This afternoon the emergency alert sounded on my phone. I couldn't believe it when it said there was a fire only a couple of kilometres away. That's a bit close!
When I first looked at the Emergency website, I think there were 3 vehicles responding, but it didn't take long for the number to grow:
In the screen shot above you can see that six vehicles were responding 14 minutes after the initial alert. Below, 11 vehicles only six minutes after that:
Meanwhile I was checking the wind radar to see how likely the fire was to move in our direction, and wondering if I needed to grab everything and leave. But there was almost no wind, so it seemed safe to stay at home for a while and keep an eye on it.
Graeme was actually driving near the site of the fire, so he stopped and captured this shot of a helicopter dumping water on the fire:
At about the time he took that picture the fire status changed to "Under Control" on the Emergency website, and then a couple of minutes later again it changed to "Safe". So the whole incident was over in only about 30 minutes. But in that time it had burnt out 2 or 3 paddocks; those in houses close by were very lucky there was no wind. Everything is incredibly dry at the moment. We need some decent rain, but there is none forecast in the next week, just hot dry days.
8 comments:
Glad all is well
Fancy there being so much help available. What a wonderful community you live in.
Thank goodness all is now well. I heard on the news that there hasn't been any decent rain since Jan 30th. We do desperately need rain. The farmers are suffering too,
It is wonderful that we now have all the resources to know what is going on and make smart decisions. Much better than seeing a column of smoke and wondering.
Glad you are safe and sound--that was close by!!
;((( hugs, Julierose
Phew, too close for comfort! Hope the tooth gets fixed soon, sounds awful.
We are so lucky that technology has helped us in the face of danger. When I was little, we only knew by the smell of the smoke, that fire was coming towards us from the National Park.
Hey Vireya, Do you have a Dam on your property?
My Uncle lives at Broadford and dug one just for 'Bushfire protection'- lucky him hit an underground spring so the thing is never empty!
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