i never talk about these things but i can’t remain silent.
i know tumblr doesn’t give a SHIT when things happen in countries outside the “most popular ones” (such as the usa & england). it’s true, don’t lie to me. y’all don’t give A FUCK. not every issue and problem in said countries gets the appropriate exposure but in general shit shows up on the news WORLD FREAKING WIDE. you set up donations, you help out, your spread the word, you say “pray for x”……
southern europe is burning.
my country is burning.
people are dying – at home, on the road, trying to run away, in their cars.
yesterday my country had 300 active fires.
people are losing EVERYTHING they own.
i have a friend that is on a train right now passing through places that have been burnt to the ground and she says the smoke is so intense it’s getting inside the train and she can barely breathe.
and yet, even though several people (myself included) have been trying to bring awareness to what has been happening in southern europe… what we get from most of you, those not part of the countries suffering, is silence. we don’t ask for money, we don’t ask for shit other than a reblog to spread awareness… something you can delete in 24/48hrs if you wish.
i don’t know what to tell you. i’m angry. i’m frustrated. i’m disappointed. i feel like i’m screaming into the void. “a reblog does nothing” – you know that’s a damn lie, you know exposure always helps, you know people start paying attention when posts on social media become popular. my country in particular is a small one, we get ZERO exposure. y’all are only starting to figure out we even fucking exist bc of the shit we’ve been winning lately.
but hell, if the EU doesn’t give a shit, why should some user on tumblr dot com?
again, i don’t know what to tell you so i’ll let the images speak for themselves:
An image captured by a Nasa satellite shows a thick plume of smoke blowing southward from the Greek island of Chios over the island of Crete
Torneros de Jamuz, Spain
Duca, Croatia
A helicopter from Italy’s civil protection service drops water on a fire near the railway between Venice and Trieste
Residents take refuge on the beach as a wildfire burns on the mountain next to the village of Lithi, on the Greek island of Chios
Men gather cattle during a forest fire in Vieira de Leiria, Marinha Grande, Portugal.
Charred trees are seen on the hills above the Cloister of Thivaidas on Mount Athos, a World Heritage Site in Greece
Portugal
This is fucking important. I am glad someone fucking spoke about this and said what they had to say. The damage is terrible, and all the evergreen, stone, even the ground is black. I was fucking terrified when Croatia was burning. The fire was near a village where I like and I thought it will burn down. I thought the church will burn down. I thought the cemetery where my grandpa is buried will burn. I still remember the smell of smoke, and when I went to check how bad is fire, my clothes and hair and skin all stunk of smoke. It didn’t go away for weeks.
This is NASA’s picture of Croatia and Montenegro burning. My fucking country was burning. Fucking reblog this. I don’t care that it isn’t UK or US, or that it doesn’t go with your blog, fucking. Reblog. It.
I live in California and know all too well how horrific fires are. Just yesterday a town near mine, Ojai, has multiples fires in one day while it was 104°F/40°C, not only are the fires themselves damaging to propery but they’re damaging to people. A lot of these people will need help and need to relocate, and sadly most governments try to get away with doing the least amount they can get away with unless people throw a fit and bring awareness to the situation. Reblog if you can.
And, famously, most of the Australian countryside is made of explodium.
The eucalypts that feature so prominently are practically dripping with highly flammable oils. There’s even a myth that koalas will explode if they get too close to campfires. The trees certainly will.
In fact, as an approaching bushfire bakes the forest in front of it, you can get a horribly volatile mix of eucalyptus oils and oxygen. Then it can all go up at once.
The Australian bush is so flammable that hundreds of plant species have evolved methods of surviving the conflagration. Indeed, many of them require a fire to germinate their seeds.
Oddly enough, despite living in a tinderbox, bushfires have only killed about 800 people in the history of the nation. Unhappily, 179 of those were during the 2009 Victorian Bushfires.
But if our bushfires aren’t enough for you, feel free to combine them with the tornadoes.
California has been in a drought for several years, but we got heavy rains this winter so the state of California has declared the drought “officially over”
Aside from the issues of people no longer conserving water (“because we’re not in a drought anymore guys!!!” 🤦🏼♀️), this also means that in the spring all the plants on the hillsides grew a ton because of the extra water, and when summer hit it dried out and now the hills are completely covered in dry weeds, aka perfect fuel for fires
This cycle has been repeating for years but tbh I don’t think we’ve had a ~really bad~ fire for the last several years
So basically the entire greater LA area is just a ticking time bomb for when everything can go up in flames
There are currently 74 wildfires burning in the western United States, many of them are approaching heavily populated cities such as Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, and Los Angeles. The La Tuna fire is now officially the brush fire in LA history. Air quality warnings are being issued across the entirety of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. I’m in Portland, about 40 miles out from the nearest wildfire, and it’s raining ash and difficult to breathe due to the haze.
If you live anywhere near these fires, you’ve probably heard this by now, but please be safe. Stay indoors if at all possible and keep windows closed. Keep pets indoors as well. Hopefully some of our trademark Portland rain will come soon to help minimize the damage.
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