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We spotted this: a reader comment on ABC's Esperance Breakfast blog, urging all to pick up and read Roger Franklin's account of Black Saturday fires, Inferno. We think reader John makes a strong point, and a year on from that tragic day, Inferno still makes for powerful, pertinent reading.

"One of the perverse blessings of Black Saturday is the literary output it has inspired. I picked up a copy of Ms Clode's book (A Future in Flames by Danielle Clode) at the airport bookshop yesterday and have almost finished it. Well-written and compelling, I regard it as a bookend to the other great book – and I do mean great – on Black Saturday, Roger Franklin's Inferno: The Day Victoria Burned.

They make an interesting pair. Clode wonders why Australia never learns from the lessons of previous bushfires. So does Franklin, whose account is less personal but much more angry that the findings of Justice Stretton and other bushfire investigators are almost always ignored by do-nothing governments.

If your goal is to get a state-wide overview of what caused the fires, why they raged so intensely, and why this state government in Victoria is grossly culpable in its emergency management procedures, I would urge readers to select "Inferno". The chapter on the blokes who took refuge in a water tank and survived against all odds is a treat.

If you favour a personal narrative that makes many of the same points, go for Clode's book. But ideally, read both. And then demand that public policy reflects reality, not PR and spin. My interest, by the way, is personal. members of my extended family barely escaped Black Saturday with their lives.

Posted by: john | 04/02/2010 at 12:04 PM