Kawasaki Sportsbike Riders Club - Australia - Online Forum

I know there has been lots of stuff on the Tv lately with all the fires but just thought I'd add my own bit of excitement from this weekend for you to look at if you are interested.
If you're not a big reader just skip to the video at the bottom
As some of you will know we had a fire on West Head Friday night, it would appear it was caused by a lightening strike as a storm went through shortly beforehand., We got paged out for a "Developing situation" so I thought I would go to the station, (I'm about 30mins away so normally don't go to call outs), I arrived just in time for us to be responded (Lights and Sirens) to West Head. We were probably about the 6th truck to arrive and basically just turned the truck around when all of a sudden the fire approaching us reached the hill we were on and accelerated towards us, it was quick! I seriously doubt I could have out run it, the call was made get on the trucks and head South NOW!, and so we did, I stuck my phone out the window as were were going and got this footage that I thought was pretty cool. We parked up for about 10 minutes and let the fire die down a bit then we drove back through it and started tying to extinguish the back of the fire as a Southerly Change was due in an hour or two ... long story short we couldn't contain it and when the Southerly hit we were forced to abandon it again for the safety of the road and spent most of the rest of the night until we were relieved at midnight watching the fire race up the hills around us. I was back at the fire last night from 6pm - 11pm and things are a lot calmer, helped by all the rain and some back burning the fire was almost out, they hope to finish it today ahead of more forecast hot weather Tuesday.

A photo taken shortly after we had to do the runner


Later that night as we sat on the road watching the fire


Saturday evening sitting in the rain waiting for instuctions


and FINALLY the Video
http://youtu.be/bjKxe3jO2Oc

looks like a couple of trees exploded as you guys started to back-pedal ??

Unless you are involved with fire people really under estimate how quick fire can move as you would know no doubt.Keep up the good work

yep, the speed of the fires through the pine plantations caught everyone by surprise here in 2003 - they reckon at some points due to how strong the winds were, the fire was moving around 50kmh ?? which is really fucking fast for a bushfire....it moved across a number of kilometres literally in a few minutes

Looks like your having fun

Yeah! got a bit crazy when we were in the Bush and the wind changed from a gentle Northerly to a howling Southerly, we suddnely went from being at the back of the fire to the front of the fire LOL but it was expected and we'd all moved to safer (burnt) ground

ducati_paul wrote:Yeah! got a bit crazy when we were in the Bush and the wind changed from a gentle Northerly to a howling Southerly, we suddnely went from being at the back of the fire to the front of the fire LOL but it was expected and we'd all moved to safer (burnt) ground

I admire your courage Paul. I've survived two big bushfires and it's frightening. I watched tongues of flame a klm long leap two or three klms ahead during ash Wednesday. I watched it from the Buninyong fire tower. That vid doesn't really provide enough of the reality of it all. The noise you can hear, but its not like being there in 40+ temps with the heat of the fire overpowering you and the smell and taste of it. Cudos Paul.

That's about a close as i'd ever want to get to one of those.