This fire allegedly was started by the son of the house owners who was playing with fire in garage. The fire has spread very quickly and was fueled by some items stored in that garage. Fire brigades had a difficult time extinguishing it as they had to wait first for the gas and electricity to be turned off. By the time the fire was gone the house sustained visible structural damage.
I looked how hard the firefighters worked and how they were affected by the smoke and the fact they had to work in the heavy gear. I have never seen a fire and the work of fireman from that close. It is a much more complex operation than just arriving and spraying lots of water on the fire.
I hope this pictorial shows some of the aspects of fire fighting, team effort, exhaustion and various other elements of firemen’s tasks.
According to the NSW Rural Fire Service the Peats Ridge fire started on 7 February 2009 and at 3:40pm and has burned approximately 280ha of bush land in the Brisbane Waters National Park. The rain over last two days helped a bit and there is not even a smoke coming from this sizable fire. The site looks barren, black and unfriendly. Similarly to the major Victorian fires there is a suspicions this fire was deliberately lit.
One of our friends lives on a property only few kilometers down the road and he said seeing the thick smoke advancing towards them was very frightening. I visited his property only a weekend ago and it looked very dry. I think most of the owners around the area are prising the Rural Fire Service as the fires here are tragedy waiting to happen.
As usual for me on Sunday mornings I went to Terrigal. There was a small group of photographers all set up to photograph the sunrise. I have my theory about when to photograph sunrises and today was not the day. However, what is always with me is the people interest and thus I was quite happy with this photograph or a photographer setting up to take a shot. In fact he was taking a set of them to stitch them up later and create a wide panorama.
Beautiful sunrise aside the sun in last few days has made South-East of Australia one of the hottest places on Earth with temperatures reaching 47C and staying above 40C for many days. Victoria is particularly affected with fire claiming not only property and bush but also human lives, children including. Police are reporting 25 confirmed deaths and estimate this count to exceed 40. This is truly tragic. What is worse is the fact there are report the fires were deliberately lit. I seriously think a total fire ban should include prohibition on smoking cigarettes in cases like that. A reporter on morning news was saying kids saw a man throwing a cigarette butt in the bush around the fire epicenter in Victoria. Shocking stupidity. No puff is worth all these human lives.
I am not sure the reason behind this but today there were a long of fire engines driving through George Street on signal. I could not find any references in current news behind this action but I am pretty certain it was not a fire. It looked more like some form of protest. I hope I can find some more information about it in the coming days.
Today, yet again, City Rail has failed its customers. The peak hour train to Central Coast has developed a problem and one of the carriages has started to fill in with heavy, chemical smoke. The train stopped at Berowra and commuters left the carriage by themselves. There was no warning over the PA. Worse yet, once the City Rail stuff have found the smoke they still allowed the commuters to return on the train without finding the underlying cause.
I watched in disbelief the same was repeated upon arrival of the Fire brigade. No communication was issued to hundreds of people sitting on the train. It took another 15 minutes before finally someone decided the further trip was not possible for this train and everyone was asked to leave and wait for the following service.
To me this situation demonstrated City Rail is poorly prepared for emergency situations. In case like this where a carriage is filled with choking smoke, everyone should have been asked to leave until the train was declared safe. This time the smoke proved to be the result of a blocked break but next time it may be something more serious.
