... people are thinking of getting out. One of Australia's bushfire historians imagines:

If people are to continue living in these places, “they’ve got to drastically change their relationship with the surrounding environment; they’ve got to drastically change the surrounding environment in order to be able to survive and reduce their vulnerability,” says Ross Bradstock, director of the Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires at the University of Wollongong. “Another option is the retreat from flammable places.”

Another writer from Australia suggests a difference between this fire and past ones:

For the very first time, the wetlands are also on fire. Old Gondwana growth, ancient forests are aflame. This is not the forest that regenerates; what is being lost will never return.

In measuring the extent of the damage, Scientific American's Andrea Thompson is into counting:

It is impossible for scientists to know precisely how many animals have been killed until fires subside enough to allow surveys of the burned areas. Chris Dickman, an ecologist at the University of Sydney, extrapolated the known population densities of mammals, birds and reptiles over the more than 12 million acres burned in New South Wales to arrive at the 800-million estimate. If the fires in the states of Victoria and South Australia are included, that would push the number to more than one billion animals whose habitat has been on fire, Dickman says.

Don't forget Queensland. Or for that matter Kangaroo Island.

Reuters summarizes the response:

Australia’s government is sticking firmly to a position that there is no direct link between climate change and the country’s devastating bushfires, despite public anger, the anguish of victims and warnings from scientists.

As for climate change, Time magazine puts out this headline: "Australia's Wildfires and Climate Change Are Making One Another Worse in a Vicious, Devastating Circle."

Oh, and as for those "misleading" maps -- they may be exaggerated, but they aren't too far off. What does Business Insider say?

Though we certainly appreciate Rihanna spreading the word, the image itself is somewhat misleading. It pulls accurate data from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management Systems (FIRMS) and gives a correct view – at the time – of where fires were blazing, but doesn’t quite accurately represent scale. The glow of the 3D fire effect also makes the fires seem much larger than they actually are.

There's rain, but not enough. So this is ongoing.

A quote, variously attributed to native American peoples, is that "When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money." This is the situation Australia finds itself in. Remember that Australia is a major coal exporter. There's money in them there rocks!