There's a fire of biblical proportions throwing up plumes of ash and steam, blotting out half the sky. It's in plain view, only about a thousand metres away. It started at Heatherbrae and headed mostly eastwards (and upwards). It flared up from a fire that started last Sunday, I heard it on the wireless that it was caused by some careless asshat throwing out a durry from their car. The fire then grew into a consuming monstrosity, devouring all in its path. It was very hot and there was a very strong wind of 41knots all day.
Here are some photos I took of the fire. It was only a few thousand metres away
view from over my carpark
the fire was nearby, on the other side of the runway
At times, I could see flames leaping up over the treeline. I wished I'd brought a better camera than my phone.
I'm going to need a wider angle lens to capture all this
the smoke plume went kept going out to sea and beyond
(note the white cap of steam here)
There were 130 fire fighters and eight water bomber choppers working overtime to put the wet stuff on the hot stuff. In the immediate photo above (one of my favourites,) you can see a white-cap of steam sitting on top of the smoke on the left. This was from the absolutely mental amount of water that had been poured onto the fire, only to be instantly converted into steam, rising up and forming cute little man-made clouds. There were many such white-caps of steam on top of the smoke, these were the most impressive part, the fact that people were effectively manufacturing clouds. I'd never seen anything like it on this scale.
...
Working at my desk, but for the talk about what was going on outside, there were no signs of any trouble. Some hours passed and work finished for the day. I walked outside the comfort of the perfectly breathable air conditioned office to find this:
The sun turned blood red, it was only mid afternoon
any minute now, four horses will ride out of this.
It was an eery twilight outside. It was not due to start getting dark for another few hours. the wind had changed and was now blowing thick smoke for miles around. Not the sort of smoke you can move out of if you're at a campfire, it was the type of smoke that follows you, makes it hard to breathe and no matter where you move, it follows you and there is no air, it gets in your eyes and burns. It started raining, except it was raining ashes. That's when I thought it would be a good idea to go indoors.
There's only two things to do during a bush fire:
- Get drunk, and
- ... ...
No, just one thing to do.
I retired to the base watering hole. Damn. It was closed. Apparently the civvies couldn't get through the smoke on the roads to open up the bar for me. Ah well, good thing I've quit drinking.
the land that has burned out so far
With the strong wind and the very hot and sunny day, it looked like the fire was not going to stop until it had burned everything in it's path until it hit the ocean. By night time it had burned 2,819 hectares of land. Countless litres of water had been used and it was finally beginning to slow down.
I would like to end this with a little song I learned, back when I was playing Team Fortress Classic.
*clears throat* (sung to 'Jailhouse rock')
Fire is good,
fire is great.
it helps you burn,
those you hate.
It's pretty and orange and cooks the best meat,
fire is something you just can't beat!
TFC, good times.
But seriously now, this was a terrible thing, people lost a lot of property, brave men worked tirelessly to get it under control, many people were displaced after being evacuated and my prayers go out to every one of them.
Until next time, Here's a picture for you of me fighting off dragons:
yes, I did make dragon sounds with my mouth while I made this picture.
James out.
