Travel Diary: Tackling wildfires

Helicopters control bush fires at Manly Dam, Sydney.

I don’t often post videos to my blog as it takes precious battery/time however I felt this one deserved an upload.

(Warning, weird accent ahead)

What an amazing sight this was. It wasn’t a wild fire but back burning, controlled fires to help prevent the chance of a wildfire. I didn’t actually know this was a thing coming from England, the U.K. doesn’t generally have this issue in the summer months. The problem is finding a spot dry enough to start a fire…

The helicopters flew directly overhead. One seemed to hover around the flames, I’m guessing to monitor it and feed back updates. The other was picking water up but I didn’t actually see it drop water onto the affected area. Was it simply a practice session? I guess so.

What amazes me is that they can create fires this big that don’t actually spread. It was a calm day, no winds which helped a lot. Has anyone else seen this before? I’d love to know.