So it happened again.

So it happened again.

The temperatures soared, the wind picked up and faster than you’d expect, we were surrounded by a thick fog of smoke, unable to see the hills.

As the smoke got thicker, the butterflies in my stomach grew and I brought up the Tas Fire Service (TFS) website to find out where the fires were.

Nothing.

Page cannot be displayed.

I pressed refresh and refresh again, hoping for something, anything, to let me know where the fires are. I’m not in the city, I’m a rural girl and when the smoke starts to hang overhead, I start counting how long it will take to fill up all the water containers on the property. I start thanking my lucky stars that I had water delivered recently and my tanks are still full. I do a quick  walk around and a survey, looking at anything that might be flammable that needs damping down.

So as I pressed refresh on the website and nothing was coming up, I got a little worried. The sky was dark and smoke filled and the sun had gone a blood red, the kind of red you only see in bushfire season.

I grabbed the phone book and hunted for the TSF number. It took me three tries to find it, in my worried state.  In case anyone is wondering, it is under Tasmania Fire Service (not under Tasmanian Fire Service, nor under FIRE! EEEK HELP!).

I rang and spoke to a computer.

Which told me to please see the website for information on fires.

Fine, except the website, had crashed. Again.

This happened last time we had bushfires in the state, a few weeks back. Their site crashed and the public got a touch irate. But you tell me, wouldn’t you think that they would plan for it and FIX IT before the next lot of bad weather?

Eventually I got through to an operator, after being told to instead, check the website THREE times, and he was lovely (kudos to the TFS, whoever is manning your phones always does a brilliant job). The fires were about 35 km to the west of me and the wind was blowing the smoke straight over.

Hanging up, I could breath a little easier, even as I continued to push refresh on the website, eager for any information I could gather. Mobile phone reception out here in rural Tasmania is patchy at best and nonexistant in many places. I can’t pick up any radio stations here and trying to play them through the live streaming on the computer has, in the past, proved to be more static that radio.

It might be that I’m spoiled, living here in my first world country and getting my news delivered up to the second by twitter and online news sites like the ABC.

But you know what? When that blanket of smoke descends on you and you can’t breath for the smell of burning gum trees, I think you could forgive me for wanting up to the second information on what the fires are doing and which direction they are headed.

So to the TFS, thank you for defending our state from bushfires and thank you for manning your phones with people who don’t get exasperated when yet another Tasmanian, rings and asks about the smoke.

But, we’re living in a technological world now, I would think that you could have sorted out any teething problems with the website by now. Your computer on the other end of the phone lines tells you to check the website no less than three times while you’re pushing buttons, trying to get hold of someone to tell you whether you need to sleep with one eye open tonight.

In this day and age of instant information, I don’t think having your website crash at a critical time is acceptable. Buy more bandwidth. Sort out your servers. Pay someone to recode the website better so that you can update it without it going offline.

Because a page cannot be displayed error, when I can smell the gumtrees burning, it’s just not good enough.

**

Thankyou to ABC radio for providing information on the fires through twitter.