Fire!

Hi all,

Well this is normally just a scrapping blog but we had quite a bit of drama today. A fire broke out about one kilometre from our house. Fortunately, the wind was blowing the fire more or less away from us but it was still very exciting - not necessarily in a good way!

We had three helicopters and a fixed wing plane circling around for ages. One of the helicopters was a fire fighting one - it's called Elvis. Elvis certainly saved the day. We watched in amazement as he picked up water  from dams with his huge siphon thingy and dumped it on the fire again and again. He's like a giant mosquito!

We heard on the news that no houses were lost but they certainly dumped a heap of water on one house. They must have saved it.

As the fire was on the hill next to ours we had a great view of the whole thing. Here are some pics:

A tree goes up in flames.

Elvis arrives to save the day.

They must mix fire retardant chemicals with the water as it comes out black.

By now the fire is almost out .

You can see the burnt out paddocks and how close it was to houses. Friends of ours had to evacuate but from what we have heard, nobody was hurt apart from a firefighter who somehow injured himself (not from the fire).

Well that's enough excitement for one day! I hope everyone else is keeping safe from the various fires and floods that keep threatening us. What an interesting country we live in!

Hugs to all,
Heather