In my non-Coffee-Snob life, I'm a CFS (SA Country Fire Service) officer. I took a crew up to the big (big for SA) fire just west of the Barossa valley yesterday.
This area has been so utterly devastated by the fire. It is wheat cropping country, and the fire was essentially a crop fire. Which isn't normally a big deal. But it has nuked 87,500Ha to the ground. Lots of farms completely destroyed. It is one of the saddest firegrounds I've been to in over 20 years of being a volunteer firefighter. I really feel so sorry for those poor sods. You can google 'Pinery Fire' and see quite a few images of the thing, but be warned there are images of burnt sheep that some might find distressing.
To those who are fire service vollies - this fire is now the world record holder for forward rate of spread. A shade over 83km/hr. That's incredible. And terrifying. When the wind change occurred, it doubled in size in about 120 minutes...
To those CFA and RFS strike teams that came over yesterday: Thanks. Much appreciated. The shear effort involved in securing the perimeter and dealing with the internal hot spots is going to be a darn long slog. Our appliance and other 4 in our strike team took 12 hours to secure about 1.5km of the North West corner. Physically hard, dirty slog... The perimeter at the moment is around 265+km...
/Kevin
This area has been so utterly devastated by the fire. It is wheat cropping country, and the fire was essentially a crop fire. Which isn't normally a big deal. But it has nuked 87,500Ha to the ground. Lots of farms completely destroyed. It is one of the saddest firegrounds I've been to in over 20 years of being a volunteer firefighter. I really feel so sorry for those poor sods. You can google 'Pinery Fire' and see quite a few images of the thing, but be warned there are images of burnt sheep that some might find distressing.
To those who are fire service vollies - this fire is now the world record holder for forward rate of spread. A shade over 83km/hr. That's incredible. And terrifying. When the wind change occurred, it doubled in size in about 120 minutes...
To those CFA and RFS strike teams that came over yesterday: Thanks. Much appreciated. The shear effort involved in securing the perimeter and dealing with the internal hot spots is going to be a darn long slog. Our appliance and other 4 in our strike team took 12 hours to secure about 1.5km of the North West corner. Physically hard, dirty slog... The perimeter at the moment is around 265+km...
/Kevin

The area was Australia's highest yielding wheat spot (measured per unit area rept). It'll not be so for many years to come..
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