12 months on....

It's hard to believe that it has been 12 months since those devastating fires that hit Victoria. Black Saturday. Mark and I watched the ABC show last night "Into the Firestorm" which recapped the timing of the fire events and the responses (and results) throughout the day. From those events, it is difficult to image that anyone living in even the fringe areas of bush and farmland would not consider fire plans. But sadly, I guess, that is the case.

As members of the CFA, Mark and I both hear from time to time about people who have not got a fire plan, do not know in advance of what they will do and expect someone, somewhere to swoop down and rescue them when the going gets hot. Sometimes, listening to talkback radio gives me the sh*ts, because it is evident that there are people out there that are just itching to lay blame when things do go wrong. I don't for a minute suggest that if negligence or malice is involved, someone should not be held accountable, but there are definately times where things go wrong and are outside of what anyone thought was imaginable or possible. Just listening to the various CFA captains and residents of those fire affected communities bodes this out. Never in their wildest dreams, did they think it could ever have gotten as bad as it did. But it did.

Add onto this, is the fact that those that cop the brunt from the "blame-layers" are in fact the face of the fire agencies. The vast majority of them CFA volunteers. Let me state that again.... VOLUNTEERS. Not necessarily the paid staff of the ones that make the upper management decisions. They are the guys and girls that pick up a line and squirt the wet stuff on the red stuff and hope that they get everything under control ASAP. And in the case of the Marysville crew, they were out trying to save other people's possessions and livelihoods while each and every one of them lost their own houses, possessions, and in one case, much much more.

So what has prompted this diatribe from me? There was an article in the weekend's Age which I received an online copy of. It is a very good article which probably states everything I have said, but in a much more eloquent way. The bottom line; if you want to live in a fire prone area, you need to accept the risks, and these may involve the loss of property and/or life. If you don't want to, or can't, accept these risks, then you need to consider living somewhere else. There simply cannot be guarantees of safety made.

Check out the article by clicking HERE