Briefly updating events…

A great big thank you to everyone who rang or SMSed us over the weekend to see if we were okay. We are fine, well away from danger and really appreciate your thoughts and concern.

So far, authorities have confirmed that 402 houses have been totally destroyed. Over half of those houses were in the suburb of Duffy which at last count had lost 219 houses. Many more homes are estimated to have been damaged in some way.

The latest word about my friend in Duffy – it turns out his house survived the fire storm although many other houses in his street were not so lucky, nor was the BP petrol station that was on the corner of his street.

Canberra, famous for complaining about nothing and everything, is living up to its reputation. There have been murmurings in the media about the emergency services being ill prepared and dropping the ball on this. Similar sentiments have been echoed around the office today. Personally, I think it is possible that everyone was under prepared, and it is also entirely possible that someone, somewhere, fucked up big time. However, I also think that this fire storm would have wreaked a hell of a lot of havoc anyway. The events of the weekend to me illustrate the price you must be prepared to pay if you want to surround and permeate your urban areas with bush land. If nothing else, Canberra will be a lot better prepared next time and I would be surprised if something like this ever happened again.

Apart from all of that, there are fires still burning around the ACT, although everything is apparently under control. Once again, the smoke cover is quite heavy and I’m not enjoying the prospect of walking home from work soon.

If anyone is curious and wants to see what else is happening with the bush fires, visit the Emergency Services Bureau ACT Bushfire Status page. It’s updated several times a day at the moment, but obviously that will drop off as the fires slowly die off.