As a risk and emergency manager I am used to managing fires, floods and other emergencies, but edging towards retirement the last thing I needed was a fire literally at our back door.
The map of the 22 hectare fire, Our house is on the far right.
We live in the yellow “Watch and Act” danger zone.
“Watch and Act” means keep a close eye on what is happening with the fire and get ready to evacuate. Enacting our fire plan we put the four cats in their large crate and readied the carry baskets to evacuate them if required. Our essential paper work, medications, laptops and a few clothes were readied to be packed in the car if required.
Friends were notified that I wasn’t going to be wargaming with them tonight but instead we may need to visit if everything turned pear shape!
Continuing to monitor the emergency warnings we received the message that we wanted. The two fire helicopters and 22 fire trucks kept the fire on the opposite side of the Plenty River Gorge and the “Watch and Act” warning was downgraded to “Monitor”.
The famous Australian poem by Dorothea Mackellar describes “My Country” perfectly:
I love a sunburnt country
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain ranges
Of droughts and flooding rains
I love her far horizons
I love her jewel sea
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me
Dorothea Mackellar
Cripes, Dave, hope the fire’s contained and you can stay put! Good planning getting the cats in and their baskets ready! 🙂 I’d be dithering about trying to decide if I could take one wargames army with me then which would it be!
All good the fire is under control and being mopped up. Thanks for your concern and well wishes.
Great to hear you are all safe, and hope there isn’t too much damage locally.
Thanks Dave. It was highly unlikely that it would jump the Gorge and travel across 100’s of metres of suburbs to get to us, but we were prepared just in case. Helps to have an emergency plan in place.
Yikes… scary mate. I was a resilience officer for the council for while. We had no chance of wildfires though.
Thanks. we were always going to be reasonably safe but were prepared just in case. Thanks for your concern.
Glad to hear you’re all ok. We went through something similar a couple years back. We were in the yellow zone and the fire was just across the river. Luckily the fire crews managed to put it out, but it was a pretty stressful time. We had really bad air quality for days because of the smoke.
Thanks Faust. Ironic that I have all but retired from Emergency Management and one appears on my doorstep!
Scary stuff! Happy to hear that the fire avoided you guys. Yikes – that’s too close for comfort.
Too much stress but happy all worked out fine – take care!
Thanks Mark. We are still in the midst of fire season, bit thankfully the weather has been mild.