Home » Blogs » Claire's blog

Smoky Days

 

Today I had to go to Balook for work and I took the camera with me.  The air is choked with smoke and it has been like this (on and off) for days.  Sunday was the worst.  It got to 42degC (107F) and the smoke was low and heavy all day.  The colours are weird too, every thing has a yellow hue, especially in the morning and evening.

We have a lot of air traffic happening at the moment, one aircraft, only an hour or two ago, was so loud overhead I felt that it was going to land on our roof for sure.  Riscy went outside and saw it was a big fire fighting helicopter.  We live about 5km from the airfield, so I guess it was heading there to refuel or something.

The fires are enormous and I can't imagine what it is like to try and fight such a thing or to be out defending your home and animals.

Unfortunately the people of Scamander in North East Tasmania lost many homes earlier on in the week. 

It seems weird to have such major bushfires so early in the year.  Summer has barely started.


Oh my! I cannot believe all

Oh my! I cannot believe all that smoke, what a terrible thing those fires must be! Stay safe!
  • By cyndy (not verified) at 2006-12-30 10:52

Smoke

Hi Cyndy, it got a lot worse than that in the end, we had many days of thick smoke and one terrible day involving very strong, hot winds and deliberately lit fires which spread very fast and wiped out people's houses, lots of pasture land and bush in towns and areas very near here. It was a scary couple of days. The hills to the north are still smoking, a combination of the bushfires and backburns. The bush is so dry at the moment and unfortunately any lightning activity tends to start new fires. Having said that, our property is not in a high fire threat area as we live in a large town.
  • By Claire at 2006-12-31 06:56