PAY HEED TO FIRE SAFETY

IT WAS early September last year when it all started. Homes in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast were burnt to the ground, hundreds of residents evacuated, in what would signal the start of arguably Australia’ s worst bush fire season on record.

It raged across states on the mainland for months.

Anyone living in Sydney breathed in that thick sooty air for days and weeks right through November, December and January.

Tragically, 33 people died, including nine firefighters.

More than 3000 houses were lost and it’s been estimated that more than 17 million hectares were burnt across fire- affected mainland states.

Smoke plumes even reached Tasmania where air quality reached significant lows —so you can only imagine what it was like in Sydney and Melbourne.

People started donning masks and worrying about the long-term health impacts of breathing in smoke.

We had our own blazes in Tasmania in January and, of course, we are no strangers to devastating bushfire and the consequences of not being fully prepared.

Somehow though, the 2019-20 fire season feels like an eternity ago.

As with most pre-corona virus going son, the images of Australia burning as though it were the pits of hell seem to have faded along with our determination to never relive a disaster such as that.

No one could have predicted just a few short weeks later that a new disaster — in the form of a pandemic — would turn our lives upside down.

Now, we wear masks for a different reason.

And instead of fleeing our property, our homes have become our only safe place.

And while in Tasmania our period of lockdown was short compared with that of the residents of Melbourne, we still have no idea if and when there will be a second wave like there has been elsewhere.

We shudder to think what the long-term mental and emotional health impacts are on people who have been affected severely by the coronavirus — and we worry about those who have gone through both disasters — one after the other. We have no choice but to find resilience. And all of us have to be able to walk and chew gum, all the while being ready to react to what’ s around that next corner.

Just because we are still in the thick of the coronavirus crisis doesn’t mean we can afford to be slack in our preparations for the upcoming bush fire season.

No matter what the experts predict we must learn from previous years and land management is a crucial piece of that puzzle.

It’s therefore troubling to see a West Coast council frustrated with the state government for failing to do its bit.