Hi honeys, well things certainly changed here on Tuesday afternoon. Out of nowhere a huge wildfire took hold in strong S SW winds. We took a cup of tea down to the shade by what's left of the pond and as I looked right I could see what looked like smoke. At first we thought it was wispy clouds but within about 5 minutes we realised it was smoke and it was getting worse by the second.
I dashed up to the house and went straight onto Facebook to see if there were any updates. It was a fire near Wakefield which itself is S of us as the crow flies - I'm not sure how many km's away it is but it takes about 15-20 minutes to drive there from here. Long story short we had a fretful rest of afternoon which turned into us packing up the car around 9pm in case we needed to evacuate. We were on ''prepare to evacuate in case'' notice. By 1am Redwood Valley Road around 4km away from us was burning and it wasn't looking good. The hardest thing was getting good communication. Believe it or not it was REALLY hard to get any info and the page we were told to watch on FB for updates went completely silent for 3 hours around 9pm - so nerve wracking. I phoned the local council number in desperation and was told to phone 111 emergency in the first instance for evacuation updates. I did that and it took ages for them to get any information! Scary! Needless to say i got virtually no sleep on Tuesday night. Luckily we didn't get a police phone call telling us to evacuate.
Yesterday morning the perimeter of the fire had doubled in size but they worked long and hard with helicopters dumping water all day and the area at the end of Redwood Valley was just smouldering last night with the occasional hot spot flaring up. I managed to sleep right through the night thank heavens.
Today we woke to lots of smoke in the air and the news that if the wind does what its predicted to do tomorrow we may be back to square one with the wind blowing embers anywhere in our direction. We remain vigilant and will pack the car again tonight in case. I've had to take most things out because I'm going to ballet practise this pm. I need some normality! I have to admit I've been absolutely petrified, not helped by the fact that I am and always have been extremely phobic about fire. It's my one main fear!
We have Bunnykins in a bird cage, and got the chooks out of the chook house on Tuesday night around 11pm, putting them in a big cardboard box. They went into a small pen up by the house yesterday and back in the box last night. We''ll do the same over the weekend in case.
Well I must fly out to ballet practise. Please keep your fingers crossed this fire is contained soon. At the moment it's 1900 hectares of total anger.. it's not going beyond the perimeter becuase they are fighting it so hard but it is still classified as ''out of control''. Smiles.. very nervous ones!
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