Marg????

susiestar

Roll With It
I am sorry fire is ravaging your country. I have had you in my prayers and will continue to keep you in my prayers. I hope, whatever happens, that you are all safe from the fire. Things can be replaced, you can't. My uncle was a volunteer firefighter in a place/time where there were few paid firefighters. He drummed fire safety into my head over and over, and I am thankful for it.

Hopefully these fires will have a minimum loss of life, and they will lead to increased fire safety and fire prevention training.
 

Marguerite

Active Member
difficult child 3 has just gone for a walk on the headland, in the bush. Yesterday in the heat I would have forbidden it, but today I am sure he will be safe. He has his phone with him and I know he won't be out of sight of the houses, he never goes far. He's assured me that if he sees smoke he will call it in on his phone at the same time as heading straight back. We talked about how to keep yourself safe if caught out in a fire - he really doesn't know, I need to teach him. He thought going to stand on the rocks of the headland would be safest, but it would leave him right out in the open and a target for radiant heat stress.

He'll be fine. Today is cool and overcast; he's actually wearing a fleecy long-sleeved pullover. And when I was down the road, the brigade fire engine was still in town. One door was open, so clearly they're at the ready. We have two brigade stations in the village, side by side. One is the Rural Fire Service, the other is the volunteer Bush Fire Brigade. Rural will be called out first; if they go it will still leave the volunteers here for a bit longer in the event they're needed.

We're safe. It's cooler, there were even a few drops of rain half an hour ago. I left the beach towels on the clothes line though, they'll get drier rather than wetter despite any moisture.

The death toll - I've stopped looking. The news breaks on TV say it's up in the 130s now and they still haven't got in to check out a number of towns still cut off. The man I mentioned before who was being interviewed on TV earlier this morning, who wanted to be allowed to drive in to find his wife but the police wouldn't let him - they said that his neighbour came in to the refuge and it didn't look good, the house is gone. So unless his wife and kids managed to get away and find shelter... which is unlikely, because he was talking on the phone to her and she said the fire was just about on top of them then the phone went dead.
There are so many stories like this. They'll have a follow-up on this story in the morning, but we'll be on the road by then, difficult child 3 has a session in the city at school tomorrow. There's a TV reporter whose wife and kids were at home, he was trying to get through to them. Then he couldn't get any contact. But thankfully, he found her.
He said the police wouldn't let him through, because "...if you go through, you could be the subject of a coronial enquiry." His house is gone, his wife said it sounded like a bomb going off. She sheltered in the farm dam.

The evidence is also being meticulously collected, to nail the arsonists. They're not kidding, about treating the entire area as a crime scene. They will use footage of the fires, photos, every image they have, to get every bit of data on the patterns of the fires and the seat of them and how the developed. They then use this to identify the source. From there they will examine the movements of people in the area - every person in the shelters, either statically there or coming or going, is recorded, nubered, identified and all of it verified asmuch as possible by either personal ID (if they've got it) or friends/neighbours vouching for them (if there are no papers). We went through the same procedure in '94. All of the survivor/refugee documents will be used by the police to vouch for where people were and when. We don't have the death penalty, although Victoria was the last state to have it. They'll never bring it back in, they wouldn't be able to make it retrospective anyway, but if/when they catch someone, he'd better go into protective custody...

The army is now in there, helping to get supplies in there, to move people around, to set up and support in so many areas.

I can't escape the TV news - but at least they're trying to give us some positive survival stories now. They're just showing a husband and wife now, who have just found out that their children are alive after all.

The NSW fires - thanks to the cool change last night, plus the cooler weather, the Peats Ridge fire is now controlled. They were able to successfully backburn in the cooler, still air. However, the fire is not out so peopleneed to be careful.

Humidity is high, the smoke pollution is dangerously high (although we're fine here, no smoke).

So again I stress - we are in perhaps the safest place. Yes, we are surrounded by bushland, but if it didn't get us in '94, it certainly won't now. And there are no fires anywhere in our neck of the woods. But officials are not taking chances - the Total Fire Ban signs are still up.

The floods in Queensland - a five-year-old kid was near the river and followed his dog into the river, and hasn't been seen since. His brother saw a croc nearby, they're fairly certain the croc got him. The floodwaters have dropped another metre, but many places are still isolated, thousands of people are still cut off without supplies. It's still wet season, more rain is on the way. What a pity we can't ship that rain down to Victoria! Or NSW, we'd like some of it too.

Marg
 

gcvmom

Here we go again!
Absolutely HORRIFIC. Our news here is reporting 130 confirmed dead, at least 750 homes destroyed. My heart goes out to you all...
 

Marg's Man

Member
This poem, written for an English readership is 105 years old but still rings true with many Australians. There are few Aussies who cannot recite the second verse from memory.

It sums up the love/hate attitude of the people going through the fires even now.

My Country



The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.


Marg's Man
 

mstang67chic

Going Green
It's 8:09pm right now and I haven't had the TV on since this morning so I'm hoping things are at least a little more under control. Just wanted to let you know I was thinking of you. I just can't imagine the devastation of lives and homes. Hope you all stay safe and these fires are out soon.

HUGS.
 

Marg's Man

Member
I am so PROUD to be Australian. The assistance pouring in to help the fire victims is so typical of the Australian "help your mates" attitude.

THE best source of up to date news is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation news website (Australia's answer to the BBC). When Marg & I talk of the ABC, this is the organisation we mean.

The people of North Queensland are suffering through devastating floods but they are putting their own problems aside to help the victims of the Victorian bushfires.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/10/2487237.htm

Money is pouring in, a tiny fraction of what they will need but more will keep coming. ABC radio said this morning that the Red Cross' special appeal had raised $2 million overnight, other collection agencies and banks are getting more. They don't want material help yet; cash is the immediate need.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/09/2486666.htm

Our bushfire firefighters go to the US most years especially when California is in trouble. They seem to planted a lot of gum trees there and eucalyptus forests burn in a different way to pine so the Australian expertise is needed. Now we have heard that US blokes are coming here. They are just waiting a formal request from the Australian Government which they should be getting soon.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/10/2486949.htm

The fires are STILL BURNING, only a great deal of rain will put them out. This link has a photo of the premier of Victoria wearing a bushfire fighter's uniform. He is a junior member of the Rural Fire Service, so he is entitled to wear one of the most honoured uniforms in this country.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/09/2486760.htm
I just checked another source, as of 40 minutes ago, (it is now 3.15pm 10 Feb 2009) the Bunyip Ridge area was under ember attack. Ember attack is a blizzard of fine burning particles that blow around like snowflakes; snowflakes capable of starting a new fire...

Marg and I have been through fires of similar ferocity (but on a MUCH smaller scale) twice in the last fifteen years. She was actually pregnant with difficult child 3 when they (our eldest three and Marg) were evacuated from our village by boat. I was cut off from them by fire across the road and cops telling me village was gone. I later learnt that he meant everyone had been got out. We got back together when I went to the marina the evacuation boats were coming into. We could not get home for three days.

I wonder, if all you can see from horizon to horizon is a wall of flame, does it really matter whether the flames continue another 20 km or another 200 km? Those Martian skies, with no blue at all, are chilling when you know what they mean.

We can relate well to the people of of Victoria. When it was all over here there were whole towns in PTSD. How are we going to cope with a whole STATE in PTSD?

Marg's Man
 

Steely

Active Member
This is mind numbingly horrible.
It is the hot topic amongst America Press right now, which means a lot I hope in terms of our support to help you guys fight these fires.

Please keep us updated - and you will be in our prayers and thoughts.
 

Marguerite

Active Member
People are moving back into some areas. Other areas still havne't been cleared by police and emergency services. Some idiots are still lighting fires - police have a description of a car and two men in the Beechworth area. They will get them. Beechworth is quite a big town for a country area. It's bigger than our village. A lot of the places that have gone, are a lot bigger than our village. Some are smaller.

Some towns are still blocked by crime scene tape and they know there are bodies in there. Eighty people are still missing. It is hoped that perhaps they are in their own (intact) homes or perhaps roughing it in the ashes, but unable to get in touch due to power and phoones being out. There are some amazing survival stories - one girl jumped down a wombat hole and stayed there safely while the fire went over the top. There have been cases of parents believing the children were dead, and vice versa, but after days and days, finally meeting up at evac centres. The careful registers being kept of who is where, and their movements, is helping people find one another. Listening to kids talking about how many classmates they've lost, or relatives... sad.

The winds are due to shift in the next day or so. The continuing existence of firebugs is a worry (understatement!) but with the amount of police on the ground, plus the degree of careful reporting of people's movements, it will be difficultfor firebugs to get away with it. it's sheer bravado and arrogance that leads them to do it - defiance and "catch me if you can" attitudes, plus I've seen it before - when there is a fire emergency and it begins to get under control, these people want another adrenalin rush and try to push things back to the previous level of organised panic. Sometimes it is people in authority doing this - we've often had firebugs in the fire services. That is actually the first place the police look.

There has also been some "reports of attempted looting" which tells me that the police caught some people in areas they had no right to be, with possessions they couldn't explain (possibly caught in the act). From what we've seen, there really isn't much worth looting.

Current death toll - 181, with 80 still missing. Of the people in hospital, some will die. We already know this. Five thousand people are homeless.

A vast amount of support is flooding in. The first wave of support was clothing and food. Now it's money, to buy more specific items. The army has taken on housing and is looking after people, putting them up in tents and ensuring that they have bedding as well. There are scammers trying to cash in on this, but people are being warned to stick to the big name groups (such as Red Cross) and double-check the group is genuine by calling back or checking the website.

From husband's & my experience, the people who pitch in and help are often very close to the disaster themselves. When we were billetted, we went home after three days and a day later, the wind turned and went for the homes of places where we had been previously housed. And we couldn't return the favour because the roads in and out of our area were still restricted.

It will take months to get people housed and resettled. Months to identify a lot of the bodies - they're having to use DNA in a lot of cases. Months to sift through the evidence. Each surviving family has been assigned a caseworker to help them plan where to go now. One suggestion is that all rebuilt houses will require a fire shelter on site. I don't know how serious that one will be.

For now, fingers are crossed that the expected return to hot weather and high winds will not make things bad again. There is still a lot of Victoria left unburned. Sixty fires are still burning, they're just too big to put out. Some big firefronts are possibly going to join up. Where the fires have already gone through, the place is still dangerous because of falling trees. I remember after '94 fires, about six months later, there was a strong winter wind one day while people were driving through the bush road to go to work, and a branch blew off a tree through a car window and impaled a driver. He lived long enough to get the car stopped and thereby saved his passenger and other drivers on the road. There is still so much than can go wrong.

This is all the part of Australia where difficult child 1 & daughter in law went for their honeymoon. They were further out in the country; these fires are moving around the outskirts of Melbourne now, round to the east. The wind is picking up from the south and the firies are all planning with weather conditions and fire fronts in mind, putting in firebreaks to the best of their ability. A lot of the area is inaccessible and they have to get rest some time. Some areas can only get the choppers in.

We'll get there, but it's going to take time.

Marg
 

klmno

Active Member
It's a horrid nightmare. I've been catching bits and pieces of the news and they update about the death toll and so forth. It's very sad- I am glad you and your family are safe though. It is a shame to think of the years it will take to try to get things put back together- I really feel for the people who have lost everything.
 
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