The Australian Fires

I was just about to open a topic on this, having just seen a couple of interviews (including one with a very downcast PM). Apparently these fires are the worst in Australian history.

The truly terrible aspect though is that -as with many such cataclysmic fires- the major part seems to have been deliberately lighted.
As the PM said: "what can you say about such people?". It's mass murder, is what it is.

Best thoughts to all the Ozzies from the other side of the globe, with hopes for rain and a failing wind.

That's right! Whatever happened to the culprits the Greek police tracked down then, D.?

The Greek police never tracks down anyone. And if they do, they get lost in the hordes of bureaucracy. Time erases everything here, in a land where justice is severally ill.

The perpetraters may well be decent people in normal everyday life? If the individual(s) is never caught I can only hope that this moronic act will pray on they're every waking concious and haunt their dreams for the rest of their existence.

I recall a fire in Northern Arizona set a few years back that burned 450,000 acres. It was of all people a fireman. There is nothing you can do to him that could give any sort of justice.
Thomas

It's quite amazing, all this. DavidOC might be a better poster to talk about how it all feels, since he's from Melbourne (Sydney is experiencing rainy weather today, though our state is in drought).

Suffice to say, I doubt many would have stayed to defend their homes if they'd had any idea they would be trapped without opportunity of escape. Under-estimating the danger probably played a large part in this death toll. A lot Victorian countryside is forest land, and many of the roads through the affected areas are lined by forests. Once they caught ablaze, anyone trying to get out by road was in trouble, and many of the casualties were people in cars trying to get away.

As far as I know, only one of the fires has been confirmed as deliberately lit. The conditions in Victoria were pretty ripe for a fire to start up on Saturday.

It really has been an horrific few days down here with so many people dead, it looks like it'll be over 200 in the end and there's still dangerous times ahead even though it's much cooler now. It's disaster on an unprecedented, unimaginable scale and even though I haven't personally been touched by it, living as I do, along with all my relatives, in Melbourne, there have been many fires that have skirted parts of the outer suburbs and a grey hazy fog enveloped the city and its horizon on Saturday which made it all too real for the rest of us as we waited in horror and prayed it all some kind of dream.

Ironically we were having one of the mildest summers of recent years until a couple of weeks ago when those three straight days of over 43 degrees struck. And the 46 degrees we had on Saturday in Melbourne (and even hotter in the country) when all the fires began was a new record too - and another seriously unwanted one! The scary thing is that Feb. and March, our hottest months, are still to come and many states are so dry that fires are a realistic threat in the months ahead.

I think there's only been one fire confirmed as arson, as Michael said, but there are many, many more suspected as such, which as you all mentioned, defies belief really, you can't put that sort of human behaviour into any sort of context at all. It's all heartbreaking stuff - the hundreds of families stripped of everything they own, the stories of the decent people who've lost their lives and the loved ones left behind to pick up the pieces.

Luckily there's the stories of heroism too and people who cheated death. Obviously these kinds of situations bring out the best in people as well.

A lot of people in rural Victoria won't recover from this, and a lot of beautiful little towns have been virtually wiped off the map. Maybe they'll try to rebuild them again but they'll be another generation away from becoming what they once were. And it'd never really be the same anyway.

It breaks your heart, even the simplest thing. There's a prominant picture in today's paper of a fireman holding a bottle of water up to a grasping koala's parched mouth - it's one of those simple images that seems symbolic of something larger, the threat this type of disaster poses to nature as well as people. It sounds a bit frivolous in the wake of the human cost I know but it was a heartbreaking image to see this morning.

It's been a tremendous shock for all of us!
Here in Adelaide we were very fortunate to have passed through the past few days unscathed.
It was so hot (mid forties) for a few days yet no fires!
I remember Ash Wednesday when I was young. But this is even bigger than that!
Our hearts go out to all who have lost so very much in this shocking disaster!