How serious are the fires near Melbourne
 

Just saw news clip that wildfires are becoming more and more wide spread in Victoria and its nearby areas. I know families living in the Melbourne area and have sent them New Year message, but have had no reply. Thus, wondering, anyone know how bad the situation is and have some people evacuated the region.
Thanks for your help. I pray that everyone stays safe. It is so sad to see so much devastation and misery as fires keep going.

Where do you live? You do know about the international news sources, right? Even if you don't have cable, they have websites.

BBC, even CNN and probably newspapers and television in your city have been covering the fires. For Australian resources which are updated every few minutes, try

https://www.news.com.au/

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/fede...02-p53od3.html

There are no fires in the city of Melbourne, but it is affected by various levels of smoke. Tpollution level is unpredictable - varies day to day.
There is no definitive answer.

I live 30 mins from Melbourne CBD and we did have a fire 2 kms from our house - a few weeks ago . We did receive a watch and wait warning on the emergency app .
It was scary to see a fire that close to the city . A number of houses were destroyed - it was in the gorge and was not out a few days ago but it was under control .

Glad that one didn't get much further out of hand, northie. but thinking of the home owners along Jubilee Cres who got the worst of it. Thought of you all when it was being reported. Has there ever been a fire up your way that's been so close? There was one between us and Warrandyte one year but that was put out the same day.

We're on Melbourne's east, much closer to Yarra Valley than the city and I think things here are pretty safe at the moment. A lot of smoke some days but the fires have been mostly further out. Much further than the Black Saturday fires of 2009. There was a small fire in Gembrook a couple of weeks ago but I think it was contained pretty quickly. It finally rained pretty steadily yesterday and it has stayed cool (at least for now) so we're probably ok. I imagine your friends will be too as long as they weren't camping in East Gippsland or the southern NSW highlands.

We’ve had grass fires years ago when we were virtually the last suburb before Whittlesea - now it’s houses all the way .
I remember burning gum
leaves dropping in the streets in Ivanhoe in the Ash Wednesday fires .