Under siege

Australia is these days under fire. The high temperatures on record this summer have set up fires all around the South East of the country. The death toll has risen to more than 170 at the time of publishing this and the Government expects more bodies remaining in the ashes.

Human tragedies run along with the ecological loss. Not only for the obvious burnt of trees and bushes, but also for the animal deaths. However, hope sometimes appears in between firefighters’ desperation in the form of a survivor. Like Sam, a koala nationwidely famous after surviving the hell of the fires.

The material losses are of around $2 billion. Australian Government has started to do something by sending the Army to combat the bush fire and promising aid to the affected ones. It is more than what will get the 160 people that died in a fire blast in Kenya. But as almost always happens, it is the Australian people who has been more deeply involved from the beginning.

They were the own Australians the first ones to fight the fires, in the frontline just besides the firefighters and the Army. In a country isolated and used to deal for themselves with their own problems, its people learnt how to solve everything without waiting for the help from the Queen.

Even inter-county solidarity has been a keen example of what should be done. An example provided with some irony: the victims from Queen Island’s floods (after the cyclone Ellie) will donate some of the aid they got for their own reconstruction to the victims of the fires. They could lend them some water as well.

However, the fire continues growing. The high number of deaths and the suspicion of the provocated origin of some of the fires made the Australian executive make of the burnt areas a crime scene, waiting for the test that expert forensics will run in search for evidences. Some prefer not to wait for the evidences and start blaming the offender, with more imagination than wisdom, if I have to say.


Photo via Alex Coppel/News Limited.