Apparently Tasmania is on Fire

"Are you there?" I shouted at my Tasmanian correspondent.  There seemed to be a fair amount of interference and her room was filled with smoke.  Somewhat belatedly I added, "Are you all right?"
Something garbled came out of the speakers and I shook my head and contacted my tech support.


"I'm having difficulty getting in touch with Tasmania."


"Nothing to do with us," they said piously, "there's no problem with the connection it's just that most of Tasmania is on fire at the moment."


"What still?"  I was a little surprised, there had been mention of the bushfires in Tasmania on the news but it had hardly been twenty four hour coverage.


"Still," they confirmed.  "There were about a hundred lightning strikes that caused massive fires.  Of course if you'd simply cut down all the trees and covered the place in concrete you wouldn't have these kind of problems."


I felt like pointing out that since I don't live in Tasmania I didn't have these kind of problems but that seemed a little unpatriotic when dealing with a bunch of smug Belarusians.  I settled for asking if they could clean up the signal at all.


"No problem, we just need to boost the power a bit.  Fortunately for you there's a killer satellite just overhead for other reasons that you really don't want to know about.  We can use that to help."


The picture cleared and I saw my correspondent, flushed and miserable but definitely unburnt sitting in a smoky home office.  I was about to thank my tech support when something occurred to me.


"Guys, have you been messing with weather control again?  A hundred lightning strikes does seem a little excessive."


"Can you prove we had something to do with it?"


"No," I replied.


"How fortunate for you.  Say hello to your correspondent for us," they signed off and not for the first time I wondered if a call centre in India was such a bad option.


My intention was to ask how my correspondent's holidays were and whether she had enjoyed herself but since most of the places she was intending to visit were now a roaring sea of flame I decided not to bother.


She is relatively safe, living as she does in Hobart, the closest equivalent Tasmania has to a large city.  Nevertheless she is not untouched as smoke and haze cover the entire island and the sound of fire fighting helicopters passing back and forth each day makes her life seem like a rather smoky version of Apocalypse Now.  Houses, but fortunately no lives (so far), have been lost but at the moment the fires seem to be concentrating on wiping out pretty much every world heritage site on the island.  Ancient stands of trees, breathtaking national parks, significant peat bogs (surely an oxymoron) are burning and since fire crews are stretched to the limit trying to stop 1500km of fire front from burning down people's houses those areas away from habitation are being left to look after themselves.  Sadly forests have a poor record of community involvement in volunteer fire fighting services.  In their defence when you're made of wood and full of sap going towards a fire front probably isn't your wisest option.


"Time," I announced to my correspondent, "to do your job.  I want front line reports, I want human interest stories, I want tales of loss, tragedy and human courage against impossible odds.  I want an interview with the fire if you can manage it.  Oh and toss in a loveable animal story and something with a light hearted take on the situation as well."


My correspondent suggested I watch a rerun of Lassie.  She pointed out that even in Hobart vision was so bad she couldn't see a mountain which is so close to her that she walks up it on weekends and that the air quality was reaching standards normally only encountered in New Delhi.  She did in fact tour some of the affected areas but that was before the fire started so pretty much any observations she had to make were now out of date.  Apparently the smoke rolling across the Tasman sea was so bad that people living in New Zealand had been calling their local fire brigade.  Now they know what Singapore feels like whenever Indonesia needs some new palm oil plantations.


Seeing that I was a little disappointed at the thought of great coverage slipping between my fingers my correspondent suggested a compromise.


"How about I sit in my lounge room and make shit up?  Then I'll send it to you and you can post it on your blog and pretend to believe it."


I had to admit that's pretty much how our working relationship had functioned up until now.  Reluctantly I agreed and she promised to send me a fifteen thousand word piece on the fires just as soon as her keyboard had cooled down enough for her to use.  Stay tuned.