Ange.
The loss of homes (and life-have not heard of any yet!) is horrendous. I think most Australian cope with bush fire, as most native Australian trees need fire to regenerate. I barely slept for 3 days, as I was concerned about friends and their famrs- as no one had heard from them. Thankfully they are all fine as are their livestock and buildings (just), they just had no way of communicating to let us know.
The brilliant part is how our fellow human beings are there supporting the affected people. People are doing whatever they can, I read this morning a region in Queensland (Lockyer Valley) that was destroyed by flood last year (maybe 2011) is raising money for Tasmania (my home state) because Tasmania raised money for them. The Lockyer valley is yet to get back on its feet from the flood.
The main fire in Tasmania has been going for a week, and is not yet controlled - but it has slowed down due to wonderful effort of the fire fighters. A friend of mine down there fighting the fires said for the first 3 days they had 6 hours sleep. Thank god for our friends in other Australian states and New Zealand who have sent teams over to help.
This weekend the sports body is Hobart, is starting its appeal to help people from the sport affected by the fire, by raising money and asking them what they need to help.
That being said, I do not wish a disaster on anyone. I hope all CF members, in this case, from Australia are all okay. A few days ago Australia as a continent recorded the hottest average temperature ever of a tad over 40 degrees Celsius (I think the range was 25-45+ degrees throughout the entire country)
We will recover, but it will take time.
Now I will need to look at more photos to see if it happen in the whole race/day/all the time.