Bushfire!

[khiemtran]

Heading back home to Sydney on the F6, I'm watching what looks like a controlled burn on the west side of the highway. Until the cars in front of me start slowing and suddenly there are cars heading back in the wrong direction.



It soon turns out that the fire is huge, and that it has already jumped the highway, cutting the road in both directions.



Now I'm trying to go back too. The signs in the distance mark the emergency access point where we can cross over onto the south-bound side of the highway.



Here come some of the Firies... They are in for a busy day, as are the Police.



Some of the flames are pretty big, but luckily they're still quite distant.



Still trying to get home. You will note it's dark already now. I'm actually still no closer to home than I was when I first saw the fire. (I made a few wrong turns and sub-optimal choices trying to find an alternate route, and by then the alternate roads were already either jammed or being closed by fire or accidents.)



Still trying to get home. Now, I'm stuck on Appin Road, trying to get to Campbelltown, still about an hour away, so I can approach Sydney via the Hume Hwy instead.



Luckily, I made it off Appin Road before the worst of the jam hit. The radio was full of reports of people stuck everywhere or deciding to turn back or spend the night where they were. By the time I hit Campbelltown though, it was pretty much smooth sailing, and I made it home just three hours after I set off. I really feel for those Firies though. There's been a wild wind all day and those guys are probably still out there tonight.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yikes, how perfectly terrifying! Those flames!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

At the time, I was most concerned about getting home in time for a family dinner we had organized. That was before I heard that the fire had actually jumped the highway. It felt a bit awful afterwards to be worried about my dinner when other people's lives and property were in danger.

Also, in case you get the wrong impression, the light in the first photo is mostly the sunset on the clouds, which just happen to echo the flames below.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

No, I knew--it was the last daytime photo that got me.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's certainly not something you'd want to see coming towards you if you were out in the bush. I suppose being on the highway gave me false sense of security. Lots of people died in their cars at Kinglake.

[julesjones]

Urk. I've seen a bushfire up close and personal only once in my life, and I sincerely hope never to do so again. But at least that was somewhere where what was on the other side of the highway was Bass Strait, and in the unlikely event of the fairly small fire heading in my direction there was a safe route out.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I got to watch a bushfire on a mountainside at night once, from the safety of a settlement in the valley below. By day, all you could see was smoke, but as night fell, the whole mountainside became lit up with an orange glow. It was quite eerie watching the glowing smoke reaching up into the sky and hearing the sound of cracking branches and rocks exploding in the heat.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

So happy you made it home OK. O.O

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I was actually lucky that I left early enough to beat the worst of the jam. It's going to be interesting to see what the highway looks like when I drive back to work tomorrow.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Okay. That's scary...

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

It's now almost two weeks since the fire and you can still smell the burnt out area long before you can see it.