Raglan/Mount Cole bushfire

[Biggles]

No doubt people are taking a keen interest in the awful developments taking place around a particularly special spot of paradise.

With Beaufort having been spared after a wind change yesterday, the bushfire is now concentrated to the N and NW of Mount Cole around Raglan. We can all but earnestly hope things will change for the better, and particularly that Mount Cole/Mount Buangor will be spared any infernal catastrophe. The scale of evacuations from the fire is very substantial — many quaint, tiny farming communities put on watch or emptied completely, and one I remember from 1985 — Bung Bong outside Maryborough, wholly incinerated in the conflagration of 1985, again being peppered with warnings. Within these tiny communities, many nothing more than a cross road and a few houses, many of the older, not particularly mobile residents can trace back their families over several generations of farming in the district.

Nobody knows how this bushfire started yet. Next Wednesday is being foretold as another potentially catastrophic fire weather day; hopefully everything settles down before that time, but the weather itself will bring a whole new set of dangers. I get out of my own little spot of paradise when warnings are elevated, because I border thick forest. At best, we are probably looking at an extended closure of Mount Cole/Mount Buangor, and hopefully — touch wood!, an extended closure is the worst we can worry about!

[peregrinator]

Details available here:

https://emergency.vic.gov.au/respond

And while many people have been conned into thinking that native forest logging has been ended in Victoria, that is far from the truth. It is no longer permitted in the eastern part of the state, but VicForests had already announced that logging would begin soon in the central-west zone, including in the very area that is now ablaze. So where will they choose to go clear-felling now?

Um, maybe the fire started when loggers were investigating access at Rocky Road, Bayindeen?

[Ryzi03]

I haven't seen anyone mention it and I only found it while looking into what was happening with the logging around Mount Buangor but the way I'm reading this article (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-05/vicforests-ends-community-forestry-operations-western-victoria/103418630) that has seemingly flown under the radar, has native logging finally ended for all of Victoria?

I hate to speculate and I can't see any logical reason why someone would do it but if I am reading the article right, there's the smallest little part of me wondering whether someone at VicForests wasn't too impressed with the decision. It looks like the fire started right in the NW corner of the Mount Buangor state park which, with the gusty northwesterlies, would've maximised the damage to the park if someone was thinking about it like that.
I think I'm getting way too conspiracy theorist at this point though!

Not looking forward to Wednesday, my family have a weekender on the E/NE side of the fire. The worst we got on Thursday was a watch and act once the wind change came through, hopefully it's no worse once the wind change comes this week as well. It's the family friends that have a weekender around Elmhurst that I'm concerned for at the moment though.