Australia's bushfires: politics has to change forever when your own citizens cannot sleep or breathe | Cynthia Banham

It was hard to keep a level head as the fire approached, our panic escalated, ash rained down and night fell hours before sunsetThe night of New Year's Eve was a kind of slow torture. I spent it in Vincentia on the New South Wales south coast, lying with my seven-year-old son, unable to breathe or sleep as thick brown smoke filled the house. As I listened to my child coughing, calling out from the depths of his nightmares words that sounded like "don't die", I prayed for the Princes Highway to reopen.I write this not because I believe for one minute that what I went through compares to anything people further south on Australia's east coast experienced that night, or will this weekend, but because friends and family who live outside the region - whether in Sydney or other, unaffected parts of the country, such as Perth - asked me to. Continue reading...