Fire Update

Here's the situation this morning. The black area on this map is the burnt or burning area. The little star I've added to the map is approximately where our house is:

To give an idea of scale, that burnt area is nearly 4,000 hectares, or close to 10,000 acres.

This morning there was a community meeting in Buninyong to brief everyone on the fire. We thought we would go via Lal Lal so that we could check on the chooks, grab some supplies, and just generally make sure everything was OK. As the wind is still from the north, Lal Lal isn't in the path of the fire at present.

However, every road to the area is blocked:

Fortunately we were able to bribe a policeman (not this one) with insect repellent. He let us in for a quick look in exchange for some relief from the flies! At the house we discovered that the power is off. Don't know how long it has been that way, but we might have a fridge and two freezers of food to dispose of when we can get back. We checked on our neighbour who is staying to defend his house. He had his generator on, and sprinklers set up all around the house.

This was the scene at Buninyong Town Hall:

We thought this was the queue to get in to the meeting, but it turned out the hall was full, and none of us would get in. They eventually set up a loud speaker, and a pop-up shade shelter, and distributed water and ice to those outside in the sun before the meeting got underway. There wasn't a lot they could tell us, except that there are 300 fire personnel fighting the fire, and 15 helicopters and fire-bombers. Several homes have been lost, but they are still evaluating how many. There were welfare specialists available to help those who have suffered losses of property and livestock. The weather forecast doesn't look as bad now as it did last night, but roads won't be re-opened until they are sure it is safe to do so.

As we left the meeting, one of the helicopters flew over:

So we don't know when we can get back home. If we are lucky it will be later today, but it might not be.