Fired up

Another lovely sunny day, not only that, I wore my cropped trousers for the very first time this year! But is the weather just lulling us into a false sense of security before it lets fly with cooler temperatures

Looking at the weather forecast for the next few days though I might not get to wear them for much longer.

It was really sad to read about the deaths of up to 19 fire-fighters in Arizonan wildfires. The worst deaths since 9/11.

It reminded me of the enormous bushfires that  swept across the hills between Lower Hutt and Wainuiomata.

When I was a child, it was especially scary at night to see the hills garlanded with what looked like read beads, but were in fact the perimeter of the fires. Daylight exposed the reality of fire blackened hillsides. 

That was before the council created a string of firebreaks to prevent such widespread destruction by halting the spread.

Quite a few years ago The Man and I lived in Naenae, a Lower Hutt suburb. Our house in Hill Grove was on the hills lower slopes and one summer evening we could see the glow in the sky, a sure sign of a bushfire. A bit later we could see the odd flying spark and within a very short time it was like it was raining sparks. 

Suddenly a fire engine, lights blazing, appeared in our tiny grove its loudhailer advising us to prepare for evacuation.

Now that was scary.

We could hear the helicopters, their monsoon buckets full of water buzzing to and from the nearby river attempting to get the fire under control.

Fortunately the fire-fighters succeeded in controlling and then extinguishing the blaze before it came too close to our house.