In The Shadows of Black Friday

Rage of Fire

In the State of Havington, the month of January of the year 1939 came towards the end of a long drought which had been aggravated by a severe hot, dry summer season. The devastating confluence of flame on Friday, the 13th of January, throughout the land there was daytime darkness. Water storage's were almost depleted. Provincial town of Isonburg were facing the probability of cessation of water supply.

" Eric please not to much water we need to share with the rest of the village", said Clarissa Huston.

"Why do we have suffer mother" said Eric. The rich plains, denied their beneficent rains, lay bare and baking; and the forests, from the foothills to the alpine heights, were tinder.

Men who had lived their lives in the bush went their ways in the shadow of dread expectancy. But though they felt the imminence of danger they could not tell that it was to be far greater than they could imagine. "Hurry men we don't have very long", said Lance Huston to his group of workers.

They had not lived long enough. The experience of the past could not guide them to an understanding of what might, and did, happen.

And so it was that, when millions of acres of the forest were invaded by bush fires which were almost State-wide, there happened, because of great loss of life and property, the most disastrous forest calamity in the State of Isonburg has ever known.

"These fires were lit by the hand of man. The signature of this man has been know buy many of the elders in the town of Isonburg. The name given by the people of Isonburg is Sergei" Lance said to his remaining men.

Over the next couple of hours seventy-one lives were lost. Sixty-nine mills were burned. Millions of acres of fine forest, of almost incalculable value, were destroyed or badly damaged. Townships were obliterated in a few minutes. Mills, houses, bridges, tramways, machinery, were burned to the ground; men, cattle, horses, sheep, were devoured by the fires or asphyxiated by the scorching debilitated air. 

At one mill, desperate but futile efforts were made to clear of inflammable scrub the borders of the mill and mill settlement. All but one person, at that mill, were burned to death, many of them while trying to burrow to imagined safety in the sawdust heap. That one person was named Eric, in which was blind in the effort to save one thing that was to get the settlement up and running again.

As many body's were found after the blaze some Horses were found, still harnessed, in their stalls, dead, their limbs fantastically contorted. The full story of the killing of this small community is one of unpreparedness, because of apathy and ignorance and perhaps of something worse.

On that day it appeared that the whole State was alight. At midday, in many places, it was dark as night. Men carrying hurricane lamps, worked to make safe their families and belongings. The hunt for Eric's parent began as they were separated trying to save something of the township. Even though Eric is blind he knows the village like the back of his hand. Screaming and horror was all around, suddenly Eric hears something. "Eric were are you" yelled his mother Clarissa.

An hour went by and no noise was calling for him. "If I ever find who did this, I'll make him pay" Eric said to himself.