I took several large sacks of clothing to donate today; one of the Major Charities involved in the relief effort said “We’re not taking clothes; they’re too hard to send down. You can make a monetary donation if you’d like, though” but the Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul were extremely grateful for the clothing donation and thanked me profusely for it.
The clothes will certainly do more good with them than they will sitting unworn in our drawers or wardrobe…
This Friday the 13th all Coles supermarkets will be donating all profits to the bushfire relief. We normally shop at Safeway but will be making a special trip to Coles this time.
If you’re able to donate money it’s worth checking with your employer whether they do donation-matching. For every $1 we donate my husband’s company will donate $2. His company also had a blood drive but apparently the Red Cross don’t need any more blood at the moment since people have been donating blood in droves.
I donated some baby clothes, including some new stuff that was outgrown before it was worn, and the Salvos took them but told me they’d rather donations of vouchers to Coles and Safeway.
Nice of them to realise that not everyone has money to donate, isn’t it?
I’ve been at the St Andrews community meeting and at the relief centers at St Andrews and Diamond Creek, serving the Kinglake Complex of fires. One thing I’ve been told about is the kids and adults who are really distressed over their lost pets. The residents from here up to Kinglake were allowed back in today. Many were looking for was their pets. Some found their bodies. Others have no idea what happened to them. It is heartbreaking.
I’ve got together with the local vet, who is already treating the wildlife and surviving pets for nothing, but there are urgent needs for pain killers, anesthetics, bandages and so on in the short term, as more pets are found and the wildlife is coming out of the edges of the bush.
But what is really worrying me as well is the long term. There is so much media fuss now, but the trauma will set in over the next few months, when all the media attention has died down. So we have started a fund to make the kids a promise - we will pay for them to choose their own new pet - puppy, kitten - whatever they want. And the fund will cover all the vaccinations, worming, food and allowing the kids to choose baskets, toys and so on. They can get the pet when they are ready, but the counsellors were saying that making the promise is something they can look forward to and plan for.
Hopefully we can put a smile on those terribly sad children’s faces which we are seeing around. Plus it makes me feel much better to be doing something, knowing that we were the lucky ones, saved at the last minute by a wind change which killed so many others.
a koala got a nice drink from a firefighter.
Don’t be sorry, I don’t think it matters that it happened some days before the most serious fires…
I think it matters a great deal, and it is important that it is shown. The present overreaction from the anti-green brigade is that the forests should all be cool burned - some seem to want to clear fell them. I know it is just the aftermath anger. But every time they cool burn the forests, native animals are burnt and die horrible deaths. We choose to live in the bush, and it really distresses me to think people will now try and have the things I love so much - the forests and the animals - destroyed in the vain hope that it will save houses and people who have chosen this way of live.
Fires - controlled and wild - (sometimes the former become the latter) - destroy the wildlife. There needs to be some kind of balance - easy to say, but no idea how to find it.
Fair enough, I hadn’t considered that side of it. Though if done correctly, a certain amount of controlled burning should prevent a larger amount of uncontrolled burning. Although it’s no comfort for the specific animals caught in a controlled burn it may be better on the whole as it would prevent larger scale fires such as the recent ones. Ultimately I think the owner of a house should be able to clear an effective fire break around the house OR not be permitted to build in the first pace. I imagine you’ve seen the story of the chap fined $50,000 for clearing trees around his house who subsequently had his house survive the fires?
{comfort to everyone}
I’ve never heard of anything approaching that level of flammability in a landscape before. I’m shocked.
Lynne’s right (although the correction was due to the fact that I’ve had this clip sent to me as glurge… :checks Outlook: seventeen times in the last three days. People don’t like to be corrected on their glurge).
That being said, fire’s a normal state of being in Australia. Trees have evolved to burn quickly and hot and recover - some of the wattles even require it as part of their seeding cycle. If people want to build in the bush (or invite the bush into their areas), part of that process is accepting that you’re going to be subject to those processes.
The weird thing is how many people are surprised by this (witness the reaction to the Western Canberra fires in 2003 or Sydney’s in '94 and '01).
If you want your home among the gum trees, it’s appropriate to clear a lot of land and still expect that it’s likely to burn down every couple of decades or so. Many councils don’t want to permit people to buy blocks of bush and then clear the land for 30-50m around a house. I’m not convinced that breaking the law to clear the land is the appropriate response.
I agree with you say, BigNik - we choose to live here and know the normal risks. We were not prepared for the sort of fire which happened last Saturday, so that will require a very solid rethink. But the issues of green versus unrestricted clearing are very divisive in areas like this, so I think they need to be left for a few weeks at least so those divisions, and the blame game, can be put aside and everyone works together to get people’s lives back on track. There has been some anger along those lines at the community meetings.
Us very green types will have to reconsider our policy, although I had never heard of rules against trees next to houses before, and I live in Nillumbik, the shire copping most of the criticism. That isn’t to say they aren’t in place. I haven’t heard about the $50,000 fine guy, 1920s Style "Death Ray, but would like to know about it. The problem with clearing 50m around a house is that is 100 m diameter circle - huge - and you have just broken up all the corridors for the wildlife which many of us feel are critical and are the very reason we purchased this property initially. We wanted to be part of the corridor and preserve it. So people are threatening the very basis of my way of life and choices. In my rational moments, which are returning, I concede that I must reassess the beliefs I have about leaving the bush as natural as possible. But then I hear the slash and burners on the radio, and immediately become defensive to try and protect what little is left of natural habitat.
50 m radius around the house is effectively clear felling our 18 acres. I couldn’t bear to live in such a vast open space. The neighbor does the same. The bush is gone. That means living in the middle of a desert - it is too dry for grass and there is no water for irrigation. The only thing which holds the thin top soil here is the trees. But we will certainly be looking at the trees near the house - we have none particularly close.
I hope there will be some balance. Those who want 50 m clearance, are better off living in a farming community or the city. There is no reason to live in the bush if you really don’t want to be within sight of the bush. So the extremists on both sides need to wait until the people who have lost so much are resettled, and then try to be much more rational than they are being today. When I hear the ‘50 metres mandatory around houses’ (I know that isn’t what you were saying, BigNik, I am quoting talkback callers this morning), I get really stressed as I look out of the window and see that they want to raze all the plants I love so much to the ground. There goes my 'roos and wallabies, possums, all the birds - I know them as individuals - they make my life so good. Some were advocating a 1 km clearance around all towns.
I just want the lifestyle I had a week ago. and will never have again.
I’m not saying that clear-felling and mowing for 50m all around is a good idea - much less the right idea. I don’t. It’s just that it’s what’s generally accepted as what’s necessary to eliminate the risk that your place will go in the next big one.
The $50,000 fine guy was on both the SMH and Age’s websites this morning. You can probably find it with minimal searching. It’s not an irrational decision.
People have said that a 30m radius is good enough, but a number of places in the current fire were this far from the treeline and got lit up by embers.
My mother who lives on NSW’s Central Coast has trees up to the house, but bought a sprinkler system for the roof as a counter-fire measure. Considering that her gutters are full of branches and leaves, I can’t imagine that it’ll be all that much use.
The rational answer is to treat your house as unfortunately expendable - insure it, update the insurance every couple of years to make sure that it’ll cover a full rebuilding, and then in an emergency be prepared to leave it and all its contents behind. Keep your irreplaceable items (copies of photos, important documents that you never use but need to have, etc. as well as a copy of your ID like an expired driver’s licence or your passport) in a safety deposit box in Melbourne.
It’s worth noting that although the winds, heat and dryness made it ineffectual this time around, if you know what you’re doing “stay and fight” is typically a valid option. Where people usually get caught in a bushfire is because they haven’t known what they’re doing when they stay and fight, abandon the house when it’s already ablaze (or close to it) and get cooked on the way to or in their car. If you prepare properly and evacuate ASAP, you might waste a day each season when you unnecessarily abandon ship, but you’ll live and you can come back.
If you want to live in the bush, there are some realities that come along with that. But if you do enough planning, and you’re willing to live with the costs that come along with it, you shouldn’t have to sacrifice the things that brought you bush in the first place.
That said, your neighbours may not want to take the same precautions.
You would think if they can build working bomb shelters they could build a serviceable fire shelter underground. For a price of course.
One guy did. He rode it out and I think that he brought in another family as well.
That said, the reason for people to stay is typically to protect the house, which is a full-time job. Hosing out embers, watering the eaves and so forth. If you’re not going to do that, you’re better to evacuate at the first opportunity than to stay in a shelter.
And for crying out loud, at least evacuate your kids.
But again, staying and fighting - if you know what you’re doing - has historically proven a pretty good tactic. The problems creep in where people don’t know what they’re doing and make a hash of it or try to change their mind at the last minute.
This fire was exceptional in that it also took people who did seem to know what they were doing, and it’s leading to a major review of policy in these situations, potentially making evacuation mandatory.
Yes it’s too soon to have a rational debate about this. It need not be so divisive though, I’m confident there is a way to manage the land so that both parties are catered for. There must be a large middle ground here, the country is not divided between greens and anti-greens.
They must have a large property as he claims he left thousands of trees standing, so it’s a different situation from what you’re thinking of with closer communities effectively clearing a town of all trees.
Edit: Significantly, although he cleared up to 100m from his house, he still had to fight for it when the fire came. It gives no guarantees.
I don’t think wholesale destruction is the answer either, it seems as useful as going out and killing sharks after a shark attack. As you say, the debate can only be had properly once the dust has settled and the emotions have died down. There is talk of making a fire bunker mandatory in each house at a cost of about $20,000 which seems reasonable.
They’ve caught and charged someone over one of the fires that killed at least 21 people. If he’s guilty, he’s going to be off to Supermax for a few decades. They’ve charged him with possession of kiddie porn, too - is it just me or are a lot of people who are done for something major seeming to be charged with kiddie porn these days?
He didn’t appear in court today because he was “in a fragile mental state”. I’m not bloody surprised.
Otherwise, I’m often stunned when my opinion of A Current Affair and Today Tonight sinks a little lower. I always think that I hold them in the most extreme contempt, and then they sink a bit lower. Tonight they had were intermixing the misery porn that make their names on with a hearty slap on the back for what great guys they are for helping out so much.
I agree with almost everything said above. We are looking at a bunker, and I think that is something which needs to be looked at very seriously. There are reports of one family dying in their bunker because of heat and air loss. There is the guy at Kinglake whose bunker was set against his massive concrete water tank - seems like the clever thing to do and what we are considering when the smoke clears. Literally. It’s horribly smoky here at the moment! We need urgent information on bunker design, but I am sure that will be available pretty quickly.
The $50,000 guy is a different issue, I suspect. Areas like this are zoned as bush for two reasons other than ones about nice places to live. The ‘green wedge’, a wedge of regulated greenery going in towards the city from where we live, is considered ‘the lungs of Melbourne’, and is granted as one of the reasons Melbourne’s air quality is so high. It is also part of widespread catchment areas, protecting the purity of Melbourne’s water supplies - Sugarloaf, Yan Yean and Tourorong dams. Then there’s O’Shannassy, Maroondah and so on over towards Healesville (please allow for the fact that I am geographically challenged). Much of the forest area which burnt is part of that catchment area. Some people buy into a known restricted zone and then clear mass acreage - this guy did 40 acres. They then claim it was for fire zone and cop the fine, having then got away with getting an open area in an area which is lovely all around due to others sticking to the laws. Many of the laws are to protect air and water quality, which are part of the reason Melbourne constantly rates as one of the most livable cities in the world.
Frankly, I couldn’t stand to live in something as sterile as what he has created. The argument is - if you want to live in a paddock, then buy open land. Why on earth would he buy zoned bush land? I think he deserved every bit of that fine. It’s very different to the claims I am hearing of the shire not allowing people to take out trees overreaching their roofs or within reach of falling on the house. That, if it is the case, and I suspect it may be, needs urgent review. I am going to have to back down on my love of every single tree and every bird in them!
Lynne-42 you seem to have a lovely home with immense pride in the wildlife. I envy you- I live in inner city and plant so many native trees for he wildlife but that of course is nothing compared to what you would have.