Things are fine (to date) on our side of the range. A mere handful of kilometers away over the hills though, it's putrid, homes lost, needless to say a lot of animals in harms way but no one reported to be hurt or dead. Some of the warnings have been considered way over the top but I don't agree, you're better off warned than not.
Basically, the big fire west of Coffs Harbour; known as the Liberation Trail fire is forest and bushland with small rural towns and random properties. No disrespect to those areas of course but if that bad boy gets over that range we'll have big losses of homes and lives. As it is right now though with the change in wind direction, we're on alert on this side of the range and sitting pretty, fingers crossed.
While I think of it, there's a lot of local chat about "the fuckers need to backburn this shit". There's so much that can be said about bushfires and many people looking from the outside in who say stuff but truth is, forests and bushland are flammable,really flammable. You can chuck some containment in to protect certain areas but you ain't never gonna enough to prevent a bushfire. Oh except for completely obliterating said forest with....................an out of control bushfire. Lets be real, you jump on a plane or hell, just drive a car from Sydney to Brisbane and you'll see that the suggestion of backburning to stop these fires is a pretty vague assumption and a monumental task that would probably turn out to be a catastrophic fuck up that creates a new hazard anyway. Sucks to say it but we've all got to manage this with cool heads and stop trying to find a way to blame someone or something. I'm actually sick of seeing the shitty memes people put on social media saying it's a politicians fault or a greenies fault or a farmer's dog's fault etc etc, it doesn't help anything and it doesn't prevent anything. Lets deal with what we have and enjoy the great things we have.