On the Saturday none of us in Victoria will ever forget, I decided to do the dishes, despite the 46.4°C heat and no air conditioning. My wife and daughter had wisely gone to the movies, to see Slumdog Millionaire. It was five in the afternoon and with a fan stationed on the counter behind my back I worked through the task. Some ten minutes later I went to the laundry to fetch the rinsing basin and noticed that the temperature guage affixed to the window now registered a mere 37°. The cool change had come! I opened the back door and cheered. I opened the front door and basked in the relative coolness of what normally is an intolerable heat. A neighbour across the street was out as well; we waved to each other and raised two arms, a victory sign indicating we’d come through the hottest day in Melbourne’s history.

My wife and daughter arrived home a little later and the three of us sat on the back verandah, basking in the cool southeasterly breeze that had routed the northwesterly and its dry heat. I drank an ice cold Ukranian beer and loved every drop.

Knowing the hot day was approaching we had wisely booked into a local restaurant we knew had good air conditioning. We ate our dinner — Spaghetti Marinara, Calimari Fritti and Spaghetti Napolitana — in a full house, cool and relieved and deeply thankful that the cool change had saved us from baking all night in our stifling house.

We had no idea that while we were joking with the people at the next table about the gigantic serves of sumptuous desserts, the cool change we had all cheered was responsible for turning the gale force winds around so that hundreds of people in Kinglake, Flowerdale, Strathewen, Humevale, St Andrews, Steels Creek, Marysville, Churchill, Labertouche, Callignee, and many other hamlets who previously had felt safe, were at that moment being burnt alive, literally vaporized, in a fire storm that has been likened to the fire bombing of Dresden and the equivalent of 650 of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima.

It wasn’t until the following day, when we heard the morning news and that evening sat stricken in front of the television watching reports of the carnage, that the true horror of the conflagration emerged. The days since have produced harrowing coverage with heartbreaking photos of entire families lost in the fire that roared through without warning. The conditions were unprecedented. No rain in January and very little before that. Four days of above 43° heat the week before. And after a few days of cooler weather, the predicted record-breaking heat on that Saturday, the 7th of February, which eventually produced the worst natural disaster in Australia’s history.

One of my wife’s colleagues lost her house, but managed to drive herself and her two children down the mountain to safety. It was to be over twenty-four hours before she learned that her husband, who had remained behind to fight the fire, was still alive. Two friends of another colleague were killed. The boyfriend of one of my daughter’s closest friends lost an aunt and uncle and their children. Here in Melbourne, the six degrees of separation have been reduced to two.

The stories of some of the survivors show just how quickly it all happened, without warning. A man in Marysville (where it is estimated that one hundred of the 519 residents perished) said he and his family were sitting down to dinner at 5:30 PM. The radio had reported the fires to be far enough away to remain alert but that evacuation plans were not yet necessary. By six PM, a mere half hour later, he and his wife and two children were running for their lives, without even enough time to grab wallets and purses.

Kinglake survivors reported the same instantaneous attack by walls of flame that moments before were nonexistent. In both towns, there was only one road in and out. Both roads were later littered with burnt out cars, many with charred bodies still inside.

As of this writing, 181 are confirmed dead, with the figure likely to reach 300.

It is impossible to comprehend the horror of the people who died, people who one minute were alive and preparing for a Saturday night of fun or relaxation, and the next minute were huddled together or alone, calling or texting goodbyes to friends and families elsewhere, as the heat sucked the oxygen from their lungs and the fire turned them into ashes, some burnt so badly that they will never be properly identified.

It is even more difficult to comprehend the horror of the survivors, people who have lost members of their family, their close friends, and their homes. People who while escaping, heard the screams of the trapped, the bellowing of burning animals. People who experienced such fear that post traumatic stress will define their lives for years to come, if not forever.

This catastrophe is perhaps the worst kind: the event that comes without warning. It emphasizes the fragility, the impermanence of life. We never know what the next minute has in store for us. If we could all remain aware of this, our selfishness and greed and hate would largely disappear. Because that is exactly what has happened in the aftermath. The generosity of Australians coming to the aid of the victims is almost Biblical. Where politics tends to divide us, tragedy unites us.

For many of the survivors and the rest of us, there is a feeling of guilt — well known among Holocaust survivors — at having been spared. I myself have become almost ill watching with despair the daily reports in the media. But I have also felt unable to turn away, as if doing so would reduce my solidarity with the victims. In the lottery of life, I could have easily been one of them, just as they could easily be safe in their own home, like me.

The future of the planet depends on every one of us comprehending life’s impermanence. We are truly all in this together.

Technorati Tags: Australia, fire, Melbourne, Victoria

Blog Tags: Australia, fire, Melbourne, Victoria