OT: The Australian Fires

[Targan]

Originally Posted by kcdusk

Targan - he is on the opposite side of the nation, so i assume he is fine.

Well in an amazing coincidence, on the day of the worst fires (Saturday September 7) I was on holiday in Victoria visiting my girlfriend and we were in central Victoria visiting friends. We were on the Hume Highway driving back to Melbourne when they had to close the Hume Highway in front of us when one of the killer fires crossed the highway.

The entire sky to the south of us was black, it was 48 degrees celsius and there were 70kph wind gusts so I knew some very, very bad sh*t was going down but it wasn't until the next day that my girlfriend and I realised that we had been less than half an hour away from being caught in the Kilmore fire.

The parents of the friend we were staying with north of Shepparton the night before managed to save their dogs and one of their cars but everything else they owned including their house and classic car collection were completely destroyed.

The fires have been a true tragedy. Unfortunately as I am a professional media monitor, as soon as I got back to Perth and returned to work most of my working days for the next week were filled with Victorian fire stories. I was a bit depressed there for a while.