worst. They packed two cars full of their possessions and were waiting on the verandah for the fire to come.

"It's like, 'Bugger it, this is my place, and you're not going to have it.'"

Currently there are plenty of urgent warnings:

URGENT THREAT Archerton, Toombullup, Tolmie, Bunstons sub-division, Masons Road, Upper 15 Mile Creek. Spot fires and erratic fire behaviour in the Stringybark Road, Peppermint Road, Spring Creek Road and Bunstons Road areas.

And it's not looking good for the next few days:

'Worst bushfre crisis'

Earlier today, Premier Steve Bracks warned that Victoria is in the grip of the one of the worst bushfire crises in the state's history.

The Premier has cut short his holiday and returned to work after a fire in north-east Victoria cut transmission lines yesterday and sparked blackouts across the state.

Today Mr Bracks attended a briefing with Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin and Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon.

The meeting was told the next three days were critical and conditions were expected to be even worse on Saturday than they were yesterday, when eight houses were lost and temperatures soared into the 40s, Mr Bracks said.

"When I came back in this morning and had the briefing and learned that Saturday was going to be worse than yesterday, it just sends shivers up your spine because we all saw how bad yesterday was," he said.

"I think it will go down as one of our worst bushfire episodes in Victoria ever, and that's saying something in the state that had the 1939 fires, the 1983 fires and even the 2002/03 fires.

"This is the worst bushfire conditions we have ever had in Victoria's history because it is going to go on and it is going to get worse.

"We have never encountered this in Victoria before.

"This is 48 days ... of fire activity and one million hectares which have been burnt, and of course we are bracing ourselves for some very, very tough conditions."

Fingers crossed...

The stories:

House spared as fire hits neighbours.

Thredbo evacuated as fires cross border

Fire heading for Thredbo.

More planning mistakes.

No prizes for guessing - it's the road planners yet again.

The latest stupidity is in Dubai Marina, so I don't know which particular group of what's hysterically known as planners is responsible - RTA, Emaar, Municipality...

There's been a Master Plan for years and you would assume the roads were designed to cater for the residences, retail outlets, hotels that are shown on that plan. Designed to cope with the volume of traffic and to direct traffic flow in the most effective way.

Wrong.

The roads were built, finished, in use for a year...now they're being changed completely.

The fourth bridge across the marina has been open a couple of days, the dual carriageway to it for just over a year. The un-named dual carriageway that runs around the edge of Dubai Marina on the land side has also been finished a year or so. Now on both roads the central reservation is being dug up in several places, a new system is being built and traffic flow is totally different from the original plan.















This was a continuous central reservation until yesterday.

On the bridge approach road a roundabout is going in. So what was planned and built as a continuous dual carriageway now has a roundabout in the middle. The traffic flow from adjacent roads has been changed completely from what was originally planned and built.

On the outer road it's anyone's guess what latest change they've come up with, it's a huge confusing mess of cones, flags, bits of timber, chalk marks. Parts of the central reservation have been demolished, lanes changed. No warning signs of course, all but no directional signs. But once again the traffic flow is entirely different from the original plan.















That's Jumeirah Lake Towers in the background.

The traffic lights still work, needlessly because the junction is totally coned off, but they're over-ridden by a flagman. He sits there on a crate all day vaguely waving a green flag at the totally confused motorists. You might just see him in the photo, in a lime-green safety jacket between the third & fourth buildings from the left.

The unrelentingly incorrect planning from the roads agencies is appalling. It should also be totally unacceptable and heads should roll. We obviously need to get rid of the incompetents and bring in designers and planners who can actually work things out and come up with the right answers first time. That's what planners are supposed to do.

It wasn't hyperbole when I said in yesterday's post that transport/roads was one of the two major factors, the other being inflation, endangering Dubai's future as a serious commercial centre. They are the two main topics of conversation in both private and business circles.

Companies don't have to be in Dubai, there are alternative cities in the Gulf and further afield. The cost of our bad road planning is felt by every company - staff regularly caught up in traffic instead of being able to work, time wasted trying to get to and from appointments, salesmen wasting selling time stuck in traffic or looking for parking space, cancelled appointments because of traffic snarls, huge lost productivity.

There's also the frustration, the added pollution, the tens of millions in wasted costs.

Every major city has traffic problems and Dubai's will inevitably be worse because of the endless construction. But to plan and complete roads only to re-design them months later, dig them up and start all over again really is totally unacceptable.

Global Village - the good & the bad.

Went to Global Village on Saturday evening - started off at 4pm to get there before the worst of the traffic and it worked. Plenty of parking available at that time too.

It was well worth visiting I thought, plenty of interesting pavilions, ranging in size from large to huge, from a whole range of countries around the world.


India, the biggest busiest pavilion.






The standard of what's available inside varied enormously of course, but that's to be expected. There's the kitsch, the poor quality, the stylish, the good quality. But there are real bargains to be had on all sorts of items.












A 'parade of the puppets' was well done and there's a big variety of other entertainment. You can easily spend several hours there, so fortunately there are plenty of restaurants, take-aways, snack-food outlets.








A couple of interesting small displays were by Abu Dhabi and Dubai jails. The inmates are being trained to produce handicrafts and there are some beautiful examples on display and sale, especially wooden dhows and ornate wooden chests with hand-worked brass decoration. It's all to do with giving the prisoners a chance at a worthwhile job when they get out, so congratulations to all concerned.

But there's always a but.

Problems are needlessly created, as always, by the people in charge of roads and transport.

Inevitably it's them. Whatever you try to do in Dubai there are problems caused by that same group. We have some good places to go, good things to see and do, but the useless road planners spoil it just about every time.

There are two things that are endangering the entire vision for Dubai's future - inflation, with its disastrous effect on conducting a business in Dubai, and the people involved in our transport and road system.

Global Village throws up a couple of their disastrous contributions to chaos on our roads; their 'planning' and their complete lack of thought.

The tens of thousands of visitors driving to Global Village are given one entrance and one exit. Worse, to come out and go to 'New Dubai' you have to drive 10 km in the wrong direction before you can turn and drive the 10 km back to where you started, now facing in the right direction.

Brilliant!

After the chaos of jammed in & outs, cars that don't need to be there are made to fight the morons on Emirates Road, have to do an extra 20 km, adding to the congestion, just to cross the bloody road!

Even worse is signage adding to the confusion and the dangers.

I've posted about this before and the stupidity just gets worse. It's hardly rocket science is it, having directional signs and locating them in the right place!

The people responsible have either never driven themselves or they don't have a single brain cell amongst them. My money's on the latter.

Example. The huge new roundabout being completed near Arabian Ranches. Not one bloody sign to tell you which exit to take to get to Global Village. Not one.

If you happen to guess correctly you will find, about 500 metres along the road, a sign to Global Village. Confirmation that you guessed correctly, but that isn't the point is it. Of course the reverse works too - drive for a kilometre or so and not see a Global Village sign and the chances are you took the wrong exit.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Locate the bloody signs where they inform drivers where to go, not as a confirmation that they've guessed correctly!

There's the same problem with other signage, as there is all over Dubai.

A sign indicates the lane for Jebel Ali & Abu Dhabi. Take it and a little further on you come to a choice of two roads - but now the signs give you other destinations, there's no mention of Jebel Ali & Abu Dhabi. Again you have to guess, again there's a sign later on that tells you you happened to guess the correct road. Or if you don't see the sign, you guessed wrong.

Take the wrong road and it's anybody's guess where you'll end up, with all the dual-carriageways, flyovers, clover-leafs, underpasses. You can spend hours adding to the congestion by aimlessly driving around looking for a sign to get you on the right road.

It really is an absolute disgrace.

Sub crashes into supertanker

An American nuclear powered submarine has crashed into a 330 metre long Japanese oil tanker in the Gulf.

Three hundred and thirty metres long, painted white, weighs tens of thousands of tonnes, makes a noise, can be seen by the naked eye and by radar.


AP/Gulf News

Was a Dubai car driver in control of the submarine?

Nuclear powered folks. It has a nuclear reactor on board. It's not the sort of thing we want crashing into big solid objects.

All the talk seems to have been about the threat of oil leaks, which thankfully appear to be zero.

But I must say I have more concerns about nuclear spillage on my doorstep.

Could we have a serious investigation please, to make sure that it doesn't happen again. And that whoever was responsible has his licence cancelled.


Here's the story: Vessel traffic unaffected

Tabloid beat-up.

What a lost opportunity!

We have a real need for independent media, but the one paper we have is nothing more than an amateurish tabloid rag.

Another example this morning. The most important thing going on in the world to the editor's mind, deserving of solo front page coverage, is a hotel beach club allowing only members in.

In true tabloid hysterical style that's not how it's presented of course. No, no. They use the emotive word "banned" in relation to maids instead. And in contrast to the headings, the story goes on to more-or-less tell the facts. Apart from obvious inaccuracies that is.

It really is tabloid journalism at its worst.

Briefly, Le Meridien Mina Seyahi is said by the rag to have banned maids from the restaurant, beach club & kids club.

The hotel says that they are welcome in the restaurant as long as they are paying guests. The GM of the hotel says: "If families wish to bring their maids along as normal paying guests and sit and eat with them, then that is fine." Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. A restaurant isn't the place to go just to sit without eating.

But the beach club is for members only, membership is full and people have not enrolled their maids as members. The kids club has space for the kids, who are looked after by trained staff.

So, maids are not banned from the restaurant and only members are allowed into the beach club. Boy, that's a real front page story isnt it!

We've had the misquoting of Sheikh Khalifa, and the subsequent sacrificial sacking of the reporter, we have endless racist letters being printed, we have obvious spoof letters, usually inflamatory, being printed, we've had the distasteful 'up yours' headline. I could go on, there are many, many examples of what a dreadful tabloid rag 7Days is.

As I said at the beginning, it's a lost opportunity when the need is so great.

I must add the head-shaking description by 'one family' - they don't have a maid, they have...wait for it..."our lovely Filipino resident house assistant." When I read that I nearly had to go and change my underwear.

The 'story' is here.

Muslim Congressman - bigots out from under their rocks.

The good ol' US of A has its first Muslim Congressman, Democrat Keith Ellison. An American, born and bred in Detroit who can trace his American ancestors back to 1742.

Inevitably the paranoid bigots have crept from under their rocks - first there was Virgil Goode (Republican, Virginia) who sent this letter to supporters:

When I raise my hand to take the oath on Swearing In Day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran. We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy pushed hard by President Clinton and allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country. I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.

Save us from the evil and the stupidity of these people! Apart from claiming a link between illegal immigrants and Muslims (taking a lead from BushW's 'link' between Saddam and Al Qaida) and the xenophobic racism, there's the basic stupidity. Ellison is a Muslim, how can he swear on a Christian Bible! Equally, Goode is a Christian (obviously in name only) so he can't swear on the Quran.

Then in a CNN interview there was this:

CNN's Glenn Beck: OK. No offense, and I know Muslims. I like Muslims. I've been to mosques. I really don't believe that Islam is a religion of evil. I -- you know, I think it's being hijacked, quite frankly.

With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, "Let's cut and run." And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."

And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.

Beck, you prat, I have a request for you. Prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.

It's one of the most serious problems the world has - racists and bigots. They hypocritically claim to defend but actually don't believe in or follow the standards of their own societies or their countries' constitutions.

No tolerance. Only they are right, only they can be trusted, only they are patriots. Everyone who doesn't agree with their feverish bigotry, anyone of a different faith, or even a different branch of their own faith, is an enemy of the state.

Not only in America of course, it's an international evil.

In a clever riposte from Rep. Ellison, as the Washington Post reports:

Yet the holy book at tomorrow's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We've learned that the new congressman -- in a savvy bit of political symbolism -- will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

THE bigots always claim to speak on behalf of many others, and there's an interesting comment about Goode's constituents here: Not all of his constituents are narrow-minded bigots.

Other links:

But It's Thomas Jefferson's Koran!

Goode's letter.

Beck's interview.

A 'good service' story!

Parked near the cafe for my early morning two-double-espressos, trotted out of the cafe when I'd finished, jumped into the car, turned the key...nothing.

Not even a suggestion that it was going to start.

Lights, radio, windows all worked, which suggested it wasn't the battery. Starter motor? Probably.

I have insurance with AXA which gives me breakdown recovery, so I called the number. Gave the details, they said the recovery people would call within 10 minutes.

Guess what? They did!

They'd had a few call-outs and were busy but they'd be there as soon as possible.

One hour later the driver called my mobile - he was close by and wanted precise details of where I was parked marooned. He told me the Dubai depot fleet was all tied up so he was from the Sharjah depot. He'd made it from Sharjah to Knowledge Village in an hour at 9am. Amazing.

I'd called the dealer, Galadari Mazda, to tell them the car was on the way. They said they were fully booked today but they'd inspect it tomorrow.

Fair enough.

At 3pm they called: "Mr Seabee, your car needs a new battery. Give me the go-ahead and it'll be ready for you at 4pm."

I called for a taxi, which turned up in ten minutes, got to Galadari at 4pm and there was my car, fixed, ready and waiting.

Not much of a story, but I complain when service isn't up to scratch so it's only fair that I acknowledge this good service delivery.