Default mood is sad.
Victoria is burning.
I assume most of you know this already, as the news and stats are being passed around quite vigorously. Over 750 homes destroyed, 3700+ homeless and with the death toll expected to pass 230. As I write this the confirmed death toll is 173, however for the last few days this has been increasing just about every time I turn on the radio or update ninemsn.
I’m safe. My house is safe. I’m a long way from the (serious) fires, though there have been small fires as close as a few hundred meters from my place. There is so much fuel on the hill I live on. We’re a cigarette butt away from being the next casualties-if not this year, next year. On Saturday I stayed up watching the lightning strike a few kilometers from the house and waited to see flames.
ABC radio has been doing constant coverage. The news is bad, but the radio is worse. There is so much horror. I’m not even on the ground there and the things I’ve heard have left me in shock and mourning. There are friends I can not contact from towns that now don’t exist. There are people I know who have lost homes.
There have been stories about a father who put his kids in the car, ran back into the house and came out to find the car on fire and his children burning alive. A man who tried to stay and defend his house but decided to leave when he saw cows burning alive in the paddock beside his house. A man in a wheelchair was unable to flee his house in Bendigo. A woman was fighting spot fires in her yard and turned around to find her house on fire-her two children died inside. Burnt and blind livestock is everywhere. Thousands and thousands of hectares of wildlife is dead and burnt out.
I am so gutted by this, I can’t even imagine what it must be like for the people involved.
My mother and I had already been having talks about moving. The southern half of Australia is going to keep getting hotter due to global warming. Its possible bushfires like this could happen again-as soon as next year. So on Saturday we started packing. We sat down, decided where we were going and started searching for places to rent there. I expect to be out of Victoria by the end of April-however between packing and moving, you won’t see much of me online at all.
On a writing related note, the novel I have been obsessed with an in love with for the past month centers around bushfires. I think about it now and wonder if or when I will be able to face that topic again. I’m on another temporary writing hiatus, at least until the idea of writing about fires doesn’t make me physically nauseous.