![]() ![]() We had been raking debris around the house for weeks. I had been practicing methods of communication that may influence my neighbours to leave or at least stay in contact with me and stay super vigilant. We had spent the morning driving to every neighbour, checking that they were all evacuating. Our family was safe, our animals were in Sutton Forest and we were sitting outside our beautiful home having a beer working out the next steps. Once we moved them all we realised they were all safe. My husband and I had detailed right down to who would hold the cage door open and closed that was in the back of my Pajero each time we passed a chicken in. My mum has spaces for us to move them all. The stay and fight option was way too risky and the leave late option was not going to be possible. We knew, living rural and on a dead end road that we had to have a plan to leave early. We joined the RFS earlier and had been spending time with our local RFS team getting to understand what they do and what we could do at our home to help them if it came to fighting the fire. We believed we were having these thoughts to be on the safe side. We had spent weeks working out the decisions and actions we would take to ensure our son and other family were not home, and how we would move the chickens and cats and where they would go. The fire still had about five kms we think, to get to our road. The day that the fire was so close that we decided to evacuate, was yesterday. How I am feeling today, and the actions I took in the days before, are probably the same or very similar to most of the people who lost their homes. I think my strength today is to let the tears come and to express how this all feels as a way of helping more care, more understanding dive into our community. I want to be in action every moment of that someone else is hurting. I want to stand strong with my community and hold us all together. We can’t know who else of our neighbours is impacted like we were. We can’t even get near to the area because it is still burning. But then another thought pops up that my husband and son and animals, my extended family, my neighbours and my community are my home. My mind is full of thoughts of shock and horror as the reality of yesterday hits home that we have lost our home. We will keep you posted.įacebook posting always starts with that Facebook question – what’s on your mind? Here is my answer today. The fire looks like it has gone up our road and we don’t know if the house is lost or not. We got our animals and us all out last night. (This blog is unedited and taken from Sara’s daily Facebook posts, please excuse typos) We would like to thank Sara for her honesty in sharing this deeply distressing personal time with us. With Sara’s permission we have reproduced her daily blog here to show first-hand how the bushfire crisis is affecting real families. Housing Trust Board member Sara Haslinger lost her house in last weekend’s blaze which tore through the Southern Highlands near Exeter. ![]()
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