SYDNEY -- The pall of eucalyptus-scented smoke that has smothered Australia's largest city since Christmas Day is lifting. More than 11,000 evacuees are returning to the burned-out bush where their homes once stood. The cost of Sydney's worst-ever bush-fire season? Who dares count?
The midsummer holiday season has been, as Charles Dickens might have observed, the best of times and the worst of times. Now that the fires seem to be easing (although red alert is still on and the forests still smolder) dazed citizens are trying to think only of the positives: the bravery of volunteer fire fighters, the selflessness of neighbors trying to save whole streets of houses, the precise coordination of efforts from around the world.
Yet it's the negatives that will haunt for years to come -- the willful destruction from hundreds of fires deliberately lit by pyromaniacs, the folly of drivers obstructing access roads. Not to mention the bureaucratic bumbling that continues to allow people to build houses beside national forests deemed untouchable to sensible fire-hazard destruction.