I have heard about those fires here too. I am a certified forest fire fighter here in Canada, and would love to come help out there. Nothing much to fight up here at the moment. My wife has family in the Perth area, so she'd be all up for me coming to help out I'm sure.

Oh yeah, and about the temp, we are supposed to get up to 3 C today, and have been above freezing the last couple of days. I live in the deep freeze usually at this time of year, with a normal temp at about -15 C. Crazy global warming. I do feel for you and 117 F though. I can't even imagine how that would be.

WA = western australia