bushfire - update

Posted by Kathryn (Warburton, Australia) on 17 February 2009 in Documentary & Street.

Same view as an image i posted here last week but this time it is a bit less ominous, thank goodness!

We continue to be blessed here with relatively calm and stable weather that has stuck with us over the last few days and hopefully will continue for the next few days at least. These conditions have allowed firefighters to construct many kilometres of containment lines and to continue with controlled burns in readiness for when the winds do change and strengthen. All good news but there is still much much much work to be done and all we can do is hope for the calm weather to continue, allowing the firefighters more time to continue their protection strategies, or for rain of course!

We here in the Yarra Valley, as well as in Melbourne and across Victoria, are currently experiencing massive amounts of smoke, mostly, we are told, from the enormous back-burning operations being undertaken just beyond our hills and in many other areas. Some of this smoke can be seen in this image but this is a mild amount to what we are seeing right now! But at least this smoke is a 'good smoke' as opposed to wildfire smoke - haha.

The media here is reporting that Victoria can now breath easier as only 6 fires remain uncontained - but what they don't say is that some of the many fires over the past week have combined to form massive 'super' complexes of which there are now 6, with the complex of most threat to us being 75,744 hectares in size - just enormous! Thankfully though for the moment, most of the active fire-front is still burning in thick bushland away from communities - however this terrain makes then for more difficult, dangerous and slower work for the firefighters implementing the containment strategies. Despite this firefighting/containment operations have been continually ramping up in the last few days rather than scaling down with many firefighters from interstate (NSW and TAS) and overseas (NZ and US) presently fighting the fires in my area along with our own crews.

Another story that is making big news here is the arrest and charging of a man whom allegedly lit one of the fires which killed at least 10 people. As you can imagine, the public feeling towards this man is much less than amicable and now sparking safety concerns for his family and related individuals. At the moment at least 2 other fires remain ‘suspicious’, one of them being the most deadly so far and which now is the fire causing most threat to my area. The hunt for these arsonists still continues with whole devastated towns being sectioned off as crime scenes and not allowing residents to return.

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!

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