[lisa_spyder]

Even though the weather is really quite cool, there are still new fires starting. There are several urgent threat messages out for many towns right now. If these new fires take hold I would hazard a guess that by the time all the fires are controlled that most of our forest areas will be burnt out.

The losses are already unquantifiable...for God's sake I hope the firefighters are capable of a miracle before the weather warms up again over the weekend.

It was close here - very close. Lots of ash and burnt leaves in our garden. We enacted what fire plan we could given that we live in a town of some 12,000 people. However, spot fires were reported only a couple of streets away from us in a "built-up area". Mike thought I was being a little over-reactive by getting the hoses out, checking gutters etc (I have been through bushfire twice before)...until Billy (9yo) brought in the first totally charred gumleaf from the garden.

To give you an idea - on Saturday the temperature reached nearly 47 degrees celcius here in Warragul, with only 4% humidity and Northwesterly winds gusting to some 60kph...of course the winds were worse in the immediate fire area. Then the wind changed to a Southwesterly and the 2 kilometre front of the Bunyip fire became the flank and the 20 kilometre flank became the fire front...disastrous.

Now there is very real talk of two of the fires joining up - the Bunyip fire and the Yea-Murrindindi fire. Expert opinion is that this will happen in the next three to four days...right when the weather becomes all the more challenging again for the firefighters. These fires at the moment are less than 20 kilometres apart, with the water catchment area for Melbourne bang in the middle (along with a host of towns and little communities)...