Catching Up

Ugh, I've realised that I'm really bad at catching up with people. I've spent the past few months virtually living in a cave, as far as my social life is concerned. I used to have the excuse of being too busy, long distance, illness etc. etc. but all that does is separate me from my friends even more. Not good.

I've made amends so far this month. I've been good and sociable three times so far:

1. I went and saw my ex-US friends at their new house in Warragul. They had only lived in the house for a couple of weeks, and apologised for the mess. HA HA HAAAH!!! My standards for "mess" are WAAAY higher than yours, guys... You need to come see MY house. Especially MY room. (...btw, any luck naming the kitten yet?)
2. I finally got around to visiting my ex-housemates who now live in Boolarra. They'd moved towns, and I was so far out of the loop I didn't hear about it until about four months after it had happened. #0_0# Their new place is beautiful and spacious, and is perfect for raising their two kids - once they get all of their electrical problems sorted out. And it's so nice and quiet out in the country. Only thing was, I also got to see how close to the town the bushfires came. VERY close indeed.
3. Aaand... I got to meet up with friends at the GippsTAFE Vis. Art Dept's art show! It was good to (briefly) chat with some familiar faces, even though it was so noisy and crowded inside the gallery you could hardly make out what people were saying; and my voice doesn't travel well in the best circumstances! I also bought a painting by one of my friends, but I haven't collected it yet...

So, I've been a good young man so far - but it's not over yet. I still need to deliver some very late Easter stuff to some other friends of mine, and also go to the Salvador Dali exhibition with some other interested pals. Don't worry - I'm gonna do it, already, just gotta get organised...

Victorian Bushfires

Victorian Bushfires Make National Headlines

Looks like I spoke too soon.

I came home from working in Traralgon on Saturday evening, only to be greeted by huge plumes of smoke coming off the hills behind my home town.
I managed to get a couple of photos before I had to go back to work. These were taken at about 4.30pm:

I didn't have time to take more, but my sister's man took some video footage of the scenes form the front of our house:

There are others like it available on YouTube. Just browse through the "Related Videos" at the end of the movie, or click here.

By the time it got to 6pm, we had to turn our lights on, because it was so dark outside. We were covered by the smoke and ash from another fire happening about 60km away from us.

Basically, we got caught up in the middle of two different bushfires:

• the Churchill one, which never actually hit Churchill, but started in the Strzelecki Ranges behind the town, and spread rapidly south-east toward the coast, and
• the fire that started in Kinglake and swept across the region north-east of Melbourne, which was far bigger than the Churchill fire.

It was very very scary.

I had about an hour between shifts to decide what to do. My sister and her boyfriend were busy setting up the house for protection (incidentally, the safest place to be in a bushfire) and I scrambled around, gathering up backup disks and USB sticks - and wondering why the HELL I'd bothered collecting so much useless crap over the years! (I think it's cleanup time...)

We were listening to ABC FM for the latest fire news, but they told us that the local transmitter was in range of the flames, and that their signal may cut out. At about 8.30 we lost them, and also all of our local TV stations. I don't know if they have been restored yet.

The shop I work at was still open during the emergency, and we had customers coming in and buying all sorts of panic-related things, but mostly they were buying cigarettes. Yes, in times of crisis people latch on to the only coping mechanisms they have!

Outside, a cloud of smoke and ash set over the Valley, and by 6.30pm it was near impossible to see further than a kilometre. The whole sky turned a deep blood-red, then a dark ash grey. Small black particles and burnt leaves fell from the larger bushfire, all across the town. People came in to the shop covered in sooty black marks.
Then it rained - but only a little bit, and it left more streaky mess over the buildings and cars.

My co-worker and I didn't know what else we should do. Were we meant to close the shop? Evacuate? Get out the fire hoses? We didn't have a very good view from our position, and had to rely on everyone who came in to tell us what it was like outside.
We were trying to cope with this, while we had customers coming in and buying sliced ham! icy poles! soft drinks! I saw people wearing loose summer wear; some people were only wearing shorts! (When you're under threat of fire, you're supposed to cover your body with long-sleeved shirts and trousers, to protect your extremities from burning.)
Luckily, my boss was also in the town, and had a better view of proceedings - he said that he'd let us know if we had to stay or go.

The day had been very hot, but a cool change was expected late that evening. It came, and it was very cool by the time we finished work. The only problem was that the wind changed direction, and the fires turned north-east toward Traralgon. Fortunately, the conditions were better suited for the CFA to control that side after that point.

Eventually, the fires came under control, though some of them are still burning as I write this. And although our area ultimately made it through the crisis undamaged, many parts of Victoria were not so lucky.
I believe the death toll currently stands at about 130 people. One of them was a retired news reader for one of the major TV stations. Many of the others were people who left it too late to leave their houses, and were found inside their burnt-out vehicles.
This fire has been labelled as worse than the infamous Ash Wednesday fires in 1983.

The next day, our shop was very busy again, but this time it was customers using our carwash to clean their vehicles. There were people queueing up to use it two cars back, and both bays were used non-stop from start of trade until about 7pm. I left it until Monday to do mine:

It makes me very angry and upset to see all of this happening around where I live. So many people have suffered needlessly.
I want to do more to help, and hopefully some time this week I will.

Boolarra Bushfire

So... the bushfires.

Here's some links to news articles about them:
ABC.com.au - Vic blaze destroys homes as town runs out of water
The Age - Bushfires destroy Gippsland homes
The Australian - Huge bushfire threatens power line, coal mine in Victoria
News.com.au - Gippsland fire now within containment lines

The fires started late Wednesday afternoon. I was at work at the time, and the weather had just turned nasty - as in, 40° Celsius. Most of the grass and vegetation that had grown during rainy December last year had turned to kindling by this stage, so a bushfire was probably inevitable... though I was hoping that we'd see the summer out without having a fire this time.
A customer came in during the early evening, and said "Hey, it looks like there's a fire somewhere..." and I thought, "Oh, no..."

I took some photos from the front yard, and the edge of town. These were taken last Saturday at about 4.30pm, while the weather was still scorching hot, and the huge smoke cloud coming from the fire was still visible. It got worse over the next three hours, until the whole western section of the sky was covered in a sickly purple-orange haze. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of that because it was just too damn big to fit into 640x480 pixels...

It's taken about three days to get under control - fortunately, the weather has turned cooler again, but the wind has also picked up. During this time, the towns of Yinnar and Mirboo North also came under threat. When I popped in to work to get fuel, my co-worker told me that our town had been issued an alert for falling embers - I went straight back home and filled up some buckets to prepare. Luckily we didn't need them.

Boolarra was the worst hit, however - though no-one was killed, and the general township was spared, at least ten homes were destroyed by the blaze.
One of my friends from the mural project lives - or lived - out in Boolarra. Apparently, she has lost everything.
Her family had no time to grab anything of value - they just had to get out of there. When they came back, they found nothing recognisable. Their house was completely destroyed, as if it had never existed. The only thing they could identify was part of a stepladder.

I'm going to try and send her and her family something to help them get along. I know they'll be eleigible for emergency accommodation and relief packages, but what else can you offer someone who has lost their home and belongings?

This is crazy.
Even worse, there is suspicion that the fire was deliberately lit. If it was, the people who did it have yet to be caught.