Those Heroic Volunteers !

There is something very different about the fire crisis that is consuming hundreds of Australian homes and blackening an almost unbelievable portion of state forests.  All this started well before the traditional fire season and has been burning continuously ever since - and we have two thirds of summer yet to come.

One of the reasons is a drought and because of that we are not getting the usual rain events that help contain the fires. We have been warned that this will be a drier continent in the future because of global warming and yet both prime minister Scott Morrison and New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian are ignoring the crisis that is erupting in fire management.

Fire control in cities is handled by paid members of fire brigades, but outside of those cities and in country towns the task falls to the Rural Fire Services and these consist of volunteers.  The men and women who form the core of this volunteer fire service willingly put their lives on the line to do very dangerous work.   It is a civic service and the public seem unaware that it comes at a cost to the very people whose efforts are keeping them safe.

In some cases they are self employed and the time they spend fighting fires is time lost in earning a living.  Those in employment rely on the indulgence of their boss to release them and most gladly continue to pay their wages, but there are obvious limits to how long that is possible.  This fire ravaging the countryside had its genesis weeks ago and there is every indication that we may be plagued by fire for weeks to come. Probably for the entire remainder of summer.

Our volunteer fire fighters are suffering exhaustion.  The government puts its hand in its pocket and provides fire trucks and fire fighting equipment and lately a fleet of water bombers has been added but there is no doubt that those volunteers are seriously eroding family finances by the heroic work they do as a public service.

There is an enormous groundswell of concern building about global warming.  We haver suffered a propaganda campaign from the oil industry to dispute the projections of how a hotter world will impact our lives but this drought and these fires are definitive proof that we are living in a more dangerous world - and public opinion is fast swinging behind remedial action.

What we need to do to reign in global warming will definitely have impact on lifestyles and that is staying the hands of the politicians and this reluctance to provide relief for volunteer fire fighters is typical.  Tax relief for them and their employers when they are away on the fire front would be a welcome recognition of the public service provided and the government should chip in and provide the safety equipment that they presently provide from their own pockets.  It would not be unreasonable to expect the government to fund death or serious injury cover for RFS members in recognition of the dangerous work they do on the fire fronts.

In the fire emergency we have faced in recent weeks it is evident that all that has stood between safety and a total disaster has been the Rural Fire Services.  There simply is no " Plan B " if that fails !