This horrifying headline greeted me when I clicked on my usual morning perusal of my hometown newspaper online. The story also repeated in the ABC news.

This is something we all dread come the summer months - the wild fire. I still vividly recall the awful Ash Wednesday fires in 1983, with the entire Adelaide Hills ringed with fire. I can still hear the choking emotion in the voice of journalist Murray Nicoll as he stood across from his home and watched it being engulfed in flames, yet still continued reporting it over the radio to a shocked audience.

"At the moment, I'm watching my house burn down. I'm sitting out on the road in front of my own house where I've lived for 13 or 14 years and it's going down in front of me. And the flames are in the roof and -- Oh, God damn it. It's just beyond belief -- my own house. And everything around it is black. There are fires burning all around me. All around me.
And the front section of my house is blazing. The roof has fallen in. My water tanks are useless. There is absolutely nothing I can do about it."


Yesterday, with temperatures across South Australia in the 40s and fanned by a searing north wind, these fires swept through the state, taking ten lives (three of them young children), destroying over 100 homes, killing thousands of sheep, cattle and wild animals and devastating whole rural communities. There is an excellent summary of the story in my favourite Aussie blog Public Opinion. This story even made the news here in Sweden, with graphic footage of the country burning. It's not often I hear the word Australien on tv here, so I looked up to see the Eyre Peninsula ablaze.

My heart goes out to all of those families affected by this fire. Life is really so short and fragile. Appreciate every minute of it.