I don’t tend to look at the photos I took last year on Black Saturday. They pop up when I scroll picasa, or check my flickr feed. I’m going to share one with you now.
The photo there doesn’t begin to describe the feeling of watching Kinglake burn. The clenched gut knowing that people we love and care about were trapped up there, with no way of knowing if they were alive or dead.
Once the sun went down, the power went off and we sat in the loungroom, myself and my family, and listed to Jon Faine on the ABC – Jon Faine who normally we would hear in the mornings on weekdays was on air on a Saturday night. It was both comforting and scary. I checked and rechecked the CFA incident website on my pager, we went from ember attack warning to no warning to ember attack warning and I don’t know if any of us slept.
I didn’t attend memorials, and nor will I be watching the sugar loaded BS special reports on tonight. One of the strongest memories I have is watching a news team badger a man who’d just lost his entire family. They wanted tears, they got them and to this day I hold most of the media in contempt for their actions.
My love and thoughts are with everyone who is remembering their hell today, be it trying to get out through the fires, or losing loved ones.
Strathewan is being reborn, many places are. Let’s please now look ahead, help the towns recover, help the people recover and move into the future with hard lessons learned, but learned well.
07/02/2010 at 3:13 pm Permalink
*hugs*
08/02/2010 at 2:43 pm Permalink
I don’t have the right words. I know it was horrible but I can’t know just how horrible.
Bloggers, tweeters, facebookers, and various other online voices have told me more than any of the major media ever did about the whole event. It’s been incredible to read the pieces this weekend, to hear the real voices talk about what they went through. That’s what matters, those of you telling the stories so people don’t forget.
Hugs