Fire Emergency Report 5

It is Christmas Eve although it doesn't feel very much like it. People are trying to get by as best they can. They are still meeting at cafes or dashing about on last minute purchasing errands for tomorrow. Liquor outlets  and supermarkets are filled with customers. There seems to be a determined attempt to simulate normality as much as can be managed.

A lot of people have had to change or abandon their Christmas plans. We had been intending to join my brothers and their families for a few days in Sydney over the period. We have had to cancel that, lest conditions deteriorate, preventing our return. Friends who had been intending to join us for lunch tomorrow have had to retreat to Sydney altogether. Many, many people will miss out on the occasion they'd been looking forward to. We'll all get over it, I suppose.

Right now the temperature is in the mid twenties, the air is still and fire conditions are stable. There are no choppers or bombers. There are no sirens.  I am informed that a huge fire containment line is being constructed between the end of Govett's Leap Road and Mount Hay, to the east. This is an effort to protect Katoomba, Leura, Wentworth Falls and villages toward Sydney from fires which are expected to be driven in that direction by prevailing winds over the weekend.

The downside of all this controlled burning is air quality. The NSW Dept Planning, Industry and Environment allows a concentration of 200 for particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometres (or less), before the air quality is declared  "hazardous". Today's reading (averaged over the past 24 hours) for Katoomba (where there is a measuring station) is 1228. While this is the highest concentration ever recorded at that location, we have all been breathing some degree of hazardous air for weeks now.

Despite our use of suitably rated masks when outside, we are not managing well at all and are largely confined indoors. If I am going to be chasing down ember driven spot fires by the end of the week, I need to be fit to do so.

This might be sufficient to chase us out of town were it not for the fact that few places seem to be enjoying much BETTER air quality right now. I am not trying to harvest the reader's sympathy by relating all this ... so much as I am trying to explain what life is like for people living with bush fires. Heaven only knows how the fire fighters themselves are managing. 

The blip was shot today at 11:04 am, heading west at Medlow Bath. The extra was captured in Katoomba Street about 10 minutes earlier. Anyway I hope everyone gets the best Christmas that they can. All the best to you and yours.