What do other people do on the 18th of January?

I wouldn’t have used the word ‘celebrate’ either, given so many others lost so much.

But it is up to you how you remember the day.

http://the-riotact.com/it-took-8-million-in-consultants-fees-to-bury-rhodium-at-a-crossroad/30491

Can you confirm that this sort of conduct is precisely what you expect of your elected representatives?

cranky said :

The 18th of Jan is the day that our former emporer was shown to be wearing no clothes. ‘I will take responsibility for this disaster’, followed by the use of every trick known to man to avoid responsibility by himself and his incompetent ‘mates’.

ACT Gov has gone downhill since that day. Every Labor politician in this town has been able to deny responsibility for every snafu visited upon them, based on Sonic stonewalling his way to a stalemate on the question of responsibility for this disaster.

I have a belief in karma 🙂

Mmm, I seem to remember Kate Carnell & anybody else that was responsible for the Canberra Hospital explosion (it certainly wasnt an implosion) ran for cover once poor Katie died.

They were all responsible as they ignored any other methods even though they were cheaper & even promoted it as a big event. I often wonder how the woman who pushed the button feels…………

DrKoresh said :

cranky said :

The 18th of Jan is the day that our former emporer was shown to be wearing no clothes. ‘I will take responsibility for this disaster’, followed by the use of every trick known to man to avoid responsibility by himself and his incompetent ‘mates’.

ACT Gov has gone downhill since that day. Every Labor politician in this town has been able to deny responsibility for every snafu visited upon them, based on Sonic stonewalling his way to a stalemate on the question of responsibility for this disaster.

I have a belief in karma 🙂

You may as well blame ACT Labor for global warming and cancer while your at this childish, irrelevant political mud-slinging. Argue against them on legitimate points or STFU.

By the time the fire reached the ACT, there wasn’t anything our politicians could do about it.

The real culprits are the pseudo-Green idiots who want to lock up National Parks to prevent anybody from using them and allowing the fuel loads to accumulate. The last two years have been excellent for growth – a dry year or two and more idiotic pseudo-Greens interfering with sensible land management and we’ll have another one.

cranky said :

The 18th of Jan is the day that our former emporer was shown to be wearing no clothes. ‘I will take responsibility for this disaster’, followed by the use of every trick known to man to avoid responsibility by himself and his incompetent ‘mates’.

ACT Gov has gone downhill since that day. Every Labor politician in this town has been able to deny responsibility for every snafu visited upon them, based on Sonic stonewalling his way to a stalemate on the question of responsibility for this disaster.

I have a belief in karma 🙂

You may as well blame ACT Labor for global warming and cancer while your at this childish, irrelevant political mud-slinging. Argue against them on legitimate points or STFU.

TheDancingDjinn said :

I-filed said :

MWF said :

BerraBoy68 said :

A serious question though, who do people have a desire to ‘celebrate’ (is that even the right word?) an anniversary of a day that brought sadness?

To be grateful that they escaped the fire with their lives? To help deal with ongoing PTSD? To acknowledge all sorts of feelings that they had and have?

I spend 364 days a year pretending I am “normal” and not bitter, twisted and scarred by the death of my child. Taking one day a year on the anniversary of my child’s death to be my bitter, twisted, scarred and angry self isn’t really asking too much.

No point seeing two lives lost here. Sounds as though it is time to get help and make it your business to feel differently by the time the tenth anniversary rolls around … Some years ago I met a Canberra man who had lost his wife and all three of his children in a car accident a few years before. He was scarred of course, but not bitter, not twisted, and not angry. An amazingly calm, sweet and inspiring man.

This comment is horrible – I don’t think giving advice on how one should grieve the loss of their child should be given by a guy who once met someone who lost their family, and becasue he was a nice man then whoever loses their children should just be and feel the same way? – While i doubt your intent was to be heartless, Sir you have most certainy come across that way.

+ eleventy billion

Hat of to those who can live life and only fall in a heap one day a year after such a tragedy. I cannot even begin to imagine how much strength that takes.

I wasn’t directly affected by the fires (as in ‘not threatened and no property to lose anyway’). But I think no one really walks away completely unaffected from a disaster like that. Canberra was just a completely different place that day and the weeks after. The community spirit was very moving indeed. The stories of narrow escapes and people losing everything they worked for touched everyone because they were people from our community and we related to them. And that feeling of ‘OMG, it could have been so much worse’ – especially after the VIC fires – was very intense.

So I do think there is value in looking back. No use living in the past, but very useful not forgetting what we learnt from it! And I’m not talking about emergency response here, but about how it made us realise how fragile life (and property) is and how easily we forget our differences when our lives and/or our community are at stake.

And I really like the way you commemorate this. Lighthearted yet deeply symbolic. 🙂

Pooks said :

MWF said :

BerraBoy68 said :

A serious question though, who do people have a desire to ‘celebrate’ (is that even the right word?) an anniversary of a day that brought sadness?

To be grateful that they escaped the fire with their lives? To help deal with ongoing PTSD? To acknowledge all sorts of feelings that they had and have?

I spend 364 days a year pretending I am “normal” and not bitter, twisted and scarred by the death of my child. Taking one day a year on the anniversary of my child’s death to be my bitter, twisted, scarred and angry self isn’t really asking too much.

MWF said :

BerraBoy68 said :

A serious question though, who do people have a desire to ‘celebrate’ (is that even the right word?) an anniversary of a day that brought sadness?

To be grateful that they escaped the fire with their lives? To help deal with ongoing PTSD? To acknowledge all sorts of feelings that they had and have?

I spend 364 days a year pretending I am “normal” and not bitter, twisted and scarred by the death of my child. Taking one day a year on the anniversary of my child’s death to be my bitter, twisted, scarred and angry self isn’t really asking too much.

Yep. Berraboy got owned with this comment.

Not sure if your comment was said TIC, but I’m curious to know how asking a serious question and getting a very valid response it getting ‘owned’? You must have been a riot at school.

Each person responds to tragedy in their own way and I am genuinely interested in why such anniversary’s matter to some people. It’s not as if I haven’t experienced my own tragedies. In 1983, I lost 2 brother six months apart, I’ve since nursed my father at home for almost 2 weeks through the final stages of his cancer and helped him die. I’ve witnessed, and been one of the first, on the scene of a plane crash where two people died horribly and needed counseling for that. My family and I also survived the fires.

In my street close to Mt Arawang we have 6 houses – three were lost. We were lucky with our place only suffering superficial damage and a lost front yard. Oddly enough, we have to live with the reminder of the fires every day as one of the blocks still remains empty. A continual memory of fires which came through here. Neighbours in the street continually call the ACT Gov’t about the state of this block. The grass is frequently anywhere between 4 – 6 feet long which in previous years causes concern over another fire, we’ve seen several brown snakes there so our kids can’t play near it, people now dump their rubbish there and the owners, shortly after the fires, deposited two big green shipping containers on the site which are very hard to miss. The owners of this block have mysteriously vanished and can’t be located, or so the ACT Go’v tells us – we know where they are but they won’t respond to letters, about their block. So we do live with a daily reminder of the fires making it hard to just move on. That said, I honestly don’t remember the actual date of the fire until I see it here, or somewhere else. Same as the dates for the other things I’ve experienced stated above. While the events themselves matter to me, the actual dates just don’, but each to their own. Good luck to those that are putting on special events though. I sincerely hope that whatever you do helps you.

Maybe I should remember the one part of the fires that still makes me cry by calling up a local womens or youth shelter, asking them what they need and taking it to them. In a city wide emergency we were so quick to help each other that just 20 minutes after calling for some random supply, evacuation centres were announcing “thanks for the blankets, we have enough now!” But every day there is always someone in crisis.

I-filed said :

MWF said :

BerraBoy68 said :

A serious question though, who do people have a desire to ‘celebrate’ (is that even the right word?) an anniversary of a day that brought sadness?

To be grateful that they escaped the fire with their lives? To help deal with ongoing PTSD? To acknowledge all sorts of feelings that they had and have?

I spend 364 days a year pretending I am “normal” and not bitter, twisted and scarred by the death of my child. Taking one day a year on the anniversary of my child’s death to be my bitter, twisted, scarred and angry self isn’t really asking too much.

No point seeing two lives lost here. Sounds as though it is time to get help and make it your business to feel differently by the time the tenth anniversary rolls around … Some years ago I met a Canberra man who had lost his wife and all three of his children in a car accident a few years before. He was scarred of course, but not bitter, not twisted, and not angry. An amazingly calm, sweet and inspiring man.

This comment is horrible – I don’t think giving advice on how one should grieve the loss of their child should be given by a guy who once met someone who lost their family, and becasue he was a nice man then whoever loses their children should just be and feel the same way? – While i doubt your intent was to be heartless, Sir you have most certainy come across that way.

MWF said :

BerraBoy68 said :

A serious question though, who do people have a desire to ‘celebrate’ (is that even the right word?) an anniversary of a day that brought sadness?

To be grateful that they escaped the fire with their lives? To help deal with ongoing PTSD? To acknowledge all sorts of feelings that they had and have?

I spend 364 days a year pretending I am “normal” and not bitter, twisted and scarred by the death of my child. Taking one day a year on the anniversary of my child’s death to be my bitter, twisted, scarred and angry self isn’t really asking too much.

No point seeing two lives lost here. Sounds as though it is time to get help and make it your business to feel differently by the time the tenth anniversary rolls around … Some years ago I met a Canberra man who had lost his wife and all three of his children in a car accident a few years before. He was scarred of course, but not bitter, not twisted, and not angry. An amazingly calm, sweet and inspiring man.