fire survivors (mostly OT)

Yowie wrote:

Nor did I mean to sound like what I was saying was against you personally
Joyce, it wasn't. I didn't think it was you who might condemn such people
for leaving their pets behind, just ranting at some who might.

The nerves are still raw on this one and I apologise if it felt like me
attacking you.

No problem, I imagine you would have raw nerves from this! When I think
of people trying to get away from the fire in their cars, and being
overtaken and burned, it just makes me shudder. I know there were many
different scenarios of catastrophes, but for some reason, that one really
gets to me. Maybe I put too much trust in the automobile as a reliable way
to escape danger, and it freaks me out to think that even that wasn't
successful for some people.
--
Joyce ^..^

(To email me, remove the X's from my user name.)

wrote:
Yowie wrote:

Nor did I mean to sound like what I was saying was against you personally
Joyce, it wasn't. I didn't think it was you who might condemn such people
for leaving their pets behind, just ranting at some who might.

The nerves are still raw on this one and I apologise if it felt like me
attacking you.

No problem, I imagine you would have raw nerves from this! When I think
of people trying to get away from the fire in their cars, and being
overtaken and burned, it just makes me shudder. I know there were many
different scenarios of catastrophes, but for some reason, that one really
gets to me. Maybe I put too much trust in the automobile as a reliable way
to escape danger, and it freaks me out to think that even that wasn't
successful for some people.

I don't know as much as Yowie, obviously, but I've been reading
obsessively about those tragic fires, and it seems like using a car to
try to escape was very often fatal - but by the time people realized how
much worse the fires were than expected, they didn't have anything
really in the way of options. There are a lot of stories online about
people seeing the smoke so far away that they thought they weren't in
danger or had hours to escape - and then the wind picked up or changed
direction (it was blowing at 100 kph sometimes! the flames were moving
faster than a car could drive, even if the roads weren't blocked by
fallen trees and wrecks from accidents caused by thick smoke) and they
had seconds - or no time at all - to find shelter or escape. And as
Yowie said, sometimes the houses simply didn't provide the shelter they
would have in 'normal' fires. They couldn't; the temperatures were too high.

Cheryl