A couple of days ago it was forecast that today would be the worst for the bushfires burning in various parts of NSW. Hundreds of homes have been lost and yet the worst may be yet to come.
It’s been a quarter of a decade since I moved away from my family home in the lower Blue Mountains but it only takes a bushfire headline for me to relive the fear. And true to Pavlovian theory of classical conditioning, I can still smell the smoke when talk turns to fire. It’s one of the reasons I can never live there again.
To date my parents and siblings haven’t lost a home to bushfire, but all have experienced the fear. Last Thursday my sister received a text message from the local fire service instructing her to evacuate her Mt Riverview home as the blaze that claimed too many Winmalee homes roared down the mountain. My sister and her husband were at work that day. Their 16-year-old daughter was at home alone after school sending panicked texts to her mother about the smoke that was filling up their home with increasing intensity. Thankfully my parents, her grandparents, live five minutes away and were able to collect her faster than her parents could reach her. The fire didn’t make it to their home last Thursday but the fear did.
I was about the same age when most of Lapstone caught fire. My parents’ home backs onto bush which has thankfully been cleared since that fire 30 years ago. But back then we were battling falling embers and the blistering heat from a blaze that literally surrounded our street. I still have visions of my dad out front with the hose doing his best to soak the roof and his many tall trees. He was determined stay and fight for the home that represented everything he had worked for. I recall standing on the balcony and being terrified by an enormous fire blazing through the gulley at the bottom of the street. The air was thick with smoke. The safest place was inside our home.
The fires feel very early this season. For as long as I can remember I have associated bushfires in NSW with Christmas. The Black Christmas bushfires of 2001 got dangerously close to my brother’s former home at the base of the Blue Mountains. As we gathered there for a family lunch to exchange gifts, fire raged around the perimeter of his suburb. Ash blew relentlessly across his backyard as we tried to keep our then young children inside and away from falling embers and smoke. It was impossible not to fear the worst.
The risk of bushfires is always in the background when you live near bush and winter departs. So many families have shown fighting strength, community spirit and apparent resilience in the face of having lost everything in the past week.
Communities under threat have bandied together. The sheer selflessness on display has been overwhelming and a positive model for how to behave when faced with adversity. Let’s give generously to get these people back on their feet through one of the various charities focused on doing so, including: The Salvation Army and St Vincent de Paul.