OT: Thoughts For Our Friends Down Under

Some fires were deliberately lit. At one stage there were more than

100 separate fires. Of these, perhaps ten at most were the result of arson. The West Bendigo fire, which was believed to be arson, was discovered to have been caused by some idiot throwing their cigarette butt out of their vehicle window, something you frequently see here although it is illegal.

We had the worst heatwave in our history combined with over a month without a drop of rain and gusty winds of 100 km an hour and more. There was a lot of dry fuel because of the rain we had in early December when it was too late to do burning off. We also had a large numer of dry lightning storms. If there had not been numerous fires it would have been astonishing.

Then of course we had total fire bans for a considerable time and it is almost certain some people disobeyed them and accidentally started fires they may not even have been aware of.

The media and the government are all too happy to have most people believe that all the fires were arson because it makes great headlines, discourages people from thinking rationally and distracts attention from the poor organization of our emergency services, the failure of the federal government to pass the necessary legislation to implement the country-wide telephone fire notification service which has been before parliament since 2004, cost cutting on both fire prevention and fire fighting services and the impact of climate change.

I am angry because all this misdirection means that adequate action to reduce the likelihood of such a tragedy happening again is unlikely to be taken.

Thank you for your kind thoughts.

I finally saw film on the news a couple days ago. Just made me want to weep.

Tina