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We are lucky enough not to be directly impacted by any of the many fires that are currently around our whole country but it is difficult not to be emotionally affected when we see the strength of the fires and the devastation they have caused to people and their homes, land, forests and creatures including native animals, stock and family pets. It is a possibility that we have many species of flora and fauna that have been lost in the fires that are now extinct. The positive aspect of this situation is the way Australians show their best qualities in the most difficult situations particularly our emergency service organisations in this case particularly our firies a lot of whom are volunteers who take time of work and lose wages to help out in any way they can. This often entails time away from their families and homes, sleeping out in rough conditions and working long hours all because they care, it is pretty difficult to find the words that adequately thank them for their service. It is also great to see so many people and organisations collecting items and money to send to the people impacted by the fires, this also takes lots of co-ordination to make sure there are enough of the required items and not too many of the things that are not needed, I believe the Salvation Army are regulating this as much as they can.
The downside of our current situation is the blaming that is going on which is of no value whatsoever and can also be quite damaging. Our priority at the moment should be trying to stop the spread of the fires and also to commence discussions around how to make sure this never happens again if we lose momentum now while the fires are still raging it stands the chance of being swept under the carpet again with token actions like we experienced after Black Saturday. Time to listen to the experts, let's have an open discussion between representatives from the disaster management committee, Indigenous groups, farmers, forest management groups and conservation groups.
My final comment is around how fickle we are as a nation, there is lots of hate talk around about our greenies and how these fires are their fault. I am not a fan of the greens myself and don't agree with a lot of the policies they come out with but I wouldn't mind betting a silver dollar that the heroes we were celebrating weeks ago, a lot of whom were children, for their climate change beliefs and marches in the city would have been made up of a percentage of greenies and where do we place Greta Thunberg in this area. I think we sometimes forget there are two sides, at least, to every story and unless we are willing to listen to all sides and compromise with others in ten years time we are going to be facing this catastrophe all over again.
