Victorian Fires
Ξ February 9th, 2009 | → | ∇ Uncategorized, My Diary |
I’ve had a lot of recent emails, and comments via this website, concerned about me and these bushfires in my home state of Victoria. I’m fine. Frustrated and angry - but fine.
Sadly, these fires that are ripping through Victoria have claimed far too many lives - close on 200 now. I hate to mention a number, because every life lost is a tragedy, not a statistic.
Most of the fire-fighters are Country Fire Authority volunteers. I used to be in the CFA, and it taught me many things about fighting fires and saving lives, but one thing has stayed with me above all else: respect fire.
We had ample early warning about last Saturday’s weather conditions, and a week before that day, having seen the forecast, I started telling friends and family to bug out of the bush. Most stayed put. Most said they had “fireplans”, which is little more than a plan to delay death. Every fire-fighter in the country working around the clock could not put out bushfires burning in over 350,000 hectares of dry, drought-stricken land. They know it’s about containment, it’s about fire breaks, and it’s about minimising losses. For the average citizen, they should do the same calculation, and that’s what I told people I was concerned about: minimise your losses - get out with your lives.
We need better planning. We need better controlled burns done before bushfire season. Every person living outside major urban centres should be education in fire safety. I was four when the Ash Wednesday fires came through this state - and as a country kid, it’s always been a part of my life, entrenched in my psyche much like the stories of Gallipoli my great grandfather told me - a part of my life and a reminder of the horrors of reality. We live in a land shaped by fire, and this country will always burn; as long as we have people living in the bush, bushfire will always claim life.
Yet we have greater predictions and forecasts and communications than ever before. As I said, current fire-plans are bullshit because the people who make them are gambling with something that they do not comprehend. Fires like we had been warned about are unstoppable to all but the best prepared pros. So many of my family and friends stayed in their homes despite being ringed by fuel that has been baking through the worst drought in our history. It’s like we knew an invasion was coming and most people stood there, garden hose in hand, ready to repel. I understand people treasure their homes and possessions but everything but a soul can be remade.
There is a Royal Commission into this fire. I hope to see several things come out of it, including:
- The populace must be better educated - whether that’s through compulsory education at school or CFA involvement; if you live in the bush you must know about fire, just like to drive a car you know about road laws and sit a test.
- We need a disaster relief agency like the US’s FEMA, to oversee the efforts of multiple agencies and has federal resources on hand to field ASAP.
- The State and Federal government must provide cash to families and individuals who decide to leave their homes ahead of the fire warnings, to pay for relocation - I hate to think any innocent children lost their lives in these fires because their parents are living hand-to-mouth like so many Australians, parents who weighed their situation up and decided the risk was low enough not to warrant borrowing money from someone to stay in a hotel for a few days. This cash grant is a better allocation of tax-payer money than having state and federal employes searching from the air or on the ground through smoking rubble for lives lost. And that’s just the money side (because I know I will get emails saying ‘who will pay for such a move?’ And to these people, I point out that for every life that is taken, whether by fire or a car accident or health issue, that’s on average a million dollars of lost tax revenue that that person will not provide).
The physiological scars that touches all those involved in this would be minimised with every death that is averted, and like every Victorian I have been personally affected by these fires, affected more than I expected with all the warnings we had.
It’s the 21st century, and it seems so many of my fellow Victorians are ignorant of the dangers inherent with living in the bush. The media is showing much of this tragedy, through nation-wide coverage. Will we learn? Will we be better prepared? Will Australians wake up and do something about this, or will we sit on our butts and watch TV? I had hoped that we’d recently entered a new age were empathy is the norm - I still have hope, but I hope I’m not alone.
