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My fav. thing is when Centrelink talked about their welfare help for people affected it absolutely leaves them open to be completely ownd by robodebt
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Jan 7, 2020 03:04
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Stevefin posted:I will tell you right now if the feudal gov gets to plant anything, it will be coal with the slogan "See coal is not bad?" How will the future generations of Australians harvest the plentiful bounties of the coal trees if our generation does not plant them today!
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Jan 7, 2020 03:07
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GotLag posted:You realise that a shitload of people are under-insured or couldn't afford sufficient insurance, and regardless have had their lives totally turned upside down with their homes and jobs destroyed? yes actually I do realise that, as do most! this is why I feel my donations are better directed to animal welfare and rescue services, because the government has already set up a 2 billion dollar fund for people affected by the fires, with currently nothing announced for animals. do you realise that animals have absolutely zero say when it comes to environmental policy yet bare most of the burden when it comes to the result of said policies, right? do you realise that animals do not have insurance, have not only lost their homes but also their food sources and are already facing a number of serious threats to their survival before the fires started? do you realise that humans are the most intelligent and capable species on the loving planet and despite the hardships the survivors of these fires are facing, are likely to have a support network of family, friends and community around them? 30m+ raised by that one comedian. 500k donations from a number of other celebrities. 2 BILLION relief fund set up by the government for those affected by the fires. pretty sure the humans (you know, the species that contributed to climate change, the primary reason these fires are so loving bad and the only species on earth stupid enough to poo poo where they eat despite fully understanding the rammifications) are gonna be OK mate. get hosed. edit: 500 MILLION birds, mammals and reptiles estimated dead in NSW alone. this does not include insects, frogs or bats. Laserface fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 03:29
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Laserface posted:edit: 500 MILLION birds, mammals and reptiles estimated dead in NSW alone. this does not include insects, frogs or bats. BATS AREN'T BUGS! (Sorry, I had to. I agree with the rest of your post)
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Jan 7, 2020 03:36
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The ad leading to this thread states that Scott Morrison "has defunded vital services and protection all over". I want to read more about this, as I've heard others say similar things. However, I've only been able to find this fact check from the ABC saying that at least for the NSW RFS funding hasn't been cut. Can someone point me in the right direction or post some of the organisations so I can look up more information?
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Jan 7, 2020 03:41
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There is this one of them rejecting a request to improve the air firefighting capability two years ago. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/pleas-made-two-years-ago-for-more-federal-funding-for-water-bombers-20200105-p53ozq.html Not exactly a funding cut but it certainly came back to bite them.
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Jan 7, 2020 03:52
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All the coverage I have read has absolutely emphasised how badly the animals have been affected. Or maybe that's just the articles I've read, but their loss is certainly not being glossed over. Also, the 2 billion that ScoMo announced was actually the funding for that new agency. It apparently includes flora and fauna recovery as part of its mandate, so I'm glad the government hasn't forgotten about that at least. But when I donated, I gave my money to WIRES. Animals going to need all the help they can get, and while I have sympathy for all the people affected, half a billion animals is to me a lot more devastating.
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Jan 7, 2020 03:59
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Synthbuttrange posted:for those not from here, Black Saturday refers to the massive 2009 fires that burned through the state, until now the worst bushfires Victoria had seen. 173 people died and 400+ were injured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires TBH it looks like the CFA and RFS took the big lesson to heart when it comes to protecting lives - it's not just the heat and winds that fucks poo poo up, it's the wind change of a southerly that REALLY does the damage - The main death and destruction was the communities being caught when the southerly wind changed turned a narrow fire front into a roaring wide monster that exploded in ferocity as well. The RFS has been at pains to explain the four times we got a heatwave followed by a southerly buster that it's the fire front turning would be the true problem - residents have got the hint and evacced mainly early. And there's been a lot more communication and education that you need to either gently caress off well before the fires get near you or you defend only the best prepared homes / stay the hell in shelter till the firefront passes Plus a lot of people have taken a good look at the bush and the drought and have gone "gently caress that, I aint dying for a house" drat amazing house losses havent been higher.
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Jan 7, 2020 03:59
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Yeah black saturday changed heaps of things for the CFA. Retrofitting all trucks with crew saftey equipment. A change to bushfire warning messaging, there is no longer a Stay or Go message, which gave people a false impression that they could remain at home and ride the fire out without actively fighting it. It is now just an evacuation warning. Plus the Catastrophic or Code Red fire danger rating days and letting people know that the CFA will not arrive of you call for help in certain areas on certain days because everything is turbofucked and the best way to live is to get out the day before. Gridlocked posted:Thread is going to go back to living in GBS for a bit with linking threads posted in some other forums/sub-forums so people can find it if they don't frequent D&D. I can't beleive you would start 200+ fires all over the country just so you could post a thread and have it stickied in GBS. 
drunkill fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 04:12
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Laserface posted:yes actually I do realise that, as do most! this is why I feel my donations are better directed to animal welfare and rescue services, because the government has already set up a 2 billion dollar fund for people affected by the fires, with currently nothing announced for animals. Laserface posted:Im feeling for those affected by the fires but not really that much. Laserface posted:get hosed.
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Jan 7, 2020 04:19
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I've noticed that there's quite a few different navy rescue choppers floating around the state today. That's probably part of the defence force helping out thing.
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Jan 7, 2020 04:51
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GotLag posted:That will most assuredly not be pathetically inadequate, and all the humans will be fine, especially the poor ones. She'll be right. He's allowed to feel sorry for animals, stop trying to get d&d points while the thread is in gbs. Jesus christ
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Jan 7, 2020 04:56
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PT6A posted:How do Australians feel about the focus on animals suffering/dying compared to people? I feel like it's getting a lot of play in the international media and on social media, and it is indeed horrific, but is there at all a feeling of "yes, it's sad about the koalas but also people are dying and lives are being destroyed, could we talk about that?" I feel like Australians are more okay with this in part because a lot of us are aware that Australia is, far far more than any other continent, ecologically on the brink. Other ecosystems just risk extinctions of various individual species and damage with ongoing mismanagement, but Australia in its current state risks total collapse and extinction of the original ecology, thanks to the combination of land use of the limited fertile area, invasive predators, plants and rabbits already having pushed it to the very edge. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 05:07
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MikeJF posted:I feel like Australians are more okay with this in part because a lot of us are aware that Australia is, far far more than any other continent, ecologically on the brink. Other ecosystems just risk extinctions and damage with ongoing mismanagement, but Australia in its current state risks total collapse of the original ecology, thanks to the combination of land use of the limited fertile area, invasive predators, plants and rabbits already having pushed it to the very edge. Yeah. It's not so much sadness that animals are dying, it's sadness that species that exist nowhere else in the world are coming much, much, much closer to extinction.
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Jan 7, 2020 05:11
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Actual decent Hollywood actor Chris Hemsworth just dropped a million dollar donation. Probably the highest from an individual?
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Jan 7, 2020 05:14
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drunkill posted:Yeah black saturday changed heaps of things for the CFA. The message hadn't quite sunk in for everyone since there were still 1000+ tourists down in Mallacoota who didn't heed the evacuation warnings, got caught unprepared and had to shelter on the beach with the locals for 24+ hours waiting to get evacuated by the ADF but I'm pretty certain everyone in the country will take those warnings way more seriously now. Also bushfires just used to be a problem for people living out bush when I was a kid but now they're directly impacting the lives of pretty much everyone in the country, whether by smoke haze or transportation lines being cut or the power grid being cut or similar. Almost everyone knows someone who was caught up in the fires or had to be evacuated or lost a house or came close to losing a house, almost everyone's had a nervous day where they were worrying about the safety of someone they know and were glued to the TV waiting for news, almost everyone's seen photos of places they've visited in the past which are now completely destroyed. It's a whole different level now 
Snowglobe of Doom fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 05:24
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The Hemsworth’s are Aussies, Chris lives up in Byron Bay on the north coast and I think they got a lot of smoke pollution there when the fires were bad in that area late last year.
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Jan 7, 2020 05:26
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  av sized Synthbuttrange fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 05:27
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I live in the Brisbane area so the fires haven't had a huge impact directly. The missus and I have re-routed our recurring charitable giving to funding aid to firies and and folks affected by the fires for at least the next few months. We're also spending our spare time making joey pouches and other in-demand items. People in our area responded very well to requests for old sheets and stuff so we've got enough material to spend the next few weeks making stuff. It all feels like pissing in the wind a bit but you've gotta do something to stay sane.
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Jan 7, 2020 05:38
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Hello to Games Goons. Please read the OP and look at the stories of that others have posted. Thank you from taking an interest in our plight.
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Jan 7, 2020 05:40
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Looks like jordies couldn't help but be jordies https://twitter.com/friendlyjordies/status/1214308584827146240?s=19
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Jan 7, 2020 05:42
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-07/bushfire-ash-burns-hunter-valley/11845492quote:Falling into knee-deep hot ash at recent bushfire site sees woman suffer severe burns on her legs, hands Ash is at least a foot deep in places. :|
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Jan 7, 2020 05:44
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My husband's got the worst crush ever on Kylie Minogue which usually makes me roll my eyes when he mentions something about her, but she and her family kicked in a cool half a million towards relief. Fine, hubby, you get a pass to listen to a bunch of Kylie today. Here in Virginia, we had smoke coming about 50 miles away from a big fire in the Great Dismal swamp in 2011. I thought it was horrible at the time, it was constantly low level fog and the stink of a peat fire is pretty bad. But that poo poo's peanuts compared to what y'all are going through, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that level of devastation. My heart goes out to y'all. Stay safe, upside-down goons.
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Jan 7, 2020 06:02
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  this is one of those times I'm grateful Melbourne has such insane weather, when the awful ones go away. 24 hour time difference.
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Jan 7, 2020 06:07
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Quantum Shart posted:Looks like jordies couldn't help but be jordies Just in case people were wondering, it's true https://twitter.com/james_findlay/status/1212164870596001792
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Jan 7, 2020 06:18
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Here's a before/after of Kangaroo Island:
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Jan 7, 2020 06:44
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thats pretty burnt.
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Jan 7, 2020 06:46
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I thought I'd try to do a quick update on things as I've been out of it for a day or two and, again, I imagine the media outside Australia isn't showing much. I will start with Kangaroo Island, which if you have been reading the thread will be aware is an important place for ecological consolation efforts in Australia: About a third of the island has burnt down, mostly national parks. There was roughly 50,000 chlamydia-free Koala's living on the island, at this time it is unknown how many have perished. This is an issue as the majority of Koala's on the mainland have been infected with Koala chlamydia. The very endangered Tailed Dunnart (it's a mouse thing) lives on the island. Again it is unknown how many have perished but it has been noted that given how many are left even losing 20 would be a significant impact. The last remaining pure-breeding stock of Ligurian honey bees lives on the island. Beekeeper Stephen Heatley has confirmed the loss for 40 hives and believes up to 500 maybe be lost. In Western Australia: More than 40,000 hectares of land have been burned in the Stirling Range National Park. The ABC notes that the park is home to more than 1,500 species of flora, at least 87 of which are found nowhere else in the world and that conservationists say the landscape will take centuries to recover. For more fun a tropical cyclone is floating off the north of the state causing serious winds and flash flooding. Truly a land on contrasts. In Victoria: Rain over the last day has helped to stall the megafire burning in state borders. Fire crews are being re-tasked to adding more containment lines to prepare for a change in weather predicted to happen in Friday, this maybe more difficult than it sounds because while the rain helps suppress the blaze it doesn't extinguish it completely and backburning lines in is very difficult when it's damp. Premier Dan Andrews confirms minimum 200 homes destroyed. In NSW: RFS confirms 1,588 homes destroyed with a further 653 wearing damage. I'm sorry I don't have more on the current status but I don't want to try interpreting maps at the moment. Maybe another Goon could fill this in? Finally I don't want to be one of those wankers who posts pictures of the crying kids of dead soldiers with some lovely falsely patriotic meme message about ARE FREEDOMS, ARE TROOPS or other drivel that they use to plug their rancid, racist, It's Ok To Be White, nationalist ideologies on their Facebook or Twitter. BUT I am going to leave this here because I do want people outside Aus to see it. This is 19 month old Charlotte O'Dwyer. She is the daughter of former NSW RFS Volunteer Andrew O'Dwyer, that is his casket. He died along side Geoffrey Keaton on the 19th of December when their truck was hit by a falling tree, damaged by fire, whilst en-route to another area. Three other volunteers were injured and evacuated to hospital. Charlotte was given her dads posthumously awarded service medal today. I post it because unlike a lot of those ARE TROOPS DIED FOR YOUR FREEDOMS memes Andrew, and Geoffrey and the other 3 firefighters, were all volunteers. No one gave them hazard pay or a nice life insurance plan for their families. 
Gridlocked fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 07:14
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NSW current status * 20 people dead, two missing * 130 bushfires burning on the South Coast, Snowy Mountains, Blue Mountains, Central Coast and Mid North Coast * Almost five million hectares burned - equal to the metro areas of the five mainland state capitals * 1588 homes confirmed destroyed but number expected to rise Also the ash cloud from the bushfires has travelled 11,000km all the way across the Pacific Ocean is affecting Chile with hazy skies. It will drift into Argentina next.
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Jan 7, 2020 07:33
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Gridlocked posted:In Vitoria: And by 'change in weather' we mean: quote:Wangaratta and Bairnsdale are set to hit 39 and 38 degrees on Friday Edit: there's whole chunks of NSW that are forecast to hit high 30s and low 40s the next three days running, Friday looks particularly spicy Snowglobe of Doom fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 07:34
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South Australia has, on the whole, been fairly lucky thus far. You can see the burnt area on this map here: A wind change from the southeast and some water bombers are more or less what stopped the fire from spreading further south. There's not necessarily enough dense vegetation in SA to lead to fires on the scale of the ones in NSW but were they to hit the towns just to the south of the burnt area there would be a pretty serious increase in fatalities. There's one main road out of there into the city, which would probably slow down to a crawl in an evacuation and is surrounded by dense trees. Mount Barker alone has nearly 17K people so people fleeing the area on a 4 lane freeway would be not ideal. This area is where quite a few of the South Australian fatalities of the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires were and the area has a much larger population now. Thus far SA has 4 fatalities from this year's fires, with two of them being on Kangaroo Island. On the plus side, that cyclone that is currently hitting northern Western Australia will downgrade from a cyclone to a "lots of rain" system and will track down and is forecast dump a bunch of rain on the fires that have closed the SA/WA border (some of those towns in WA are entirely dependent on transport from SA and have literally had toilet paper airlifted in). It will probably also drop a bit of rain on the Adelaide Hills and Kangaroo Island but sometimes rainfall totals under 25mm/1 inch are not actually that helpful because they don't put out the fire, they merely lead to unburnt areas within the control lines that can catch fire from a smouldering log or something the moment it gets dry and windy again and also make the tracks that fire trucks move along quite muddy.
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Jan 7, 2020 07:48
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I don't think half of Kangaroo Island burning is lucky
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Jan 7, 2020 07:58
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bell jar posted:I don't think half of Kangaroo Island burning is lucky I suppose that's not the best word to use. The Cuddly Creek fire very nearly turned into something much worse on Dec 23 is I guess what I was trying to say here. That said, the vegetation around here is the driest and deadest I've ever seen it and probably won't turn a reassuring shade of green until a time of year where there's actually reliable rainfall (late April or early May) so maybe I spoke too soon anyway
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Jan 7, 2020 08:08
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Also could the goon who made the nice SA advertisement please make yourself known or PM me if you're shy, I promise not to disclose who you are, so I can thank you personally.
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Jan 7, 2020 08:09
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yeah that goon is true blue
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Jan 7, 2020 08:11
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I can't loving believe your firefighters aren't getting paid for that poo poo (as far as I've read, I could be wrong). I grew up in California, another place that is routinely on fire, and my father and brother are volunteer firefighters for the local municipality but when they get sent out on strike teams to go fight the big wildfires elsewhere in the state they get paid a pretty good wage and that's in the capitalist dystopia that is the US. It's ridiculous; the guys out there risking their lives (and wildland fires are where firefighters die, not structure fires like in the movies) deserve better. Stay safe aussie friends.
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Jan 7, 2020 08:13
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Resting Lich Face posted:I can't loving believe your firefighters aren't getting paid for that poo poo (as far as I've read, I could be wrong). well you see 
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Jan 7, 2020 08:15
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Mush Man posted:The ad leading to this thread states that Scott Morrison "has defunded vital services and protection all over". I want to read more about this, as I've heard others say similar things. However, I've only been able to find this fact check from the ABC saying that at least for the NSW RFS funding hasn't been cut. Can someone point me in the right direction or post some of the organisations so I can look up more information? look for cuts to the parks services, responsible for maintaining national parks https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-06/national-parks-underfunded-former-ranger-warns/11282562 quote:Former rangers, traditional owners and conservationists are warning Australia's national parks are reaching an environmental tipping point, with funding cuts at both a state and federal level leaving them in poor condition. https://www.themandarin.com.au/120342-parks-and-wildlife-funding-cuts-in-the-spotlight-as-nsw-nationals-play-the-blame-game/ quote:But staff cuts and restructures have seen the NPWS lose more than a third of its fire-trained workers, according to Public Service Association acting general secretary Troy Wright.
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Jan 7, 2020 08:17
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Synthbuttrange posted:well you see What a oval office. Can I say that in an aussie thread? Whatever I'll eat the 6 if not.
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Jan 7, 2020 08:18
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Resting Lich Face posted:I can't loving believe your firefighters aren't getting paid for that poo poo (as far as I've read, I could be wrong). I grew up in California, another place that is routinely on fire, and my father and brother are volunteer firefighters for the local municipality but when they get sent out on strike teams to go fight the big wildfires elsewhere in the state they get paid a pretty good wage and that's in the capitalist dystopia that is the US. It's ridiculous; the guys out there risking their lives (and wildland fires are where firefighters die, not structure fires like in the movies) deserve better. To clarify there ARE paid full-time and auxiliary firefighters and they put it a lot of hard work, however there is a fucktone of volunteer Rural/Country firefighters who cover towns too small to have their own full-time Fire and Rescue station or too remote. The volunteers outnumber the paid but a rather large margin too.
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Jan 7, 2020 08:19
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