farmdoc's blog post number 302

Here are some of my thoughts about the Victorian bushfires:

Last Friday Sweetheart Vivienne and I lowered the Mole Creek Fire Station’s Australian flag to half-mast. I shed a quiet tear. I think she did too.

I can’t imagine the conditions near and in the fires. The noise, the smoke, the heat. I’m told the heat turned windows to molten glass.

I can’t bear to think of the panic and terror of those trapped in the fires. I hope the last moments of the people the fire killed were mercifully quick and painless.

I can’t imagine the despair of the survivors who lost relatives, neighbours, friends, workmates, homes, workplaces, possessions, memories, dreams.

On Saturday 7 February, the worst day of the fires, the half an inch of rain that fell on Mole Creek made me feel guilty.

And I also felt guilty about declining – for work and age reasons – an offer to join the contingent of Tasmanian firefighters fighting the Victorian fires.

It’s marvellous to see how the plight of the fire survivors has evoked an outpouring of money and goods, and especially empathy and emotional support, from the population at large. And from politicians too, whose words and actions were and are, I think, genuine for once. The survivors deserve all of it – and more. Government aid must not be constrained by the current economic crisis.

I don’t know why this outpouring has occurred. But I think adversity brings out the best in us Australians. Our national spirit can be, and usually is, amazing when our backs are to the wall.

Whilst Premier Brumby’s reflex response was to say that this will never happen again, it surely will. And it’s nonsense to suggest that buildings can be designed to be bushfire proof. Resistant to ordinary bushfires, maybe, but not to those as ferocious as last week’s.

The process of the Royal Commission is likely to be more important than its outcome. Numerous reports from numerous inquiries after numerous previous major bushfires sit on shelves; yet this month’s fires are the worst on record.

Will anyone in power connect the dots linking bushfire frequency/severity and global warming/climate change? I doubt it. At least not publicly.

I’m so proud that darling Kate and Brendon have made their guest cottage available to a young Marysville family for a few months.