VIC
Fire is Southern part of the Alpine fires in Victoria. Today is day 20 since lightning
started approximately 50 – 80 fires that have spread through the Alpines. I
have also added a map (from CFA public website) in case anyone is interested. If I
understood correctly at one of the briefings at the fire they estimated that the same area
took 7 weeks or so to burn in 2003. At each initial briefing we have been advised
that 2003 fires were thought to be one notch above 1983, and these fires are one notch
above 2003. Victorians are lucky at this point it has impacted very few properties
or towns, we all feel bad for those affected and I hope the weather helps keep the impact
low compared to the area burnt. The photos are labeled and taken from around
the Heyfield Division of the fire. At Bills back burn we estimated the temp got down to
about 12 deg C and RH got upto 65% possibly more and we had no problems lighting up.
This gives you a bit of an idea of the conditions. I have been involved for many
years and these base camps that DSE have set up are excellent with abundance of
food. The night shift sleeping changes if they have an influx of strike teams, all
they do is remove the inner tents and put the stretchers end to end inside the
Marquee’s still air conditioned. I am not sure if this setup is for all around
the fire area but I understood from a logistics person there are at least three other
setups which include the kitchen. The kitchen is a 20ft container fully stainless
steel inside with full commercial cooking facilities and the serving area with bain-maries
just folds up inside for transport. When I was at Heyfield Camp recently a new
kitchen was being unpacked, I only knew it was new because of the setout & marking
lines from manufacture were still there. The container driver who offloaded the
kitchen thought they were valued at $300,000.
Other people from at these fires might be
able to give people on the D-board an idea of their facilities and conditions.
cheers
Russell |
