Victorian Bushfires
 

For those of you in the Northern part of the world preparing for a white Christmas, we here in the wide brown land are facing possibly the worst bushfire season in recorded history. The great fires of five years ago that ravaged parts of the eastern states and even crossed in to the suburbs of the country's capital, Canberra, are still a vivid memory to most of us. We were even warned for evacuation here at Bandiana.
At last count today, there were 248 bushfires in Victoria alone. Inthe last three days they have burnt an area equivalent to the last major fires in their first nine days.
The worst case scenario is that the fire fronts will converge and virtually cause one huge blaze.
With strong winds, storms and little chance of rain forecast for the weekend, I think we are in for a rather suspensful week.
Wish us all luck...............

Ian, you have my (and our) best wishes, trust me on this one.

Fires
 

This may only be the beginning.

We've had so little rain lately and the humidity levels are extremely low - all we need is a hot day (Sat is forecast to be 37) with strong winds and we're in real trouble. Even the dams relied on by firefighters are dry so vast areas just cannot be defended.

Our fire season runs until early March.

A mate of mine in Northern Victoria has been using his bulldozers to make firebreaks and has already lost one machine to fire.

smoke
 

plenty of smoke around here this morining blown up from Victoria, no fires close by here.
Max

fires
 

Ian, with all those fires going you better be careful that the yowies don't move into town to escape the fires, you may need a yowie rescue team

Never mind the Yowies, what about the drop bears...
 

Thank Goodness there's a team of CMP drop bear rescue ambulances standing by.

What's a yowies
 

Could you translate for people who live a might north of you.

Neat display, interesting how something like that will really catch people’s attention at a show, the kids love it.

Re: What's a yowies
 

Yeah..... especially when they start rooting :D

Fires
 

For fire updates :

www.dse.vic.gov.au

www.cfa.vic.gov.au


Lets hope that many old relics like Blitzs will not be lost in the fires . There would be many old sawmills in the N.E. part of Victoria , with derelict CMP's nearby .

Mike

Karmen is seriously praying for heavy rains for that corner of the world for you folks, but just enough to douse the fires and replenish the earth and growing things!!!

:cheers:

Fires still going
 

And we've just had the hottest day for this time of the year on record. It was 42C in Melbourne before a cool Southerly buster arrived dropping the temperature by 20C which was quite a relief. Tomorrow there's some rain forecast but it's been so long since we've seen any I'll believe it when I see it.
Hopefully it will bring some rest for the firefighters too. Victoria has been blanketed in smoke the whole weekend.

Bushfire map
 

Here's the current map as at Sunday evening:

Sat view
 

This is from Saturday once the smoke cleared from Melbourne which is at the head of the bay on the left.

http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/20...y__325x400.jpg

That's Tasmania at the bottom.

Source

Keith, the state's ablaze and yet you still have the bare-faced cheek to go out taking Aerial Photos!! :D

LMAO!
 

Gee I was flying high that day... :eek: