ABSTRACT
Graham’s face reddened as his voice gave in to the emotions that were making his hands shake and pushed tears to his eyes. Sighing deeply he cleared his throat and with a barely audible voice apologised. “I’m crying. I still cry. I can’t help it. I’m sorry. It’s hard to talk about it. I’ve been in fire fighting for forty years and that was probably the scariest night I’ve ever had”. Graham’s eyes shift to the scarred landscape that surrounds his property on all sides. The devastation that meets the eye makes it hard to forget: the hillsides are covered in the charred matchstick remains of a once dense forest filled with old cedar trees. Scanning the terrain, Graham’s wife Jennifer recollects how before the fire, the forest cover was so dense they could neither see nor hear their neighbours or local traffic. Asked if she has gotten used to it three years on, Jennifer shakes her head, “No. Still makes me feel sad”. Her sentiment is echoed in Graham’s lingering feeling of devastation wrought unnecessarily:
They just shouldn’t have burned that day. The winds howled seventy miles an hour that night and brought the fire down through here. That’s not to say that the wildfire would have gotten it anyway. But they didn’t help. I have plenty of training; been on a zillion fires. You just don’t do that. (♂ CA Apr. 2011)
