The number of deaths from bushfires in the Australian state of Victoria has reached 170 and officials say it is still likely to rise. At the time of writing there are around 30 fires still burning in Victoria and more than 700 homes have been destroyed.
After my Sunday post on the Australian bushfires I received an e-mail from a Michael Smalley, who grew up in Victoria, Australia. In the e-mail Michael mentioned some of the beautiful and historic towns that have been destroyed by the fires.
Michael suggested that Google could do something with the Australian street view imagery similar to the new satellite imagery time-line in Google Earth 5. The new time-line in Google Earth lets users view historical satellite imagery and see how areas have changed over time.
In the areas that have been covered Google Maps street view imagery provides an incredible visual record. There is now an added poignancy to the street view imagery of the Victorian towns that have been destroyed by the bushfires.
Let us hope that these communities are able to recover and rebuild.
Marysville, Victoria
Kinglake, Victoria
St Andrews, Victoria
Buxton, Victoria
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When will the Netherlands and Germany be on street view??
ReplyDeleteSince the devastating bush-fires in Australia there has been a number of people petitioning to have the Google street view data archived so that the residents of the towns would have a record of how they looked before they were destroyed.
ReplyDeleteMarysville, which was completely destroyed by fire, was a historic and popular tourist destination as well as Kinglake, Flowerdale, Strathewen and Narbethong which were basically gutted.
The facebook group is http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69249521398&ref=share
Google are currently in discussions regarding preserving the street data so hopefully this is the way forward!