EFFORTPOST Free State Province Burning Down in Winter Drought and High Winds

Greetings Dramatards, it's fricking cold in South Africa currently, and it's snowing in Sutherland, in the Northern Cape Province.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=458233760502109

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1147243579819012

And snow is extremely rare in south africa, so this is an especially cold winter At least for all of the inland provinces, record low temperatures, and all following on the tailcoats of the last El Nino weather phenomenon, means while the 2 years prior were abnormally wet, this year has been aggressively cold

https://snowreport.co.za/best-snow-photos-from-south-africa-lesotho-early-june-2024/

It's a running meme/steriotype that boers are immune to cold, or allergic to longpants

Which is where the gay boy shorts uniforms of the 1980s came from.

Lesotho (the country in the middle of SA) is also more prone to snowing, compared to the rest of the surrounding nation, due to its high elevation, and numerous mountain ranges.

Even high mountains in provinces not at all prone to snow, has light snow coverage on their peaks.

Anyways point is it is abnormal conditions in SA currently, even though SA is usually already pretty cold at this stage of the year in its climatic history.

All except the Free State and much of the Eastern Provinces of South Africa, in which regions are currently combatting some of the worst and most intense wildfires of the past 5 years.

https://www.earthnews365.co.za/update-of-fires-in-the-free-state/

This is because places like the Free State are very arid Semi-Deserts in large portions of the province, and the winter counter-intuitively has higher rates and risks of forest and veld fires than in the Summer. This is because while summer's heat definitely aggravates circumstances to high risks of literal spontaneous combustion, it is also the raining season for inlands in most of the country, and consequently there would be a watering of the earth to combat the heat.

In Winter, especially in the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, despite the cold, the velds and forests are much more prone to combustion. This is because of the hyper drought which yearly besets southern africa, and the Cold counter-intuitively aggravates dry circumstances. The cold means less evaporation and less clouds, and the freezing of water which prevents the evaporation of whichever water mediums remaining even further.

When Cold Fronts arrive, they can bring massive freak winds with them, and it is in high wind situations where veld fires really thrive. This recent Sunday a massive Cold Front froze the whole center of the country over and brought with it 70km/h consistent winds, which are abnormal in their strength and consistency.

Several thousand small wildfires have been breaking out hourly for the past 3 days, and several hundred fires continue to burn in the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal whom were both hardest hit.

https://www.facebook.com/FSUFPA/

The fast sustaining winds meant that even the flicker of embers would explode into roaring flames as the extreme drought made every leaf and blade of grass a tinderbox

i was helping my father and some other boers here in the province driver hydrant and fire-firefighting vehicles around yesterday afternoon and night.

Which is a lot less heroic than it sounds, basically I was driving a water-trailer around for the real men to do the hard work.

Farmers have organized into Brandwag, or burning vigilance since forever, and a smoke trail on the horizon usually has bakkies scrambled to come to the aid of your neighbours, even as out of sheer interest it is in your desire to extinguish such flames in their cradle, before they become an uncontrollable firestorm spreading outwards everywhere, additionally the wind can always always change.

The biggest r-sluration is that most farmers and municipal teams working are usually all amateurs and most commercial farmers of even the small type usually has a shitty fire-fighting wagon in their store-house of 5 years old and only once tested, as per regulations,

and thus the 1st responders always being the most untrained farmers who've never even held a firehose in their lives is always comical in our ineptitude, before the Provincial Professional Firefigting response squads arrive which usually can be hours if not half a day late as the country is large.

There's this one 80 year old grandma lady who still works for the Municipality whom have been dousing flames since sunday afternoon - she says the perpetual amateur mistake municipal workers and boers not used to fighting fire makes, is not to totally overdose simmering flames,

as perpetually the teams had to go back and re-extinguish fires because they had failed to completely douse embers in their totality, and certain carbon remains, even surrounded by water, eventually dries in the extremely dry Free State, and literally fricking begins anew!

Here is a professional rural firefighting vehicle unit, if it looks unprofessional because it's not a classic Euro/American city firetruck then realize that a regular 4x4 vehicle with a trailer is by far the superior required vehicle for transporting water over seldom tread rural dusty dirtroads in the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal. Since the potholes, underdevelopment, extreme isolation and offroad rugged terrain conditions, means that fire-lorries meant for cities, are completely unsuited for the velds of South Africa.

there are however sometimes special dedicated water transporting vehicles used, but these often are too specialized for poor municipalities - a provincial Toyota 4x4 with a water-trailer works just as effectively as fancy crap.

anyways just telling you strags this, cuz i haven't responded to the shitload of comments of yesterday, will fix that soon