Bush fire asthma, NSW emergency

I've not seen it this bad in Sydney for about 20 years or so. The last time anything like this happened I remember going down to Coogee beach in the east of Sydney, and seeing burnt gum leaves in the sand from fires out west of Sydney. They'd been so hot that the leaves went right up into the atmosphere and eventually came back to earth in the east. This morning I opened the back door to put some washing in the machine and instantly smelt smoke. 

The sun was up but although yesterday was a lovely day here with clear skies, this morning the air was filled with haze from the smoke. Snapped this one quickly, looking across the road and the morning sun.

David gets asthma and has been coughing his guts up the last few days. Watering eyes, sneezing. Finally it dawned on me this morning looking at that haze, that that's why he's having this asthma thing happening. Even I've been getting allergies this year with it being on the verge of Spring. Have some times gone up to the shops and come back with my nose, eyes, just pissing out allergic fluid stuff.

Out west of Sydney there's currently two out of control fires. Here's a NASA satellite image from a couple of days ago. You can see cloud cover on the right, and the bushfire smoke to the left west of Sydney. The fires have been burning for a few days, but they're very worried about the next 2-3 days as hot winds from the middle of Australia blowing in will make things very bad for the fire fighters. Premier O'Farrell declared a state of emergency in New South Wales yesterday.

If you're interested, this is a live map from the fire service. The yellow fires are ones out of control. The red one is an emergency where people need to evacuate. Blue ones are under control. Click the fires to get info about them.