Too close for comfort.
So…yesterday (21/9/26) I was working at the book cave and all day there was a pall of smoke hanging over the town as there has been for a few days due to a bush fire down in NSW. On finishing work I headed home and almost immediately saw a huge cloud of smoke from another fire that appeared to be very close to where we live.
Will was over at our neighbours when I got home. Our neighbour, Dave, is a park ranger and he was preparing for the worst because the situation did not look good. The fire was not that far away, just over the hills in front. He said he would keep us updated on the situation throughout the evening.
Will had already packed up bags and stuff in the car in case we had to leave quickly. It was quite stressful and we went out to our rock lookout a few times to see what was happening.
A bit later, Dave rang to say that he was in touch with the Firemen and that he felt that we would be ok but at exactly at that moment we saw that the ‘Fires Near Me’ App had updated to an Emergency Warning and was telling everyone in the area to evacuate and that the fire could cross our only escape road in the next hour!
Dave was sure we would be fine. He has great experience and knowledge of bush fires and we trust him so we didn’t evacuate.
As the evening went on we made a few more trips out to our rock lookout and the fire did seem to be dying down a bit and the wind direction seemed to have changed too in our favour. I didn’t get much sleep during the night but by morning the Fire warning had been downgraded. Dave was right.
The fire is still burning and might continue for days yet and the situation could change if the wind changes direction but at the moment things are a bit calmer.
It is just the start of Spring here and we still have Summer to come and the ‘El Nino’ forecast is not good but if there is a silver lining about this fire it is that it has already burnt out a swathe of bush land in the area from which we are most likely to be threatened in the future.
