Fourteen Kilometres

You are the mayor of Bellweather Valley, responsible for its residents, its only through-road and every public warning issued during the festival weekend that finances the town's lean months.

At 11:40 the ridge fire becomes yours: the wind has begun backing toward the valley, placing eleven thousand sleeping campers and twenty-nine thousand arriving visitors inside a judgment that could leave families trapped on the only road out.

The valley road clears six thousand vehicles an hour until festival arrivals meet it at 14:00; every minute spent seeking certainty consumes road capacity you cannot store.

The council chamber has become an incident room, its tables shoved beneath a survey map taped over the honours board. Burning eucalyptus has seeped through the air conditioning; yellow light presses against the windows, three phones are talking at once, and nobody among the eleven people present has taken a chair.

What is yours

You answer to Bellweather's permanent residents, festival workers, visiting families and the crews who may need the valley road clear enough to meet the fire.

What you know

Eleven thousand campers are already sleeping or parked inside the valley.
Twenty-nine thousand more visitors are expected to begin arriving at 14:00.
The road can clear roughly six thousand vehicles an hour before arrivals oppose the outbound flow.
The active fire is fourteen kilometres from the valley floor.

What you don't

The exact minute the wind will turn toward Bellweather cannot be resolved before road capacity begins disappearing.
Whether the utility equipment near the ignition started the fire cannot be established today.
How many visitors will ignore a warning and continue toward the festival cannot be known in time.
Whether a spot fire will cross the valley road during an evacuation cannot be guaranteed.

If you get this wrong

If the road locks, Lena and Mo Iqbal may meet the front with their children in a stopped car; if you empty Bellweather unnecessarily, Bea Nowak must dismiss 780 workers and Niko Vale may lose the trading weekend that pays his winter rent.

This one costs somebody something. It may be you.