Happily untouched by fires in the area

Yesterday was being described as going to be a possibly catastrophic fire day here in Victoria. Hot and windy.

I live on a 5 acre bush block with a dirt road. On the other side of the road is state forest. The "fire plan" here is simply to get out if there's any danger. All seemed well for the morning but a fire at Taradale, about 23km away, had it's area extended in our direction.

(My location is where the binocular icon is). At that point we left for the refuge of nearby town Kyneton. Unfortunately when we arrived we found that the power had already been off for three hours - everything was shut - and there was not the respite of an air-conditioned bowling club we'd dreamed of. The power outage was over quite a large area and we were lucky not to have lost power here in Drummond already.

All power was out and this included the traffic lights which made it difficult for a queue of cars to get through an intersection so my visitor, VK2EMU, helped out by directing traffic for a while.

The pie shop had some warm pies still in the oven so we ate there, walked around the very hot town for a while and when the Taradale fire was downgraded we headed home.

Other areas were not so lucky and this included nearby Mount Alexander where our broadcast TV and FM is transmitted. Now we have no broadcast TV.

At this stage I'm not sure how serious the problem is. It could just be a power outage or the transmitters or towers might be damaged. We won't miss broadcast TV terribly much as we mostly stream.

We were lucky, this time. These fires are terrifying and I keep a pure wool blanket and water in the car. I'm also prepared with an amateur radio station that can operate from battery power if all else has gone.