I see there are some bad bushfires in tassie at the moment. Are you going to be affected? Keep us posted mate. I have fires close to me too (not threatening yet). takes the fun out of riding when you cant breathe or see hey?
Luckily for me the fires are nowhere near me. Burning on the east coast currently 250km away, but winds are predominantly westerly here, so it looks safe. There are some other fires going as well at the moment that are closer though. But it would be horrendous for the people caught up in it all. The fires in Victoria are probably worse as they are over a much bigger area. Would you believe we had a cold snap here yesterday and there were snow flakes falling in amongst the rain late yesterday. I did the toy run Saturday and went to Hobart, come home sunday and had 30+ degrees most of the ride.
Well, funny thing. I got called down to the fire base to help with radio and phone duties on monday and tuesday. A group of us (SES NW region members) were invited to relieve the Northern region SES. In Tasmania the SES is structured with municipal units that handle local storm damage, road crash rescue, etc.. and three regional units that do emergency operations centre type things such as search and rescue base, logistics and radio comms. I have been a member for 16 years and had a variety of interesting duties, including being taken down the Pieman river by boat to setup and man a search base when a fishing boat sunk off the west coast, helicopter drop off to setup a radio base on a mountain top during a fire. We do radio comms every year for Rally Tasmania safety network, and have done other events in the past such as Targa Tasmania. It's real good if you can organise yourself to do a radio relay point on one of the competitive stages.<!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s --> Anyway, the good news is the rain we have just had is a welcome relief for the fire fighters. It has bucketed down today here and I think there has been enough down the east coast to dampen things down a fair bit, so there may be little pockets that will still be burning but mainly it will be under control.
Just in time for Christmas! It started pouring down rain here today too. As for 11 days, it’s not that unusual. When the fires hit Canberra a few years back they had already been burning for two weeks, spot fires where still being rounded up a week after that. I hear that some U.S. Canadian and NZ crews where flown in to help fight the fires in eastern Victoria. Bet they would be cheering the rain too.
