Friday, October 4, 2013

Bleary Eyed.

After I posted last night Deb and I went around and sorted out what we would take if we needed to evacuate.

At the same time we had dinner cooking on the stove. It was rather strange periodically stirring our meal and then going outside to check on the bushfire.

As it got dark  the fire moved across toward our track, burning in the forest to our south east.
 As I said in my last post the wind was favourable to us and although the fire grew in intensity, it seemed to only be creeping slowly in this direction.

By 9:30 it was really intense and dominating the sky to the south-east.

That was as bright and as close as it got. By 10:30 the air temperature was low and the intensity of the fire dropped. 
Just before midnight I decided it was safe enough to go to bed.
I set an alarm for 2:00am and got up again then to make sure conditions hadn't changed.

I was up again at 5:00 to check again.
This morning to the south-east the fire seems to be all but under control.
You can see smoke still coming from the forest (from burning stumps and the like) but the threat from that direction has certainly eased.

We aren't entirely out of the woods yet (excuse the pun) as the fire appears to be burning further around to the south. I can hear heavy machinery operating in that direction so presumably the RFS is putting in a containment line somewhere.
The trouble is the terrain down that way is so rugged lines are very difficult to establish. More than anything we will rely on the wind staying favourable.  The forecast for the days ahead seems promising.

3 comments:

mshatch said...

Wow, that sounds a little scary! I may not like our winters here in Maine but aside from the occasional blizzard we don't have any natural disasters (earthquakes, flooding, fire...)and there's something to be said for that!

Hope you stay out of the woods.

Lisa said...

How frightening - fingers crossed that the winds stay favorable and the fire services are able to get the fire stopped.

Kathleen Jones said...

Wonderful, dramatic pics Al. But how worrying for you. We have bush fires on the hills here in Italy and have had some close calls, but they're small compared to this one. It must be a real worry. Fingers crossed for you all.