eye-witnessed
bushfire - relief centre
Posted by Kathryn (Warburton, Australia) on 24 February 2009 in Documentary & Street.
Hi Guys! All is good again for the moment and we have returned home today after evacuating yesterday. Thankfully the fire of main concern to us stayed within its containment lines throughout yesterday's dramatic weather with only one case of a spot fire occuring in our valley and it being only about 2 metres in size it was dealt with very quickly - the wonderful work that all of the firefighters and emergency personnel have slogged their guts out for for the last week or so really payed off!
My family (including the dog and cat) evacuated down to the suburbs to stay with relatives but did visit the relief centre set up for our community just at the end of our valley where we could register and recieve some assitance and where people with nowhere else to go could camp the night. About 500 people registered (i.e. officially evacuated) with around 200 staying at the relief centre with all their pets and cattle! What a sight it was! In the bottom shot you can see the tents that the army set up for people to sleep in overnight last night - around 12 people to a tent - and also one of the many news crews broadcasting from the location. In the top image, as the sun was setting in the smokey sky some of the soldiers where playing a game of footy (Aussie Rules) with a few of the young boys and girls - it was lovely to watch.
Unfortunately some more fires started in yesterday's extreme fire weather - some of these possibly being deliberately lit once again - with a couple of firefighters getting hurt, 2 fire trucks being destoyed and some houses burnt.
On the weather front, the weather looks to be 'good' for us this week until some very 'bad' fire weather comes again on Fri - it is supposed to be a lot worse than yesterday so i imagine we will need to evacuate again then. Still no significant rain - only tiny drizzle patches associated with the change but not nearly enough to make an impact on the fires - the last real rain i can remember in my area happened at the beginning of January - even the ferns around our house are dying!!!
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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