I have been a bit out of touch the last couple of days (being in Palmerston North doing training). I hadn't seen the TV news and missed most of the radio news, so didn't hear how bad the bushfires are in Victoria (Australia) until I got home tonight. Over 300 feared dead; whole communities just burned off the map. I heard one young man on the news, about my age, talking about what had happened: his wife and two young children are now dead and he is alone. He looked so bewildered. It isn't real to him yet, but it soon will be. His story is repeated everywhere. It tears at my heart.
What is worse is that they think the fires were deliberately lit. I don't understand how someone could light a fire deliberately when everything was so tinder-dry and it was so hot (over 40 degrees C), with so much wind. Did they not understand that their little fire would become a big one? Or are they exulting in the thousands of hectares of destruction?
It is hard to pray in the face of so much pain.
Pachyderm tssf
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