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Australian Fires
Hopefully this post will keep the E&Ms happy as it has nothing to do with engineering!
Some of you will have seen the Australian Bushfires on the news and just flicked past the articles without too much thought.
A few weeks ago, the fires were particularly bad west of Sydney, causing the air quality in the city to be equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes a day.
Most of the Australian countryside is like a tinder box with high temperatures and little rain making it perfect conditions for the fires which have continued to spread. Last night strong winds and dry lightening storms added to the number and scale of the fires. (The winds were so strong a volunteer fireman was killed when the wind lifted and overturned his 10t truck).
This morning we got a text alert notifying us of an emergency fire situation in Batemans Bay where my site attachment was (we moved down to Melbourne 4 weeks ago). I viewed the online fire tracking website which showed the town is practically cut off by fires. This prompted me to log onto my old project time-lapse cameras to take a look. (Pictures taken one daylight and links below).
Today a picture from Batemans Bay has made BBC news and is probably one of the headlines you are waking up to this morning. It is difficult to describe the scale and impact of the devastation from the fires.
Currently there is no works on the project site due to the Christmas shut-down. Hopefully the situation will have improved in a weeks time when the site re-opens.
Sadly the fires are like this along most of the coast from the Queensland boarder in the north to parts of East Victoria in the south. All PET students are safe in cities and ready to see in the new year in Australian style.
Wherever you are and however you are celebrating I wish you all a happy new year from Australia.
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