Today I am angry. I awakened to a world full of smoke and a hazy blood red sun that has filled the house with an eerie orange glow. The people of Victoria are trying to get on with their lives. Thousands are displaced with nowhere to go, nothing but the clothes they are wearing, although hopefully they have been able to get some help from the many donations that have come in. The fires are still burning, the temperatures are set to rise again next week which can’t be good, and they have charged a man with arson over the Churchill fire. So, what would the state as a whole like to do to him? Yeah, I feel the same way.
What angers me is in all of this destruction and horror is that there are people in the world so ignorant they feel the need to comment in a less than positive way.
The Mail on Sunday in the UK captioned this photo with the comment ‘Er Bruce, the fire’s the other way!‘ To those who wrote and approved this copyline… are you morons? I know you are a newspaper so it might sound like a silly question but have you been watching the news or do facts not get in the way of a ‘good’ story. I mean, we’re rolling on the ground here laughing at your oh-so-funny quip. Over 181 people are dead, thousands homeless, entire towns burnt and melted into the charred remains of earth, millions of wildlife dead and those that are injured are left without habitat. I got up this morning having tossed and turned all night, dreaming bad things as the smoke seeped into my house. Hope you guys had a good old night’s sleep though.
Maybe, just maybe, these firefighters, many of them VOLUNTEERS by the way, had the good sense to remove themselves from an inferno bearing down on them (see my previous post for the stats on the fires).
As for one of our nations cutest icons, TMZ showed their poor taste too with: Koala to Firefighter: I Won’t Tap That! ‘After battling some of the worst wildfires ever to hit Australia, a firefighter shared his bottled water with a pampered koala on Monday. Afterwards the new friends went to Pilates and dined on sushi.‘ Yep, that’s just what the firefighters are doing in the face of the worst devastation in living memory in Victoria. Pilates! You have apologised, but again, how did that copy get approval to go live? You are a bunch of idiots. Enough said.
And lastly, it’s last because I can’t bear to read any more negative things today, here is a link to a very scary piece of footage: http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-211954 To the poster on the iReport site that made disparaging comments about Jim, the guy who took this footage, why don’t you actually inform yourself about this tragedy instead of making ill-informed comments. Perhaps you think he could have ‘run’ as you put it. These fires are like liquid vapour travelling at speeds that are unfathomable. It is being dubbed ‘the perfect storm’ because of the conditions that caused it to grow into the monster it has become. Fleeing, for many, either on foot or in a vehicle, was just impossible. Amaranth, I did not even finish reading your post. You are an ignoramus!
I am going to leave on a good note because after all, who can resist a good news story and a koala!
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