The Spectacles fire comprises of 2 main fires, christmas eve fire and todays boxing day fire, both most likely to have been deliberately lit, todays fire was definately deliberately lit and police have made an arrest. On christmas eve, the fire ripped from spectacles drive east all the way to Ratcliff rd, some 7km away from the initial starting point, and threatened homes in orelia and some parts of parmelia. Todays fire was deliberately lit, started at spectacles drive, but this time lit on the othe side of the railway line, and also on the otherside of thomas rd, near the shell service station. With todays heat and sea breeze, this ripped in a NW direction accross the freeway and threatened homes in casuarina and wandi. Control point has been at Mandogalup BFB station since 24th and police have done a superb job to block of some key roads to help the fire brigades do their job, big thanks also to the salvation army, who have supplied all of us hungry fire fighters over the past few days, including on christmas day !! Ses did a good job today as well, telling those at risk to put their emergency plan into place. Big thanks to all those other brigades who also have come down to help us over the past few days, as it has been greatly and much appreaciated.
Pics and video from the first day of the fire are now up on the Mandogalup website (
http://www.myspace.com/mvbfb ), with a good video of the carson doing a drop on houses under threat, will have the other one of the helitacs doing a drop tomorrow, unfortunatly no sound as it was taken on a camera. heres a taste of one of the pics:
) for giving me traffic directions after I got stuck in all the calamity of Thomas Road and the Freeway (from Russell/Gibbs Rd) being closed when coming home this evening around 1930.
