Gil Robertson wrote:
Hello, Gil, following is additional to previous updates,What is the latest on the fires. We trust that the weather will be kinder and the worst has passed.
368 houses confirmed destroyed. The fires leaped across 30 km of rural and bush land in less than an hour. Descriptions of them include phrases such as
'flames as big as office blocks', 'looking back at the hill seconds later I saw it was completely ablaze - there were huge fireballs bouncing down like basketballs',
'we threw the kids in the car and got going only to run into a burning tree across the road',
'raced down the street and saw a fireball coming straight at us',
'stood there wetting down the back of my house while I watched the ones on both sides burn to the ground',
'lost everything - there was nothing we could do, it all happened so fast'
Tomorrow is a danger with strong gusty winds and hot weather (35C) forecast.
Areas to the south and southwest of the Canberra residential area are under threat today, as is most of the land between Williamsdale and Cooma together with the settlements such as Bredbo, Shannons Flat, properties at Colinton, Michelago.
You will see a lot of criticism of emergency services personnel and procedures, talk of bad planning and mistaken decisions. None of us is perfect and I'm sure that some of the procedural errors need not have happened but as far as people are concerned, they could not have behaved better. A lot of decisions had to be made very quickly in the face of situations in which fireballs were taking out five houses at a time.
Following is a list of houses destroyed. This list is NOT final, most of it was taken from the Sydney Morning Herald this morning. I've roughly re-ordered it into northwest to south for those who have some knowledge of the area.
Holt (unknown)
Higgins (unknown)
Cotter Area - 14
Weston - 10
Chapman - 75
Duffy - 185
Holder - 33
Rivett - 6
Lyons - 3
Curtin - 3
Kambah - 39
