Bad News Everywhere

It seems lately that you cant turn on the news without hearing bad news.  In one end of Australia, its being devastated by floods and rain, the other end, its being devastated by bushfires.  Its so depressing watching and hearing news reports of the bush fires.  My heart aches for all the people who lost loved ones and homes in this horrible ordeal.  I cant imagine what these people are going thru, losing everything except what they were wearing on that day.

My parents were in New Zealand this past weekend, and they were quite worried as they have a holiday house up at Eildon which is near the fires.  You have to go thru Kinglake, Flowerdale and Whittlesea to get there and the last I heard the fires werent that far away, so you can imagine how my mum and step dad are feeling, quite worried and also frightened as they have made friends in the town, and they cant go up there to see if everything is okay as the roads are closed for the most part, Police arent letting any one in the devasted places.

It saddens me to hear that so many people perished, and so many homes were lost.  I was reading yesterday's paper and saw a photo of a kangaroo escaping the flames, but his feet were charred.  I saw another photo of several burned out cars and the caption underneath it was that 6 people who were in these cars had died.  Another story I read was that someone had kept their badly burned neighbour in their swimming pool for several hours till crews were able to take him to hospital.

It saddens me to read that sick and twisted individuals had started the fire in Gippsland.  What the hell gets into the minds of these sick people? Why do they get a kick out of seeing people suffer? Why do they get a kick out of starting fires just for the hell of it?  I hope these people are caught and dealt with swiftly, because of them, many people lost their lives.

We have lived here in Bacchus Marsh for 6 years and Im ashamed to say that we havent implemented a fire plan.  We have a huge park at the end of our street, and about a year or two ago, the Brisbane Ranges were on fire and we had lots of smoke haze around, and were told to watch for embers.  I was shitting myself as I didnt know what to do.  Now though, Ive been told by my folks to keep the radio on the ABC as they have fire updates constantly and tell you which roads are open or closed.

Ill be definitely implementing some sort of fire plan and a special box with supplies, I dont want to be caught unaware or unprepared.  I know that I wouldnt stick around and fight, Id get out as soon as humanly possible, when youre up against something that resembles hell fires, there is no way you'd win!