Mother Nature

The worst bushfire disaster in Australia's history continues. Victoria burns. QLD is flooded. Madness.

Last I heard this morning the death toll from the fires surpassed 180 (with more expected, as search and recovery continues) with over 1000 homes lost. The tragedy is hard to comprehend, and for the most part I'm trying to ignore news updates as the news is too hard to take in. I've also been disgusted to see TV getting right in the faces of people during tearful reunions at evacuation centres. I guess I can understand that after all the bad news TV shows are hoping for exclusive good news stories. It just seems such an invasion of privacy.

I'm pretty sure all my nearest and dearest are safe. Mum and Dad were fortunate in that they had big fires come through the week before, as they had pretty much the entire state's fire fighting resources defending their town. I think about 30 properties on the outskirts of town were destroyed, thankfully no deaths. At the time it was horrific. Mum and Dad were one of about 6 families in the town that decided to saty and defend their homes. Apparently flying embers from the main fire front caused spot fires in the vacant land surrounding their house block.

Who would have thought that having such a fierce fire was actually a good thing, but it proved to be. It created a large firebreak for the town, so that while fires this week have been close there is nothing left to burn.