Dear Paul, I'm glad you posted this and I'm sure we all share your concerns. 48 degrees C. (118 degrees F.) has to make fighting fires unbearable. Don Journet, Lachenalia expert from this list, is a volunteer fire fighter who lives in Victoria so I assume he is hard at work and I hope he'll be safe. When we visited him a couple of years ago he said that the philosophy is different in Australia than in the United States. Here in California they urge you to leave if fires are threatening and in Australia since the houses are built with greater fire resistant materials people stay to try to protect their homes and this often makes a difference. But with the large number of casualties and towns destroyed, the fires must have been unstoppable. Mary Sue