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If you're in NSW, please keep up to date here and be safe.
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There's another big bushfire near me right now, right near Newcastle Airport. Photo my friend took from the airport.
Most of the roads leading into my area have been closed off; the only one open requires you to drive basically to the complete other side of the area down the highway. I expect traffic to be at a crawl by now. My mother got evacuated from work, and my father came home early because he worried the roads would be closed - thank god he did.
Just last week the only road into my town was closed and we had a number of power outages because of a pretty big fire. A couple of houses got destroyed, but the fire brigade did a great job of protecting most of them. It's pretty crazy driving down there every day now seeing how close the fires came to homes.
There's been a tonne down in Sydney area as well, I've heard on the news.
Hope everyone's OK. Please make sure you have a fire emergency plan and don't stick around for longer than you should.
I think it's going to be a hell of a bushfire season this year...
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Heard on the radio that the fire up here has broken containment lines. Also reports of a few lost houses. :/ Heatherbrae fire at 1,200 ha area already...
Seems like there's a pretty big fire near Balmoral as well.
This weather lately's been the perfect conditions for fire. The winds are crazy and these >30C temperature spikes...
There's a few in the Blue Mountains, Windsor way, but most of them are under control now.
I'm in the city now and there's so much smike here the light coming through the window is yellow
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NSW RFS site is down, please use the ABC News live updates site instead.
Heard that the last route into Port Stephens is closed. My sister's partner wasn't able to get through in time, and I believe my brother as well - we're not sure where he is. He works at Heatherbrae.
Orange haze outside my window, I work in the city and live in the inner West so I am ok.
Every body close to the fires make sure you have your fire plans in place, and remember you can replace stuff but you can't replace people.
RFS site is back up.
Fire has jumped the nepean river and is threatening the Penrith Regatta Centre.
Forcast for tomorrow predicts a max of 22 degrees. Should be some relief if they can hold out till then
Yeah pretty crazy here in Sydney, looking at the sky it is like living on Mars.
Nuts!
All my family members accounted for :)
Glad to hear that.
In Blackheath with fires in Mt Victoria and Mt Wilson, so the fires are really close and the RFS keeps sending me really scary text messages...
There's a few in the Blue Mountains, Windsor way, but most of them are under control now.
Incorrect. See my previous post. Emergency centre has been established in Blackheath and many of those people from Mt Vic who work in Blackheath have left. There is the most amazing plume of smoke in the sky.
Oh, and I just got a land-line call from a tele-marketer in Queenstown. I told him I had to keep the line free....
In Blackheath with fires in Mt Victoria and Mt Wilson, so the fires are really close and the RFS keeps sending me really scary text messages...The fire is INSIDE THE HOUSE...
In all seriousness though, you might need to put some stuff in your car and be ready to go if needs be.
Funny DM! Haven't lit a fire for a month now. Spring in the Mountains....
But yes, we have packed important stuff, Terabyte drive is full of important stuff and bodgy old Liteace is "ready" to go....
Got married at the Manor House in Mt Victoria.
Be safe OWolf AM and anybody else close to the fires.
Stay safe everyone. Like 8th said, make sure to look after yourself and your family/friends first and foremost.
Canberra has been clear so far, but it's getting dry as hell and very windy here. All it takes is one idiot...
Having lived in Arizona for eight years in the past, I've seen my share of wildfire threats, though thankfully none got down to me in Phoenix. Not funny business at all. Can't imagine it's any better down under.
Stay safe, you guys.
Doing a role call to see if everybody is ok.
Orthos - Australia is designed to burn, our forests are primarily made up of eucalypts all filled with flammable oil, we don't get much rain in the summer so the forests and grasslands are dry and hot.
All it takes is a lighting strike, a careless cigarette butt, a spark from a barbecue, a back burn gone wrong, or a fire bug and you have a major disaster on you hands.
Currently the number of homes lost are in the 100's
When I lived in Montana, the trend was towards trying to keep fires directed away from houses, not towards putting them out. The way it was explained to us was that periodic burning is meant to be part of the environment's natural cycle, but after a big fire near the turn of the century we decided to put out every fire as soon as it was discovered. This let stuff survive when it should have been eliminated in a burn. As a result, when a burn happened among this buildup and wasn't dealt with pretty much immediately, it quickly got out of control. Now we're trying to limit the damage by not putting out fires unless they are going to burn down a house.
How similar is this to the way things are in Australia?
There is supposed to be a program for back burning, where on cool days the fire brigade will start a fire to burn of 'fuel' (mainly leaf litter and dry twigs that accumulate on the ground)
But this doesnt always happen and we get out of control fires.
Another thing out Australian Flora.
Some of our native species trap their seeds within a thick seed pod.
These pods only open when exposed to extreme heat, such as from a bushfire.
Fire goes through the bush, surrounding trees are wiped out, sead pods open and life goes on.
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Yeah, the Australian ecology is built around a wet season, a dry season and the occasional everything is on fire season. Control fires are the best solution, but unfortunately it is reliant on a lot of factors (temperature and wind conditions). This year has been particularly hot, so we're seeing a bad bushfire season (and an early one too. It's still spring here).
Bummer I had typed up a massive post but the message board ate it.
RDG covers it... The scale is hard to get across though, NSW would fit 10 or more east coast US states in it so the current fires would stretch across two maybe three states
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Yeah, the Australian ecology is built around a wet season, a dry season and the occasional everything is on fire season. Control fires are the best solution, but unfortunately it is reliant on a lot of factors (temperature and wind conditions). This year has been particularly hot, so we're seeing a bad bushfire season (and an early one too. It's still spring here).
If you live up north you break down wet season into cyclone and flood season.
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Looking forward to the black boy flowers after these latest fires. (Gosh that name is awkward, when I think about it, but that's all I've ever been told...)
You can be sure there will be a LOT of heat on O'Farrell after these fires. Utterly ridiculous.
We do have a lot of pals from Australia on the boards here - I hope that everyone is safe over there, too!
Looking forward to the black boy flowers after these latest fires. (Gosh that name is awkward, when I think about it, but that's all I've ever been told...)
You can be sure there will be a LOT of heat on O'Farrell after these fires. Utterly ridiculous.
Not too many Xanthorrhoeas around here...
Fire is apparently in the Kanimbla valley, and ABC 24hr NEWS mentioned the Grose Valley - basically both sides of the ridge that is Blackheath. I haven't heard about the fire in the Grose from the RFS alerts/local news...
RFS says if the (State Mine???) fire gets into the Wollemi it might burn there for months.
@Kelsey McAilbert - yep, the fire services are only trying to protect lives and property, they just can't stop/contain them as yet.
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There's TONNES of grass trees (thanks Wiki for giving me a non-borderline racist name to call them by...) around my town. Driving up the road into town you can see dozens and dozens of them. There are a couple by one of the local bottle-os with stalks as tall as actual trees, it's pretty impressive!
Heatherbrae fire has been more or less controlled for now, or at least no homes are under threat. Thankfully today was a very cool and calm day. The fireies were out all night though, I heard.
I could still see the flames up in the distance as I was driving to the base of the blue Mountains. This was only a few hours ago.
We're starting to see notices come through to get our bags packed in case of call-out.
We let my cousin who lives in Warrimoo know that they can stay with us if they need to evacuate.
Evacuated.
Evacuated.
Good luck OSW, I hope that the fire can be held and people and property remain safe tomorrow.
Sweden has copious amounts of rain. Many summers are rainfests with serious rainfall four days a week or so. We have no tornados, no serious earthquakes, no massive hurricanes (we have one every few years, and sometimes it causes some significant damage), no poisonous animals that are dangerous to humans. We get snowfall in winter lately, but rarely anything significant. When I hear about whole countries on fire, I am thankful I live here. I hope everyone down there is safe. Positive thoughts.
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You have Vikings, ABBA and Volvos.
Australia is a continent it's vast, large chunks of it are always doing something freaky.
My Country
The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze ...
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
**
Dorothea Mackeller
Was in Canberra from Thursday to Sunday - Friday afternoon the smoke haze started drifting over and by Saturday it was everywhere. Glad to be back in the relatively clear air of Adelaide, mind you, bushfire seasons due here any second, too.
Keep out of the flames, people.
Reggie.
Fires are very close to my town. It's been a hairy week.
@8th - I'm pretty sure I have a picture book of that, but either I've never come across that first stanza, or I've forgotten it. Fantastic. And thanks.
BTW: Weatherzone is showing a lot of rain, but whether it is just a drizzle that is hampering backburning efforts or if it will be a "gamechanger" I don't know.
RFS Commissioner says if you don't need to be in the Mountains tomorrow, don't be. 70k / hr winds and big fires sound pretty serious.
How is everybody going?