<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2025/feb/10/black-summer-after-the-fires-andrew-odwyer-geoffrey-keaton-death-toll-five-years>
"When the rains finally came, people wept.
They ran out into the streets, the paddocks, the bush, faces lifted, arms
raised.
Over one dramatic weekend in February 2020, torrential rain fell across all of
eastern Australia, soaking the scarred ground and dousing a country ablaze.
Australia had lived through a fire season unlike any it had seen before. One
that had started early – in September 2019, and had burned and destroyed
without reprieve for nearly five months.
The numbers are shocking: 33 people dead, 3,000 homes lost, 3 billion animals
dead or displaced, 17m hectares burnt.
But there are also deep sense memories of that time: the images of kangaroos
hopping from the flames, of people sheltering on the beach against a flaming
red sky, ash-covered residents of charred towns standing shellshocked; the
sounds of a burnt koala shrieking in pain; the taste of smoke.
And then, finally, the rains came.
On Monday 10 February 2020 a triumphant and exhausted New South Wales Rural
Fire Service announced that so much rain had fallen during the weekend that 30
fires had been put out. Among them, the Gospers Mountain megablaze – the
largest bushfire on record.
The terrifying beast of a fire burned for 15 weeks and cast an ashy pall over
Sydney and its surrounds, choking a quarter of the country’s population with
its smoke for month after dreadful month.
Shops sold out of air purifiers; ash fell from the sky, flecking skin like
freckles; people would go outside and, through stinging eyes, see no horizon,
just houses and trees fading into a grey smudge; masks appeared on faces,
though the air was so thick with smoke that it was hard to imagine they were
doing anything to help.
We feared for children, for pregnant women, elderly people, those with
disabilities. We feared for our screaming, aching, fire-struck land. We feared
for our future.
Then the fires were out but before Australia could catch its breath, just as we
were shakily emerging from the rubble and finally taking large gulping breaths
of clean air, the entire country was given a shelter-in-place order of another
kind.
On 29 March 2020, mere weeks after the last fires were extinguished,
Australia’s first national Covid lockdown was ordered. The masks that people
had finally been able to remove appeared again and we turned our attention to
the next crisis. We were forced by global calamity to move on, though for some,
of course, moving on is not possible.
Five years on from that day in February when the worst of the fires were
extinguished,
Guardian Australia is looking back.
We are taking a moment to pause and examine the wounds of that summer that
still haunts so many across the country but for which we have not had the time
or space to grieve."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
