February 10, 2009
The state of things
The firestorm in Victoria. Clearly we would not wish such devastation upon ourselves, and seeing it happen so swiftly to others is both terrifying and a wake-up call. Now my first thought is that we should wait a decent period of time before digging into the whys and wherefores, but looking at some footage from the scene my first thought was not the sympathy I “should” have, rather it was “don’t build on top of a ridgeline with forest below, especially so when a prevailing summer wind will drive a fire towards you”. Too late now, but my sadness for those now suffering is tinged with a notion – why do we allow people to take such risks? We’ll have to wait for the analysis to be sure but in some cases it looked like a combination of freakish weather and poorly sited housing. It may be that in such weather no amount of risk mitigation would have helped – but I do hope that some good comes of this tragedy, that we learn from it and take action to avoid repeating any mistakes.
