A collection of personal stories of Australians who lost their houses to fire (in the Guardian):
“All my life I’ve fought bushfires, but there’s never been one like this: the fireballs, the way it roared, the flames, 50-60ft high. Sometimes it seemed to be above the ground, just burning the air. It sucked the roof off the house and threw our cars a kilometre away”.
Holy crap.
“There’s not a single person in the entire region who is not traumatised – all over the Great Dividing Range. I wish the people in power would listen; I wish they would stop using industries that are so bad for our environment. I hope that the underlying anger, because of mismanagement from our leaders, does not overrule the kindness and compassion that people are showing in the present moment. I don’t really know what my life lesson is: I’m just very glad to be alive”.
Even in people who lost everything, the slippery-slidey climate change denial can still appear in full force:
“This fire was hotter than anything. I saw cars’ aluminium wheels melted and running down the gutter like a stream. The fire came from all angles, in whirling winds and twisters. It’s 35 years since the bush was last burnt out. The stuff in the mountains has been building up; you couldn’t walk through it, there’s that much rubbish. When the fire came, the whole mountain seemed to explode. I don’t think it was the climate crisis that caused this; I think it was neglect, not keeping the mountains clean”.
And:
“Forensics think two fire fronts collided and created their own storm. My brother had a bull that was killed in the fire and is still sitting upright. It was just instantly cooked, mummified. They told us that for that to happen, it had to reach 2,000 degrees. I don’t think it’s climate change; the bush here hasn’t been burned back in 15, 20 years”.
This stuff just gets my bullshit sensor out. Convince me that there was a systemic back burning operation underway over the last 100 years. References please. Also, back burning is a last-gasp attempt to burn the fire back at itself. What they didn’t seem to know they meant was, ‘controlled burning’, i.e., deliberately starting a (in theory) controlled fire to clear away low-lying flammable material.
From a different victim:
“But what upsets me most is the political inaction of the last two years, when they’ve been warned of these conditions. People had been asked for additional firefighting aircraft. They should be held criminally responsible”.
More importantly, in today’s Australia, I find it hard to see what the resulting difference between controlled burning and arson would be. Everything would just catch fire and boom, bush fire!
Too hot. Too dry.
If that bush had been back-burned 15-20 years ago, would it have burned again today? Of course it freaking would have. Australia is ridiculously hot and dry right now. Can’t think why. Would it have burned less intensively? Maybe a little bit. Maybe not. Not the point.
A final hint of reason from another victim:
“We’ve pissed mother nature off big time, and she’s paying us back. We’ve just been watching it get drier and drier – the whole valley’s been a tinderbox. Nobody heeded the warnings. Surely they’ll listen now”.
Good luck with that.
[Cover photo: of Veronica Coen and Murray Gibbs by Gideon Mendel]