Topic: Scorched TV program

[Richary]

Has anyone else been looking out for the new Channel 9 telemovie Scorched that is airing Sunday night? While I know it will be a TV drama it has possibilities regarding climate change for the future (even if maybe set a bit too close).

Story is that it is 2012 and Sydney has had no rain for over 200 days, with 6 weeks water supply left. They have a website (fairly bandwidth intensive) at scorched.tv

The stuff on the website makes it look like it could be interesting.

[Michael Bath]

I watched this - it wasn't too bad. Had lots of real footage from what was probably the Canberra bushfires. The program end seemed a bit rushed.

[James]

I could only watch the first hour before cynicism got the better of me. The whole marketing push by nine "this could happen" was a shocker. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy it a little however it just became too over the top.

Had a laugh when the wind charts appeared on screen showing a nice 20 knot se'er across the city whilst the head fire guy screamed out 30 to 40 knots screaming in from the NW lol. The obvious fact the chief fire guys son's gf was going to be in some sort of trouble later in the movie when a locket with a picture of the guy was given to her early in the movie.

[Richary]

I was a bit disappointed in it, the leadup and website seemed to indicate it was going to focus a bit more on the whole climate change, lack of water thing etc than just a huge bushfire event. That said it wasnt too bad.

And yes, I recognised some of the Canberra bushfire footage as well.

They should have shown one from the fires in the Royal National Park a number of years ago, where the fire was whipping up it's own fire tornado with the wind vortex, that looked awesome on the news.

[Jimmy Deguara]

The program was interesting from the perspective that my Fiance was able to see some of the footage from previous bushfire seasons and give her some insight as to what occurs here. The political component and its focus rather than focus on the disaster itself and the victims was a poor ending I thought. But then again, I am biased against politics anyway.

I also thought their portrayal of the magnitude of the disaster was rather poor - mention of whole suburbs burning but lack of a variety of footage to back it up.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Richary]

The program was interesting from the perspective that my Fiance was able to see some of the footage from previous bushfire seasons and give her some insight as to what occurs here.

I am sure she will see the news reports and smell the smoke sometime in the next couple of years! When I first moved to Adelaide my parents were worried that it was a fire prone area (which it can be with the very steep hills to the east of the city). I did point out that if the fires actually got to Glenelg then a lot of Adelaide was going to be in trouble first.

The big fires in 1999 were interesting as I was living at Gosford. We had burnt leaves landing in the garden when the firefront was still 40km to the west. We had bush over the road about 200m deep before it hit the next line of houses, and a big hill at the end of the street that for some reason seemed to catch fire almost every school holidays. When the fire finally hit on the Saturday I was listening to the fire brigade on the scanner and heard them pull everyone off the top of the hill leaving Somersby and Kariong to luck. Then a big wind change (80kph) came through and started spot fires close to 10km in front of the main fire. Luckily the direction meant it left our hill alone and went over to East Gosford/Springfield.

The distance the smoke travels is amazing though. I was at Port Lincoln in South Australia a couple of years ago (1 year after the bad fires there) and we were getting smoke from fires in western Victoria.

[Jimmy Deguara]

Getting back to the main point that the movie I think tried to portray was the risk of a major bushfire event in Sydney. Given its expansion and the greenbelt that seems to exist across many parts of Sydney (not Schofields haha), a majr catastrophe could occur. This was evident in a couple of the major bushfire events in recent years where there was a risk of fires could cross the Hawkesbury River system and head into the western suburbs.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara