Australia burns

[farmerrex2002]

We've had cases here in the past of bushfire arsonists being caught, and then it's discovered that they are trained firefighters, who obviously have some sort of sick need to light fires so that they can then help to put them out.

Just makes me shake my head in utter disbelief.

An update on the arson situation. Victoria Police have arrested a 39 year old male for allegedly starting the Churchill/Boolarra fire - this fire killed 12 people and the villages of Calignee and Calignee North were obliterated, just no longer exist. The charge is Murder by Arson, a fairly new offence on the Victorian Statutes. He is also charged with child pornography. The magistrate has requested a psychological assessment.
This person has been assessed as sevserely mentally retarded and he is not able to plead. He has been remanded in custody by a local magistrate and transferred to the Melbourne Remand Centre for his own safety, to appear in the Melbourne Magistrates Court later in the year.
It begs the question why was this mentally impaired person walking around in the community able to do what he did (allegedly)? He should have been in a facility for the mentally impaired.

 

[ozguy]

Of course...they don't have any of that...so they pick blindfolded from a list of sex offenders in the area ....

So you obviously know all the details to the police investigation and are privy to information about it that the rest of us in Australia are not. Give the police a break, mate!

Personally, I think anyone who deliberately lights bushfires in the kind of weather conditions Victoria has been experiencing lately, would have to be mentally retarded.

 

[ViscountLazarus]

I can't believe that some of the fires here were deliberately lit. Like it's a great idea to start fires and just let them burn...

Luckily, no-one around here's been stupid enough to.

Where abouts are you, Ozguy? I'm on the Peninsula.

Take care, viccies.

-Laz.

 

[frankfrank]

It begs the question why was this mentally impaired person walking around in the community able to do what he did (allegedly)? He should have been in a facility for the mentally impaired.

I don't know how much of an infrastructure and social policy .au has for taking care of people who are handicapped or disadvantaged, but I guarantee you that if this guy had lived in the United States instead, there would be NO possible way that he would be looked out for.

Most of the U.S. mental hospitals were shuttered (or, sometimes, transformed into prisons) during the Ronald Reagan presidency, and I have a couple friends who used to work at an institution in northern Illinois. One that was, in fact, turned into a prison. They actually started to cry when they told me their account of being there and helping when the place was being decommissioned and shut down, when some of the patients were crying because they had absolutely NOWHERE to go and they were merely thrown into the outside world with whatever they could carry, and a small amount of money. ($50 I think he told me.)

My friends are sure that some of these discharged patients either turned to crime to survive, or died in the "hostile" exterior environment, etc.

 

[bearfan]

I know this is really inappropriate, but holy shit... ozguy is from Perth? I jerked it over your undies photos so hard.

 

[wirega56]

Oh there's an idea to raise money for the bushfire fund, auction off your undies ozguy looks like there is one buyer.
I just heard the Red Cross is skipping their annual appeal this year for the first time in 60 yrs so they can concentrate on the bushfire fund.

 

[Paladin]

I don't know how much of an infrastructure and social policy .au has for taking care of people who are handicapped or disadvantaged, but I guarantee you that if this guy had lived in the United States instead, there would be NO possible way that he would be looked out for.

Frank, in Oz there is a fairly compassionate response to this part of society, there is a well-funded government-funded sector to look out for the welfare of people with a disability.

But in this little neck of the woods my gut feeling tells me to agree with dajlelion: the fact that they so quickly happened to find a culprit who has a mental impairment and a record of child porn, sounds a bit like a convenient scapegoat who no-one will defend, and not necessarily good police work.

Ironically, while these fires were raging out of control with such devastating effect in southern Australia, where I live in the far north, we were coping with weeks and weeks of rain, and flooding. We wished so much that we could have sent the rain south...

 

[tallguy297]

Ironically, while these fires were raging out of control with such devastating effect in southern Australia, where I live in the far north, we were coping with weeks and weeks of rain, and flooding. We wished so much that we could have sent the rain south...

Yep... and as a fellow Qld'er, you are in my thoughts mate. You havent been forgotten despite what it must seem.

This country truly has the extreme of the extremes!