Monday, February 9, 2009

All safe so far

I have finally got confirmation this morning that the family I know in the Kinglake region are safe and well. Their house is most likely destroyed but they did the smart thing and got out very early, more because the weather conditions posed an unacceptable risk rather than any specific fire threat.

They live on a small property that is mostly cleared with open paddocks, but outside their boundaries is forest so if they had stayed they would have stood very little chance. We have some other friends that live in a relatively defensible property about 500 metres west and the fires got very close them.

Pretty scary stuff. I hate to think what would have happened if the wind had stayed northerly as Mernda and Dorren, which are only two suburbs northeast of us, were put on alert. If they had gone up then the fire is in the suburbs. The sad thing is that while the wind change was good for some, it put others straight in the path of the fire. The only good wind change is a change to no wind at all.

I guess this is the price for living in Melbourne's green wedge and I am sure we will hear some sad stories from friends and neighbours over the coming weeks.

10 comments:

  1. It's a tough one. It's better to mourn the loss of the house than half or all of the family though.

    Good news.

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  2. Naut glad to know all are well. Saw the feed coming in last night form Kinglake and was pretty shocked.

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  3. Moko - Once one life is lost during a fire then property loss cannot be referred to as a tragedy. It just becomes an inconvenience.

    Chaz - Yeah I stayed up late sat night listening to the emergency broadcasts on the radio just in case the wind turned back our way. Kinglake is devasting, I know the area well as I often go for a drive out that way. I have also cycled from my mates place through the forest to Kinglake. Beautiful scenery back then, probably just ash now.

    The most disturbing images have been the photos of burnt out cars on the Kinglake road. Cars that have either run off the road or crashed into each other probably because the smoke was so thick. The mind wanders to the fate of their occupants.

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  4. Glad to hear the good news. Seems time for all of us to pause and reflect just how lucky we really are. The fate of the occupants who didn't survive could be considered perhaps that at the very least they are at peace now.

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  5. And the aerial shots just showing street after street of ashen ruins. I guess the images of the cars really bring home how goddamm murderously fast the thing was. Good to hear that your friends got out alive.

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  6. I have no words that can describe the horror.

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  7. As per all the comments - what can you say. The toll just seems to keep rising. So many people and their families. And all those poor bastards in ICU.

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  8. It's unutterably f--king horrendous. The numbers are starting to become unfathomable, and the stories coming out (or at these getting reported over here) are desperately grim. And to think there's a handful of pathetic impotent little men out there who started a decent swathe of these fires just so they could feel less pathetic and impotent about their pathetic impotency. For once, I advocate bringing back eye-for-an-eye punishment: burn them at the stake.

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  9. I say when they catch the arsonists not if because somebody will talk, a set of stocks set up in the community they burnt I think!

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  10. I suspect that rough, brutal, 3000 fps style could be metered out with little thought, by lots.

    Glad to hear all are OK Naut:

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