The good news is, it started raining yesterday (I’ve never heard so many people saying “Yay, it’s raining!” instead of “Ugh, it’s raining”). The bad news is, it’s the wrong sort of rain. It’s just been a light drizzle – not enough to put the fires out, but enough to hamper visibility so that the…
In just the few hours since I posted, the fires have got worse. They’re evacuating some of the hill suburbs, and the smoke is coming from a huge swath across the hills now – I was just at a function on the 6th floor of another campus building, which has an unimpeded view across the…
A couple of days ago, two scrub fires broke out in the Port Hills. Since then, despite the best efforts of fire fighters (and the death of a helicopter pilot who had been one of many dumping water from monsoon buckets) the fires have continued to spread, and the cloud of smoke over the hills…