Firestorm

We consider Australia the 'lucky country'. Where you can do or be anything, if you work hard enough. Sure, it's a land of extreme. During Spring, for example, you can snow ski in the morning and be swimming in the sea in the afternoon. The weather can be perfect or atrocious. Bucketing with rain - as it still is in northern Queensland, or brutally hot, like yesterday in Victoria where in some areas, the temperature rose to 47 degrees Celsius or 116 Fahrenheit.

With those hot temperatures and 100kmh winds, the inevitable happened: bushfires.

North and north-east of Melbourne, the landscape is dotted with beautiful valleys and hills - and townships. As of now, twenty-five people are dead and more than a hundred homes destroyed. The death toll is expected to rise as authorities search through ash and ruins.

Tales of remarkable bravery and escape are all over the media, as is the unspeakable tragedy of people in cars over-run by flames.

Even as I watched the events unfold on the news, the cameraman caught sight of a small fire tornado. Witnesses speak of forty metre tall walls of fire, of homes destroyed in minutes and fire fighters saying that no matter how well prepared, the magnitude of the fire couldn't be prepared for.

One news story about the devastated town of Kingslake:

Kinglake, north of Melbourne, has been among the hardest hit in the Victorian bushfire emergency with six people in the township confirmed dead.

Resident Peter Mitchell told ABC Local Radio the town was at the mercy of fires which swept through it after a wind direction change.

Mr Mitchell said there was no-one to fight the fire because fire crews were already fighting other fires across the state.

He was forced to leave his home to shelter at the local fire station.

"The whole of Kinglake is ablaze, I live a couple of [kilometres] out of town, I heard explosions, by the time I got to the road there were fires everywhere," he said.

"[There is] flame everywhere, trees exploding, gas tanks exploding, buildings on fire, it's very, very, very serious.

"I can't quite see down into the main stretch of town, but there's a lot of flame coming up from there, so I presume most of the town is going up.

"It's worst-case, it's like Cockatoo back at Ash Wednesday."

Mr Mitchell said he feared for the safety of other Kinglake residents.

"We'll be fine, there'll be others trapped, poor souls I don't know."

Denise was heading home from her mother-in-law's house just outside Kinglake when she was forced to turn back as fires bore down on the town.

She was spared, but others were not so lucky. "The whole town is gone," she said.

She said her mother-in-law's house was surrounded by flames. "Everything around us is burning.

"Trees are burning, things are blowing up, there are a lot of houses burnt to the ground. A lot of houses ... It's pretty devastating actually." ABC News

And the headlines go on. I'd like to say I can't imagine what's it like for them in Victoria, but I can. I was in Canberra, 2005, the day a fire took 500 houses in the southern suburbs. My own village lost a dozen houses in 2003. I watched the trunk of a tree in front of our house smoulder with a spot fire before a sibling doused it...

Bushfires are a part of this land, even devastating fires. But the tragedy in Victoria is appalling.

Today, the heat continues in my State of New South Wales and living on the coast is no guarantee of safety. We're as prepared as we can be, though no fires threaten our area - it doesn't stop some asshole from thinking how nice the flames look...