KEY POINTS:
I came back to Auckland on Thursday, to a city sweating through the oppressive, unmoving heat. In the early evening, the skies broke and rain poured down through the night. Auckland. I love it!
It has been a week of fire, of course, in which it seemed all of Victoria was burning. Those who lived through those bushfires speak of the elemental force of them, their speed, their size, their ability to come at you so instantly from anywhere. If, despite everyone understanding the dangers last weekend, virtually a whole town was wiped out, you know those fires are something weird, something huge, savage and sudden.
What is really surprising, in retrospect, is that given the circumstances that were forming in those known incinerated Victorian hills, so many people stayed put, stayed in their homes, hoping to sit it out, hoping the worst would not happen.
Quite by accident this week, I came across a Canadian website, HorseJobs.ca, "Canada's first employment website dedicated to the equine industry," as it describes itself. Ten days ago, on the website's General Discussion page, just before the conflagration consumed those vast areas of Victoria, a Rebecca Franklin posted this.
"Please wish us luck in Melbourne for tomorrow. In 1983 we had a massive fire that cost 75 lives and hundreds of homes. Our forecast is 43C and extreme winds. Our fire authority has put out a warning that this is the worst conditions [sic] since that terrible day. I was 12 at the time and everywhere you looked there was ash, smoke and the skies were orange. I am very nervous. We will be unrugging, plaiting horses tails today and making sure every horse is in the safest paddock possible."
Sure enough, next day, hell swept across the earth. Some days go by, a week in fact, and Rebecca is back on the website. "181 now confirmed dead.; 5000 homeless. 330,000ha or 815, 440 acres burnt. There is a confirmed arsonist in the area. The police are searching for him. I was not able to get my horses out today. The person who was going to move them had to move other horses in more urgent threat. I will get them out tomorrow. It is going to heat up again in the next few days ..."
This produces a haunting response from someone called Kristin. "Rebecca, I live in the Dandenongs and remember vividly the Ash Wednesday bushfires as a child and it just terrifies me to this day. Although our area is not in danger I have been sleeping in my clothes with my phones by my side, a torch and a constant stream of news. I think I am hearing the sirens all the time and this morning I was terrified when I heard what I thought was a blaze in the backyard only to find it was a dog trotting through the crunchy dry leaves."
You sometimes hear mention of the noise great fires make. It was the noise the survivors of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, remember. We tend to think that the worst fire in American history was the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871, which began, so legend has it, when a lamp fell over while Mrs O'Leary was milking her cow. Some 250 people died in this fire that began on Sunday October 8th and burnt until the Tuesday. Nearly 18,000 buildings were destroyed.
Further south, however, in Wisconsin, was the small, thriving logging town of Peshtigo, surrounded by forest. On the very same day as fire began to rip through Chicago, the people of Peshtigo continued to pray for rain. The summer and autumn had been tinder dry, the drought showed no sign of breaking. Creeks had dried up and the river, upon which the town depended for water and transport, was terribly low. There had been sporadic flare ups of fire in the district and smoke already hung over the town.
So they prayed in the churches for rain.
Then, just after 8.30 that evening, Sunday October 8th, 1871, survivors remember hearing a dull roar that grew steadily louder. It was already too late for most, as the people of Peshtigo realised that the forest had become an inferno and ferocious winds were driving it straight towards the town. In a desperate panic, families gathered themselves up and rushed to the river. To no avail.
By 10 o'clock that night, Peshtigo was gone. It had started the day with 2000 people. The fire that night took 1125 lives; 1.25 million acres of forest were destroyed. To the world at large, Peshtigo's tragedy has been forgotten, always over-shadowed by what was happening at the same time in Chicago but the Peshtigo fire took the greatest human toll in American history.
We know the noise of a good log fire in the hearth in winter. We speak of a "roaring" fire. I can only imagine what the noise, what the roar, of a forest in flames in high winds would be like. We who have not experienced anything like the Australian bushfires can only imagine the terror they produce amongst those in their path. The Australian death toll seems unbelievable.
There have been many moving sights and stories this week. The loving care bestowed on Sam, the koala, her extremities, well, her hands and feet all bandaged up, regardless of when it happened, spoke of a beautifully kind compassion and the love of human beings for the animals. It touched us deeply.
I found myself very moved also by Rod Emmerson's cartoon in the New Zealand Herald last week. It was so simple, Emmerson at his best. It did not even try to be funny. A ghostlike figure, an Australian, exhausted, emerges from a hazy, hot, burnt orange background. A New Zealander, in fire-fighting gear, with his back to us, reaches towards the shoulder of the Australian and asks, "Need a hand, Mate?"
It spoke of the simplicity of human kindness in bad times and said so much about the relationship between the people of our two nations, when all is said and done. We have been through so much together.
