Fire Storm

A note to all my OS friends who may have heard about the fires in Victoria. They are worse than what you may be hearing on the news. They aren't anywhere near us and at the moment I'm not aware of anyone I know being involved but I have a few contacts to check up on. Fingers crossed and prayers being said. This wasn't a case of silly people doing stupid things and getting caught in a fire. Victorians especially are bush fire aware and especially those who live in rural areas are given much education about how to maintain their properties and how to act in a bush fire. Very much like Mid-westerners in the US and hurricanes, people are prepared. This fire was horrific. The media was going on and on about how Saturdays weather conditions were to be the worst ever and honestly, I thought it was a media beat-up on Friday. I had my English neighbours asking me advice on how worried they should be and I gave them some tips but told them that they would be fine. If the fires had been in our area, we may not have been fine. We were just fortunate that no-one flicked a cigarette butt out the window of their car in this regions, because that's all it would have took. We were very worried about Jim's parents farm, but thank god, nothing happened in their area. It was so hot and dry and windy here on Saturday that I hung a load of soaking wet washing out and no more than 15 minutes later I collected it off the washing line and it was crispy dry.
The people caught in the fire, were packing up to leave the area, or were fully prepared to save their property and knew how to do it, but were just overwhelmed. Normally a fire front travels at the speed that you may have minutes to react if you are in the area, people are reporting that they had seconds. That their hoses and water pumps were just doing nothing, they had no hope.
Children have been lost, parents, brothers and sisters. Men and women volunteers are doing 24hr shifts fighting these fires because they just don't have enough resources. This fire front is 80km or 50 miles wide. So while Jim and I and the boys were enjoying an ice-cream on the beach taking a photo to commemorate the hottest day on record in our area, people were losing everything they owned and even their lives (unbeknown to us at the time of course).
So the fire is a really bad one and those who did escape literally have the shirt on their backs, but that's more than those who got caught out. It's not out yet but it's not directly threatening any towns right at the moment, but it's still windy and anything could happen.
I just wanted to let all our friends know that we're all good, but it's not a very good situation at all.