Originally Posted by
IMOA
Yep, 1994 was actually somewhat scary, I spent one of the afternoons standing on a fence of a friends house in West Pymble passing buckets of water from their pool across to the neighbours house which was under threat (aka, on fire, just not on fire too much at that point). These fires have put more smoke over sydney but they haven't threatened sydney the way that 1994 did.
I remember my aunt's house up in South Turramurra that backed on to the national park was partially fire damaged.
These ones do seem more intense in that even if you have prepared your house you're still at risk of death if it comes through. And it's the radiant heat that causes death not the flames, so I guess it's just the huge fuel load out there.