*** Thanks Billy - I am currently on the opposite side of the country and whilst we do have the odd very bad fire here in the West, the current Victorian fires are simply beyond imagination - having been close to a couple of big fires when I lived Victoria I still cannot begin to imagine how bad it has been for those poor people - the very thought makes me shudder. I certainly have less than pleasant memories of a bright orange sky, the smoke turning day into an eerie half night at the same time... and the huge noise and radiant heat.
When its as intense as these fires have been, a truely hellish firestorm happens, with trees more than 100 metres from flames just catching fire spontaneously ...and the heat gets so high at its heart that the metal in cars actually partly melts and many bodies can never be recovered as there is simply nothing left to recover.
This has been a indelible historical event of the worst kind and the cost this time will be far, far more than $$$ and property - Some truly beautiful scenic places are 100% destroyed (whole towns gone) ...so many good people and their lifes work and good memories lost and or changed forever, family members terribly hurt or gone and literally millions of precious irreplaceable animals both native and domestic wiped off the planet.
The current situation just beggars belief... and I have to say that its incomprehensible to me that those B*****ds that start them, and then gleefully continue to light more while whole families die and volunteers risk their lives to help, are not simply shot on sight or otherwise executed ....The hell with the modern feel-good societys attitudes to rehabilitation!
What may be a surprise to you in UK is that here in AU almost all the country fire services are manned by volunteers - only the metro areas have full time salaried fire departments, so most of those brave men and women in the news wearing the yellow coats not only do it as in invaluable community service, they aren't even properly funded so when not fighting fires they are selling raffle tickets and manning cake stalls to get the cash / raise the money to buy their own extra fire engines and equipment! True heroes one and all.
The only positive has been the hugely supportive reaction world wide and the massive support in donations from everywhere - from within AU alone, more than 100 millon in donated cash and so much material donation that the red cross etc are out of storage space!
*** Hi Neil
I was thinking of you, Paul and the BRMA crew the other day - wondering how bad the smoke haze in Melbourne was right now - I have less than pleasant memories of ash dropping everywhere from fires only a miles away and breathing that dead burned smell for many days at a time... or of if it was close, of seeing the smoke and listening to the news, then rushing from the office deeper into the hills to get my kids from Emerald College... and generally having to argue my way past roadblocks by fire or police to proceed!
This was appx 1994 to 2000, when I worked in Dingley / Keysborough and we lived in the Dandenongs (We were living for a while not far past where the first bridge on the puffing billy railway crossed the road at Selby).... followed by a year or two at Berwick - Out of sight of working steam but where we could at least hear the main line trains as they ran up the valley on the way to Gippsland.
kindest regards
Richard