It's like it's happening on another planet.

[catsidhe]

Ah, fuck.

I know everyone and their dog is posting about this, but... fuck.

Marysville and Kinglake are simply gone.

65 76 84 dead at last count, Brian Naylor (for non-Melbournians, he was the evening news presenter here for decades) is missing, and his wife are among that number.

The flames are encroaching on Bendigo and Beechworth.



And here we are in suburban Melbourne, putting on jackets. After yesterday — the hottest day in the city on record — today is cold and rainy. And past the hills, dozens of people are dead, and entire towns are vanished.



I just... Fuck.

And bushfire season is just beginning.

Comments

[usuakari.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I think both bushfires I've been to (years ago in the Grampians and then in Gippsland in 2006) were before Christmas. I know we're not used to thinking of it that way because it's not until January that we really begin to bake, and hot weather = fires to most people, but it's more dependent on moist fuel drying out toward the tail-end of Spring and humidity dropping.

Chris Carson would have known more and explained it better than me; him being the fire educator and all. I miss him a lot, but think perhaps it's good that he isn't here for this. The sense of failure would be... ugly.

Dad says the death toll will top 200...

Jindi Cheese factory burned down...

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

That's my point: normally there have been fires here and there, off and on for months by now. This season, nothing for months, then, as if it had been stored up...

Like I say in my next post: this was not a failure of planning. By the time people knew to run, it was far too late. And hiding did no good when houses were literally exploding into flame.

There was no time to run, and no place to hide.

You can't plan for that.

[usuakari.livejournal.com]

Not saying that anyone has failed... simply that for the Community Fire Educators and all others involved will probably have varying degrees of that feeling. Undeserved, but insidious, I suspect.