Bushfire - further update

Posted by Kathryn (Warburton, Australia) on 22 February 2009 in Documentary & Street.

Today has been declared a national day of mourning in Australia for the victims of this bushfire disaster.

However the bushfire crisis isn't over as we have been advised today that we should evacuate from our town and valley, for the first time before since this crisis began 2 weeks ago, in preperation for the extreme fire weather coming again tomorrow. At the moment ash is falling from the large amounts of smoke in th sky which also is creating a blood red sun.

The firefighters have still been working around the clock to build and strengthen containment and control lines just north of us and have contructed around 280kms of line so far. Tomorrow hot temperatures and strong northerly winds are forecast ahead of a change at around 5pm which will swing the winds back to coming from the south-south west. The northerly winds will push the large firefront (of which some of the smoke can be seen in this image taken from my house) in our direction, however, the winds are predicted to be about 70% better than those we experienced on "Black Saturday" 2 weeks ago. The change of winds is also a concern for our area as that will set off unpredicatable and squally winds possibly carrying embers to many parts of our Valley and sparking fires - hopefully though the massive contingent of local, national and international firefighters currently being deployed throughout our Valley will be able to handle any breakouts. In our area alone we still have firefighters from interstate (NSW, SA and TAS) and overseas (NZ, Canada and the US) working with our local CFA, DSE and Melbourne Water firefighters doing a tremendous amount of work in very rough terrain and hard conditions. They are doing an unbelievable job!

So I am unsure of when I will be able to post next - hopefully tomorrow night if Warby isn't affected and it is safe for us to return but we will have to wait and see...

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!

vfxy Photoblogs | Listed on Photoblogs.org