50 days on and still on Fire.

Way back on December 1^st last year, a lightning strike started the first of a series of fires burning in the rugged Victorian Highlands. As it is too rugged to get safe access, apart from Aerial fire bombing, the on ground fire crews have been unable to get safe access to these blazes and have had to wait in large part, till the fire reaches an area where they have a chance to stop it. So far there have been over ten and a half thousand men involved in the effort, working in shifts, just to control and contain at the moment. With crews of fire-fighters coming from New Zealand, Canada, and the US of A.

Even though it has burnt over a million Hectares, an area larger than the greater Melbourne are, because of the rugged, in accessible country the fire is in, without a major change in our current heat wave and mass of rain all over the area, there is little hope of putting the fire out, just in controlling and containing it where they can safely access it.

This seems to echo some troublesome situations in our lives doesn’t it? It seems that things are going along okay, although a little bit on the inflammable side but still safe, when all of a sudden there is a lightning strike from almost no-where and everything flares up in to an uncontrollable situation. A situation that you may be able to control with a lot of unplanned and unexpected effort. Or you may even have to call in experts (fire crews) from outside to control the situation.

Sometimes you may not even be able to resolve the problem and you will have to let it largely run its own course like with this fire, which unless there is heaps of rain very soon, will have to run its own course and burn itself out, or at least down, so it can be finally put out.

How are you handling your own Bushfires? Can you control them yourself or do you need to call in outside help? Can you extinguish them safely and quickly? Or do you simply need to control them and ride them out?

Remember it is best to control and extinguish while small before they can cause massive damage. Final questions. Do you try and cause problems or try and put them out?

Are you a fire fighter, or a fire lighter? Walter