crimson skies

I awoke just before 6 this morning to a loud whoop-whoop noise. The apartment block's fire alarm had gone off. I looked out my bedroom window and saw the whole street covered in a red smokey haze. It looked like some raging fires were sweeping across the entire city or something. Residents had to be evacuated from the building.

Above photo was taken with my handy Sony T-5 while I was freezing my ass off outside the apartment building waiting for the fire brigade to arrive. They never came although I heard fire engine sirens and saw a few of them pass by when I walked around to the main road. Several residents called the emergency services number 000 and were informed that the whole of Sydney was assaulted by strong gails and severe dust storms and hundreds of buildings with automatic particle-type fire alarms were set off. The fire brigades were flat out hence they would take some time to attend to our building (they eventually came at around half past 7). I called 000 myself to confirm that this was the reason for the alarm going off and even took the trouble to inspect the entire building by walking its perimeter to ensure there were no visible fires before I went back home with the whoop-whoop noise still going on. You can't really make such life-and-death decisions based on hearsay from others, can you?

Subsequent readings at online news sites revealed that the Bureau of Meteorology has issued a severe weather warning across the entire state of New South Wales because of widespread damaging winds. Severe hail and rain storms hit parts of the state last night, and flash floods and bush fires affected some other regions right up to the Victorian border. (Update: Oh and I just read that Melbourne experienced earthquakes in this period too.)

Right now, at close to 4pm, the dust in the air has more or less cleared, but the wind rages on. Thick films of dust blanketed vehicles parked on the streets. I'm glad mine is under cover in the basement garage.

On the surface, it seems like everything has reverted back to normal from my side of the world, but who knows what/where/who are still suffering from the aftermath or will be affected next.

As for me, the moment I stepped out onto the streets this morning during the evacuation, my eyes had been tearing non stop rendering my vision to almost zero. I had to remove my glasses every few seconds to wipe the tears and that resulted in very tender and swollen eyes now. My already highly weakened lungs and respiratory system cannot take such trauma. The nasal passageway got immensely irritated to the extent every millimeter of skin and flesh leading from the nostrils in to the back of the throat first itched, then hurt because of the body's natural reaction to try to dispel the foreign particles by coughing the guts out. I had to kinda sedate myself with some drowsy meds so as to knock the consciousness out and calm the systems.

Ah... Mother Nature's wrath is finally manifesting itself on the disgusting human race population. Awesome.

Afterthought: I would choose to bear the SG haze over this anytime.