Doug, yes, there are fires in the Hawkesbury region. The Sydney
Morning Herald (http://www.smh.com.au/) has pretty full coverage, and
maps of where the fires are.
Again, no one (human) yet has been killed, though thousands of people
have now been evacuated. I think that the reason no one has been
killed is because people here are familiar with the drill, especially
if they live in forest regions.
The fires are so bad because of the weather conditions, which fan
them: humidity in the past two days was down to 5 per cent, with
strong winds and high temperatures. Also people have had problems
with water pressure. And criticism is growing that the State's fire
prevention program (burning off and so on to reduce vegetation which
could provide fuel) has been inadequate, because of funding cuts to
forest management, which is a major reason that the fires are so
severe: and that the government is using arsonists to deflect public
anger.
The wind has changed and the temperature has dropped, and perhaps
they'll be able to get the fires better under control in the next few
days. The thing about Sydney is that there are a large number of
public parks which have national forests right in the middle of the
suburbs, which is where the fires are burning, and why they are so
alarmingly close to the CBD. Amazingly few houses have burned down,
considering the acreage and frontage of the fires.
I was raised like many Australians being aware of bushfires, of the
dangers and precautions during bushfire season and of the procedures
to follow in case one comes this way. These fires are hardly
unprecedented: as I said, there were the Ash Wednesday fires in
Melbourne in the 1980s, in which people _were_ killed and large
number of houses burned. And Black Friday in the 1930s, in which
most of Victoria was ablaze. I remember a guy telling me about a
fire in the Centre which burned for months (nobody bothered to fight
it because it wasn't near anywhere important). The people who are
most at risk are the fire fighters, largely volunteers: sometimes the
fires are so unpredictable that they get caught in a firestorm when
the wind whips around.
If "terrorism" is not a non-word, something I'd vigorously dispute,
then using it in this context certainly makes it so and is at the
least emotive and alarmist. The fires are fearsome enough without it.
Best
Alison
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