Melbourne bush fires

Quite clearly there are no jokes to be had from the tragic events that took place in Victoria last weekend but I didn't want to just ignore it as it has had such a massive impact on the country, even over here in the West.
I was talking to a senior manager at FESA (Western Australia Fire and Emergency Service) today who said that there is a fire danger index that runs from 0-200, and he said that this afternoon in Perth (with the temperature at 35 degrees) the index was 37 and the fire risk was very high. Last Saturday in Victoria the index was pushing 300, it totally bust the scale and there was absolutely no way to stop the fires spreading so fast. The tragedy is that the people in the region are used to dealing with bush fires, they get them so often, but this was a firestorm that was moving at about 80km/h. It was on top of people before they even knew it was coming.
The terrain is a bit different over here in the West, it's a lot flatter, and therefore the bush fires move a bit slower but we certainly aren't immune from them.
We had a big fire (or so we thought at the time) a few weeks ago that destroyed 10,000 hectares (football pitches) of Yanchep National Park and a nearby Pine Forest. It took two days to get it under any sort of control and the smoke reached us in the suburbs about 20km away. It is of course no accident that we live in a built up area (like it's no accident that we are 5 minutes from a pub and a Chinese restaurant), neither us fancied the country because of the fire dangers, and the fact that there are even more snakes and creepy crawlies than we get now.
Don't think that we are complaining about the weather, it's very pleasant having a summer where you can plan to go out and the weather lets you. I also appreciate that people in the UK are having a particularly cold winter - I'm thinking of sending a couple of cartons of table salt to Gloucestershire city council to help them clear their roads.
Hope you are all keeping warm and safe.
H