Thanks Pilgrim. Where I am in the Adelaide hills is historically in the extreme danger areas for South Australia and in the last 150 years this place has been wiped out 3 times. Most of the state was completely amazed that we got away without a major fire during the week of plus 40C temps when the Victorian ones started. Last one was on Ash Wednesday (Australians love irony) 1983.
If anyone is really interested Wiki does a pretty accurate job here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Wednesday_fires28 People died in my area at that time. The toll is over 209 currently in Victoria which kind of puts things in perspective I guess.
After Ash Wednesday here the Govt put a plan in place which included a system where all known and suspected arsonists were put on a watch list. These people are graded into most likely to offend through to low risk. The people at the very top of the list during the high temp week were actually physically monitored. The next were watched for 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the late afternoon and contacted to make sure they were aware that they were being watched. As it goes down the list people are contacted and or watched to lesser degrees. The suspected ones of the lowest risk are simply telephoned by police and told that they are under surveillance. These people get spot checked on a rotation only. There is also a public awareness scheme that is like something out of a WW2 British movie as far as educating the public in what to watch for in peoples actions in the hills.
This system is not in effect in any other state and most of us here are convinced that this combined with the 3 minute standby water bombers in the hills (the planes are at any spotted or reported fire within 3 mins) is the only reason we didnt burn like Victoria.
The other irony is that Half of Queensland is underwater and has been for weeks now with floods.
