eye-witnessed
bushfire #5 - map of fire situation in Victoria
Posted by Kathryn (Warburton, Australia) on 11 February 2009 in Documentary & Street.
A map supplied by the Country Fire Authority (CFA) and the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) that we have been constantly referring to on their websites over the last few days. Though not a photograph, i thought i would post it here anyway to give you guys all an overall idea of what is going on. I have added a black star in the location of my town of Warburton. The fire symbols represent only the MAIN fires at the moment and their starting points so keep in mind that the firefronts and areas already burnt range much further beyond these symbols. Also, though this map is the most current map published at this stage, at the time of posting, the situation shown is at least 34 hours old.
As i mentioned yesterday, after feeling more comforted by some posivitive news in the morning, last night i attended a community meeting and became quite concerned with the information we were given - though some fire fronts (i.e. the Murrundindi, the Maroondah - Mt Riddell and Bunyip fires) are still posing urgent threats to nearby communities, the main concern of the state emergency services is the idea that the Yea-Murrundindi fire complex (which pretty much fills the entire top red box) along with the large fires of the Maroondah-Yarra complex that are at present burning uncontained in thick bushland and away from private property, will POSSIBLY move south and MAY join with the northern edge of the Bunyip fire. The current distance between the fires is only 18kms with Warburton among many towns lying directly between them.
At this stage we are not under URGENT threat and most likely won't be until the winds shift to northerlies - we have no firm idea of when this will occur but it may be sometime on the weekend or early next week. Of course the emergency services are all working together and doing a tremendous amount of work and planning to try to stop these fires from merging but the enormous scale, number of firefronts and the absence of any significant amount of rain in the foreseeable future means that we need to be prepared for the worst. My family now has a firm 'fire plan' in place with the cars entirely and thoughtfully packed waiting for us to evacuate the minute an alert message is broadcast or northerly winds are predicted. So life at the moment is pretty much consists of sitting beside the radio dreading the mention of Warburton in the alert reports, and constantly refreshing the CFA and DSE websites for any news.
Again, we are and have been very lucky so far that the fires have managed to not affect our town as yet especially considering what many others have experienced and what some continue to face. Sadly the death toll has risen again to 181 confirmed with at least 1033 homes destroyed across the state. A big thank you to all the people donating money and goods and also to the countries pledging aid and supplying firefighting equipment and personnel to help our exhausted emergency services. And thank you all again for your wonderful supportive comments - i truely appreciate them! Thank you!
UPDATE: after a shaky day, this evening has been a lot more calm with us hearing some comforting news once again - it just goes up and down, up and down it seems. There has been heavy rain in the southern part of the state (not much near us though!) and many immediate threats have subsided once again. Hopefully this will keep up!
Thank you all so much for your lovely encouraging comments. I am getting quite busy and am finding that i don't have a lot of time for both photography and maintaining this blog as much as i would like to so i probably won't be able to reply to each and every comment from now on but i promise i will eventually get around to visiting your blog! Happy snapping everybody!
Kaha the Kiwi has set off again on his journey around the world to see all of his AM3 friends. Keep up to date with his adventures on his own blog here. Safe travels Kaha and i hope you have a ton of fun!
Thanks for viewing my photograph!
All feedback, especially constructive criticism is welcomed and very much appreciated. Enjoy your day!
