No one is denying the gravity of what people and firefighters have been through now, but it is no use gilding the lily here.
You can’t have a fire without fuel.
Two factors above all else come into play here.
In NSW, when Bob Carr was the minister, and later premier, he ratified moves to have fire trails abandoned.
Carr’s moves prevented access to those fire trails by the Rural Fire Service, under the pretext he was keeping four 4WDs and campers out.
The government put locked gates on these national parks and planted big rocks at the entry to the fire trails.
Understandably, the fire trails are now overgrown with regrowth forest, impenetrable to everybody except native and feral animals.
Yet it was these fire trails that enabled the fire fighters to get to the heart of a fire.
They could then create back burning and land clearing.
Fire fighters could mobilise earth-moving equipment and successfully put the fire out.