Firestorm

Firestorm: Day 2

Bush fire – 2013

Thursday Evening- 17/10/13

The wind has changed with the arrival of the southerly and the pall of smoke hanging over the city has been blown to the north. It's effects are now someone else's problem to worry about. We at least can breathe easier here. The effects will linger for some days though and I expect to be treating more asthma and dry coughs in the coming days.

I listen to the news on the drive home. Four towns have been burnt out and the fire has jumped the Nepean river and is now burning on the outskirts of Penrith. The wind change has taken some of the pressure off but the fire fronts have now turned north east as the south westerly blows at 40 to 60 kilometres per hour.

Poor bloody firies will be exhausted.

The fire commissioners voice over the radio is strained and he emphasises that so far no lives have been lost.

I feel my throat tighten and the tears form at the thought of all the trauma yet to come.

This is such a beautiful place to live, but it will kill you as soon as look at you!

The TV news coverage is extensive and shows house after house destroyed. There are kilometres of stopped traffic on the highway because the fires are burning around the hills through which the highway has to pass. Hundreds of police are evacuating everybody from the fire fronts because the wind strength has picked up and the fire is now racing in different directions. The back burns haven't worked.

The helicopter video shows whole streets of houses burnt out in the mountain towns. Here just one house stands untouched as the fire jumped it and there, vehicles burn as fire fighters run past it to get to their fire truck. The warnings are continuous across the bottom of the screen as town after town is listed and people alerted to evacuate or find shelter. It is too late to escape when the fire front is roaring up the hill toward your home. You have to leave early or stay and fight it from a prepared house. To be caught in your car in the flames is a death sentence. Being burnt alive with your family is not how anyone should die.

Friday- 18/10/13

I awoke to a cool clear blue sky today – a lie, because to the north I can see the smoke and I know what last night was like. The morning news is horrible. Hundreds of homes and thousands of hectares burnt out and one death. Old Walter died when his heart gave out while defending his house from the fire. Sixty three years young and he dies in hospital from his own grief. Miserable bloody way to go.

Clinic is quiet today so I catch up on book work. My son is off on a school cycling excursion and the air remains clear and crisp without a hint of smoke. I wouldn’t be cycling up north though. The Bush Fire brigades are frantically try to back burn and establish containment lines before another wind change tomorrow and then the hot weather on sunday.

My patients are subdued but not unduly worried. We’ve never had a major fire through this area, ever. Everything else seems to burn before we do. I suppose there is first time for everything, especially with global warming.

I feed my poultry and lock them away fro the night with the smoke to the north still a curtain blocking the view. After sunset the glow of the mountain fire becomes visible, what 80 or 100 kilometre away due north. It’ll reach the escarpment on sunday if the weather is as bad as they are forecasting. We’ll have the water bombers working shifts all day long trying to stop it dropping down into the villages and suburbs below the cliffs of the escarpment.

The wind changes before I go to bed and the smoke is strong in the air. I can't see the moon tonight. Moonlit smoke haze is eery and very unearthly. Everything has a strange grey glow about it. I don't take my evening walk as the smoke is now too thick and I close up the house against it. 

It’s going to be a shitty day tomorrow.