Monday, February 9, 2009

It became very personal to us on Saturday night when we received a call about 11.00pm from a friend in Melbourne to say Peter and Kay had been caught in the fires and were lucky to be alive.
They were at our wedding in November.

I have been in contact with them over the rest of the weekend but when they left the house on Saturday night under a hail of embers and escorted by a CFA tanker and police car, they fully expected to return home to devastation.
In fact their home is only one of 3 still standing in a street of 21 homes with 18 utterly destroyed. Thankfully their area was spared loss of life.
I spoke to Pete this morning and he said to put the intense heat into perspective - at the rear of their property is a stand of trees with trunks some 15 inches across. The trees that fell as a result of the fires - the only remains are fine white ash lines where the trees hit the ground. The bush in front of their house was full of wildlife - he has walked down to the creek and cannot find remains of one animal. He believes they were all incinerated.
Our heart goes out to all those involved