Bushfire closing in

[wazkelly]

Hi Guys, thanks for all your concerns.

Had to go to work today but looking across in daylight at that spot where the fire was in the photo and you could barely see any trace of damage, it went through so quick.

Quite unexpected as we live in the north eastern most part of the estate and at the time our patch went up the main fire front was about 4 - 6 km's away to the south west, presumably caused from embers carried with the strong breeze.

Whilst packing the car I was thinking about poor Gavin Turner and what he has been through which caused me to prioritise which axes were to be left behind. For the record they were a Yamaha Pacifica, Epiphone Slash AFD Les Paul, Artist P Bass Fretless conversion, and the Non PBG Flame Top Tele as I could only pick one Tele and the obvious choice was Swampy as that finish took forever and not sure I could replicate another one.

In the end none were sacrificed but at times like that you only have moments to grab what you can and get out quick.

Reflecting on things today has reminded me of the need to prepare an evacuation kit filled with more important things such as documents that cannot be replaced or hard to replace like passports and other forms of ID. Time to take photos of everything as receipts would have gone up in smoke and with that goes your proof of purchase, value and ownership of all valuable items. Good clear photos or digital copies of photos backed up onto a portable external hard drive is now on the to do list amongst other things.

Best of all, no loss of property to anyone from this fire but unfortunately 3 houses were lost in another fire up at Noosa some 55km north of here. And yes, it is still officially winter here but the upside is that it is the wake up call we all needed to do more controlled burning to be better prepared for a long hot summer where the fire risk increases.

[dave.king1]

Reflecting on things today has reminded me of the need to prepare an evacuation kit filled with more important things such as documents that cannot be replaced or hard to replace like passports and other forms of ID.

I'm hearing you on this Waz, we live on the high side of the valley backing onto the bush in a western red cedar house and we've had no back burning on our side of the valley since we moved in back in 1990.

It is tinder dry here and we are about to head off to Europe for 5 weeks so the important stuff will be farmed out to friends and family who aren't in as vulnerable position as us.

Race car goes to the MILs place and guitars to the daughters along with our pics, all of our music is now on hard drives in three widely separated locations across Sydney.

The best plan is to have a plan and hope it's never needed.