blamebrampton: 15th century woodcut of a hound (Default)
blamebrampton ([personal profile] blamebrampton) wrote2009-02-10 06:58 pm

Much as it pains me to take issue with The Times ...

It seems incomprehensible to some media commentators that over 181 people could die in fires in Australia. They have been casting about, trying to place blame, saying that things were done poorly, done wrong.

This is not true. What is true is that the right things to do, the things that kept you alive in every other year, every other fire, are now no longer necessarily right.

Everyone who lives through an Australian summer has some experience of bushfire, even if it is only red-blazing sunsets in smoke-filled skies. The trees explode on the hot summer days, and half the flora is designed to regenerate after burning.

There are rules. You choose whether you will leave early or stay and fight. If you're leaving, you pack your papers and photos, grab the kids and pets, make sure you have water and towels or blankets in the car in case the worst happens, and you leave before or when you see the smoke. Lock the house and tell the fire brigade where it is. They'll do what they can.

Stick to the main roads, drive steadily, obey the police or the fierys, pick up pedestrians if you need to. When you get to the evacuation centre, give your names and details, call your friends. Let the officials know if you move on.

If you stay, you fill everything you can inside the house with water. You wet everything you can outside. Clear all debris from around the house (you should have done this weeks ago). Use a tractor if you have one. Fuck the garden, you can replant. Bring in the pets. Have the car nearby, have the keys in your pocket. Have your backpacks of things each of you really need ready to go. Do what you can for the horses. If the flames are small and slow, you can stay outside and keep hosing. If they're fast and large, go in. Close everything. Put wet towels around every gap, have a ladder near the roof access. Stay down, keep the kids together; the bathroom is a good place, it's cool and strong and you can sit them in the bath. If you see flames coming inside and can wet them, do so. Wait till the front passes.

This is what you do in a normal fire. This is what you have time to do in a normal fire.

When it passes, you run around the house and put out the flames that are starting inside. You climb into the roof cavity and wet down any hot spots. You go outside and use your generator to pump water from the tanks, or the pool or the dam to hose down the roof and the property. If the house is too well alight, you leave it. You grab the kids, pets and packs and you climb into the car and drive away. The car is usually all right; it's the embers blown by the wind that have set fire to the house. You can often drive out through the burnt region, there's nothing left for the fire there anymore. Your tires may be a bit fucked-up by the hot tarmac, but it doesn't matter, you'll get to the country fire authority, or the town, or the sports oval.

This is what happens normally.

You stand around with the CFA and the SES and the Parks service and every other firefighter, and you shake hands and you say thanks, or bad luck, and you pitch in if your house is standing and your neighbour's isn't, and you see about handing out sausage sandwiches and cups of bad coffee and good tea. The CWA ladies bring cakes and fruit and toys for the little ones and make sure the fierys all have a good feed and get some sleep. The McDonald's managers and the local takeaway owners bring trays of juice and water and burgers and sandwiches, the pub brings beer by the slab.

Every year, it happens. Houses burn, livestock are lost, and people turn to each other and say that it sounded like a train, that the fire moved as fast as they could run. That they lost the house but the kids are okay. It's horrible, but it's normal.

None of this is normal.

This fire moved faster than any car, twice as fast in some places. The noise was like a jet engine, they say, and the oxygen was sucked from the air leaving people sheltering inside gasping desperately as the front passed. The weather had stood above 40 for a week, the air was crisp and the vegetation bone dry. On the day the fires swept through it was 46 in Victoria.

It's never 46. Never. Not till now. The records were shattered by several degrees.

The radiant heat has been described as like Dresden. Houses were exploding into flame ahead of the firefront. While normal ember attacks give you a decent length of time for the house to stand before it is unsalvageable (the eaves and under the house start smouldering, small fires begin, but it's usually after the front has past that the house really catches light), this time large properties were gone in minutes. Normally the embers strike when the fire is up to a kilometre away, this time it was many times that.

Some people trying to escape died of dehydration before the fire reached them. Others who escaped the flames had skin crisped from their bodies as they ran well ahead or away. Some lived, and are in hospital fighting for their lives now. Cars have turned into makeshift crematoria, sometimes beside trees that are scorched from heat but not burned.

There were warnings where there could be warnings. All day the ABC and the local stations kept as far ahead of the fire as they could, but for Kinglake and some other towns, the fire moved faster than the news. The brigades were mostly fighting established fronts, trying to keep them from residential areas. The new fronts took them by surprise, many coming from nothing, possibly from arsonists.

I know that it is human to look for blame. I know that there are many who are angry and who wish to say that something or someone failed. But for the most part, no one failed. It was impossible to succeed.

There are systems. This country is used to fire and plans accordingly. The fire danger is rated from 1 to 100, so the authorities know how prepared they need to be, how many crews they need in place. On Saturday in Victoria, it was 320. More than three times worse than the experienced authorities had imagined they would ever need to prepare for. There was no way that people could deal with those flames.

And still they went out and did what they could. When I worked for the parks service in NSW I helped in two safe areas of two comparatively piddling fires. I was scared to the bones, and I am someone who keeps her head in a crisis. The sheer mental toughness of everyone who went up against those fires cannot be overstated.

So if your news service starts with the question 'what went wrong' and answers it with anything other than 'nature is a fucking bitch in Australia', please tell them to piss off in your best Hugh Jackman tones.

The lovely and admirable Ms Quentin Bryce, Governor-General of Australia has just made a gentle and compassionate plea to the nation to help where they can. In the far north of Queensland, people who have lost everything but the house in severe floods (because Australian nature s a fucking bitch with a truly twisted sense of humour) have been donating part of their emergency payments to the fire victims. The continent may be a place of horror, but the Australian people have genuine grace.

Thank you so much to everyone who has reached into their pockets to help people and animals recover from this disaster. The Australian Red Cross will take any donation from A$5 up. That's essentially a coffee.

During the writing of this post, the number at the start of this post has gone up. The police say that it will go up more.

[identity profile] realmotk.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 05:19 am (UTC)(link)
BUT BUT BUT THE GREENIES

Someone plpease put Miranda Devine back in her box.

[identity profile] liadlaith.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 08:19 am (UTC)(link)
Oh fuck yes.

[identity profile] lyras.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 10:34 am (UTC)(link)
Here via [livejournal.com profile] parthenia14, and thank you. For the past few days, I have been sitting in my safe little apartment in Sydney and watching the horrifying events unfold. Someone not in Australia said to me, "they live there knowing the risks; they make that choice," and I wanted to slap them.

This is nothing like anything else, nothing like any other fire, nothing like the usual weather, and I wish the overseas media could understand that.

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 11:13 am (UTC)(link)
You're v welcome. The smh has been good, theage.com.au has more info and, oddly (since they are often rubbish), news.com.au has had some excellent coverage. Thanks for your thoughts and care for the Victorians.

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 11:28 am (UTC)(link)
Thanks for the extra linkage!

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 11:32 am (UTC)(link)
Thanks, love. It's all still fairly staggering. All of my friends were lucky; one shed lost out the people I am actually close to, an insured house lost to friends of friends. I literally cannot imagine what it was like for people who were there.

And I am feeling a bit guilty about saying such cruel things re Mr Brown ...

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 11:38 am (UTC)(link)
You're very welcome. I had to stop replying to comments yesterday because I was growing too miserable thinking about things.

Climate change is definitely a major causal factor. I read an article today about a man who thinks he should have his fine for illegal land clearing refunded to him, because his house survived. All I could think was that his sort of attitude was the sort that lowers rain in regions and groundwater in the soil. Everyone knows that trees bring rain ... I think I have to stop reading the paper for a few days ...

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 11:41 am (UTC)(link)
You're wholly welcome, I just wanted to make it a little clearer and to get the news out a little further. And you're quite right about the analogy. This fire was like a major earthquake, sudden and devastating.
tree_and_leaf: Watercolour of barn owl perched on post. (Default)

[personal profile] tree_and_leaf 2009-02-12 11:49 am (UTC)(link)
That's just terrifying - I haven't been able to picture what the fires are like, but this has helped. It's unimaginably horrible and difficult to process.

(Here from [livejournal.com profile] sweet_adelheid's link, by the way.)

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 11:56 am (UTC)(link)
Thanks for your kindness and compassion. Money is not the only thing that helps, your support of jamie is a real gift, and keeps her strong to do the amazing work she is up to down there.

I hope that things work out with you, I know that your country is facing a crisis that is far broader in scope than this one, if not as immediately horrifying. We are all thinking of you, too

It seems that at least one of the fatal fires was started by arson, and another is thought very suspicious. The police are being very cautious in their pronouncements, but it does not look as though the news will be good. And yes, of course you can friend me, but I should warn you that it's usually Harry Potter slash, bad language, ranting and book reviews here.

XXX BB

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 11:58 am (UTC)(link)
Of course, what I actually want to do is to hunt down some of my colleagues and kick them, but that sort of thing is frowned upon.

I have this dream that even if everyone on my flist can't afford to donate a few dollars, they can all turn to anyone who says 'Oh, what idiots' and say 'Actually ...'

But you can see why I live in the city and don't bushwalk in summer. It's just grim.

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 12:00 pm (UTC)(link)
You're very welcome. I just want more people to have a degree of understanding, rather than Miranda Devine-like responses (and if you have no idea who she is, stay ignorant! She's horrid!)

Every time Christine Nixon warns that there will be more bodies, it seems all the more real and more awful.

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 12:05 pm (UTC)(link)
The locals have been brilliant. There has been understandable frustration that the media is allowed in and they were not, but for the most part they have been wonders every one. And the terrible stoicism of that police chief explaining to the community meeting that he didn't want people walking in to find the bodies of their families and friends ... just heart breaking.

When I wrote this post it was just The Times and a couple of American papers that had begun the 'We point the finger at ...' editorials. Now the Sydney Morning Herald has published Miranda bloody Devine's predictable anti-green diatribe, and I am finding it very hard not to hunt her down and smack her.

But then I think about the people of Kinglake and Marysville, and I think that I should emulate their calm resolve, or at least give them first dibs in the slapping. God knows they deserve any joy we can give them.

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 12:07 pm (UTC)(link)
I agree wholeheartedly with this, and think that it neatly covers the response of most normal people. Sadly, some of my journalistic brethren are twats, but they should just be ignored.

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 12:10 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm fine, 1000km away. Jamie is the only one who could be under threat if the fires leap up again. At the moment there is some rain, but the weekend might be grim. And yes, horrified is the only rational response.

[identity profile] shiv5468.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 12:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Dont' feel guilty. He's still a twat.

He's not responsible for the Gift Aid system

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 12:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Perth's hottest days are probably the best model for what Victoria was like on the weekend. I have read that 48.8 was the state maximum, which is just incredible to me. 12-26 tomorrow in Melbourne, bloody weather.

And you are exactly right, there was nothing that could have prepared them.

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 12:16 pm (UTC)(link)
And it's not really his money that he's donating ...

[identity profile] shiv5468.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 12:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Nope, it's mine. And he only spends it on wars, so its only right I should get some back

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 12:22 pm (UTC)(link)
It's not Yankee ignorance; I would have no hope telling you what is happening in South Carolina at the moment, for example, if your news outlets don't tell you what's happening, then it's hard for you to know.

Thank you so much for your support on your lj! I am way behind, but it is wonderful that you could help to spread the news and ways people could help.

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 12:23 pm (UTC)(link)
I think it is safe to promise faithfully that the people of Victoria will not spend any of your money on IEDs.

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 12:24 pm (UTC)(link)
You're very welcome. It is really hard to understand from outside, and even for those of us who know about Australian fires and have been to that part of Victoria, the speed of the firefront is simply unbelievable.

[identity profile] shiv5468.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 12:26 pm (UTC)(link)
No, it'll be Koalas and people. Which is nice.

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 12:34 pm (UTC)(link)
I swear, every fire it's the koalas and the wombats that break my heart. And it's not as though either of them are actually likeable animals, they're foul-tempered and spitty for the most part and just want to be left alone up their trees or down their holes.

A woman survived the fire by hiding in a wombat hole. I have a vague suspicion the wombat was probably hiding quietly down there with her, and gave her a dignified nod of 'that's all right, you can pop in for the moment, just don't think this makes us friends.'

[identity profile] blamebrampton.livejournal.com 2009-02-12 01:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Please thank irreparable on my behalf for spreading the news. And thank you for the donations, you are very right that there will be more need in a few weeks and months.

My mother is Australian, but I grew up in England and came out to visit. I had never seen anywhere with such space and skies, and I fell in love, and stayed. On its best days, it is a country of surpassing loveliness. Sadly, it has bad days that are just as extreme. I am sure that it will capture your heart if you have the chance to move here. (Though I would say that, as I love Florence and Siena above Rome ;-)

Two of the arsonists are now in custody, there are moves against several others. Things will Be Sorted.

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