Followers

Thursday 26 February 2009

Bushfires

This photo was taken on "Black Saturday" Feb 7th 2009.

It was taken from a large shopping centre rooftop carpark in Doncaster in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

You are looking towrds Kinglake, which is approxiamatley 40kms from where the photo was taken. The firefront was about 45kms wide at this point.



Today is the 26th of Feb 2009 and this fire is still burning. It has spread north now and is threatening the area around Lake Eildon.

This is where our family goes for holidays. Tim's parent have property up there and we store our ski boat, jet ski's and fishing boat in a shed up next to the lake.

From today all access to Eildon will be closed, as the conditions tomorrow will be terrible. Hot strong winds and temps of 38 - 40c expected.

There are still 6 major fires still burning, with the firefront on this fire now more than 100kms wide.

There are 5500 firefighters trying to work towards getting these fires under control.

These firefighters ar exhausted after working long shifts for days on end.

Heaven only knows when this will end.



God bless the CFA and everyone else helping them fight these fires.



Jo, Miss Ellie and Baz

Saturday 21 February 2009

Sending our love to Bogart

What a sad time Bogie and his mama Lulu are having.
We are sending every single bit of our magical AIREZEN to Klaus - Bogie's daddy.

We are hoping and praying for a miricle right along with Bogie and his mama.

May modern medicine, Bogie's kisses and Lulu's love help Klaus get through this illness.

Although we live on the the other side of the world, they are our friends, and we share their pain.

We are keeping a vigil, and waiting for something good to happen.

Sending lots of love and all our healing AIREZEN..............watch out its comin'.......

Miss Ellie and The Bazzynator

Tuesday 10 February 2009

State of Emergency

Hi everyone, it's Jo here and sorry to Ellie and Bazzy baby, but I am hijacking your blog.

As most of you know we here in Victoria are currently experiencing the worst bushfires in Australia's histroy at the moment.

The heatwave of last week, where we had days and days of temps over 45c and the continuing drought have both contributed to the whole state of Victoria being so dry that it was inevitable that we were in for a bad bushfire season this summer.

February is the worst time for us, as the heat of summer is at it's hottest, and we have already had 2 months of summer sun, just enough to dry everything out even more.

The tragedy is not over, the fires are still raging and although we have had a cool change in the weather this week, the forecast is for it to get hot again by Friday and once again to have winds blowing from the north - this means hot desert winds.

The areas hit the worst are just out of Melbourne in the surrounding hills of the Yarra Valley and at the end of the Dandenong Ranges flowing into Gippsland.

These are beautiful bush areas that in parts have quite a lot of small towns, so there are a lot of people living amongst the bush.
And of course these areas are home to many many native animals.

The concern is that the fires of the Kinglake/Healesville area will join up with the fires of the Gippsland area - this would be terrible.
The fires are both already huge and burning out of control. There is no way of putting them out, just trying to put in firebreaks to control where they head.

We have more than 3000 volunteer firefighters in there, we have also had teams of firefighters come in from New Zealand, Tasmania, Canberra and South Australia to help. The army are also now helping out and doing what ever needs to be done to save the towns under the most threat.

It has been declared a National Disaster, and it is not over yet.

Please say a prayer for the families of the 173 confirmed dead, the 1000 that have already lost their homes and for the poor people doing everything they can to save lives and homes at threat.

There have been amazing stories of survival - including my husband Tim's cousin, who with her husband and daughter hid in a steel shed on their 10 acre property in Kinglake and huddled under wet blankets while the fire raged straight through their property destroying everything except the shed. We thank god they survived. They have said it happened so fast there was no time to get out.

We are safe and have not been in any threat of danger.
I am hoping & praying that the friends I have in high risk areas will remain safe.

As I said the fires are still a high danger to a lot of towns, the weather conditions are not going to help.

Please pray for those at risk. It is truly horrendous.

Anyone wanting to help can donate to the Red Cross - they have set up a Bushfire Appeal.

Sorry to hijack the Dales blog - they said it would be ok, but just this once :)

Jo