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The Ashen Monument

By: Dankedonuts

https://dankedonuts.sofurry.com

The images had been on the news for weeks. The warnings even longer. When the fires came to the town called Wullabura, its one hundred and thirty-three occupants were ready. As much as anyone could be to face the end of their homes, their community. Dogs, Rabbits, Bandicoots, furs of all types and sizes banded together to soak roofs with hose water, load vehicles to bursting, and help evacuate those who could not move themselves. Anything and everything to save some part of their home, the town of Wullabura, or at least its occupants, while there was still time. But there was not enough time, and no one left with everything they needed, or thought they could move on without. In car after car, van after van, jeep after jeep, four hundred furs and more fled.

In their wake came those who would fight for the town. A Dingoes and Kookaburra manned the construction rigs that gouged new firebreaks into the ground. A trio of Koala, Skink, and Taipan in foresting gear tore down well-loved but vulnerable trees and hauled them away where they'd do no harm. Brave furs in gold and yellow firefighting gear fought the blaze on the front line. Battling heat and wind, exhaustion and terror with axe and hose and rivers of sweat. The very sky roared. Every now and then in the, red-gold hell that raged before them, there came a small series of explosions like unto gunfire: the seed pods of lowland shrubs bursting like popcorn. Helicopters threw water down from the sky, load after load after load.

The battle waged for days. Until at last, the fires had been turned. Distracted, but just as ravenous in its hunger for he bone-dry trees and vegetation that lined the barrier between Outback and forested land, it burned on eastward. In the ends three fire jumpers -- two Kangaroos and a Frilled Lizard -- had given their lives to the effort. An effort had been successful only for the most part: Fifteen of the eighty-some homes had been lost, and with them the town's Heritage Center, the largest of three churches, and most of the elementary school. The solar farms situated on the some ways past the outskirts were a total loss, sacrificed to prioritize tat which could be saved.

The day the all clear was given when the fires only after the great cloud of smoke had followed its source east. Nearly all of the citizens of Wullabura came home in a sporadic caravan. If only, in some cases, to see what could be recovered from houses and apartments that were known to be lost. The once sleepy town -- the eighty-five percent of it that was left -- became a buzz of activity. Donation stations dotted the two main streets that crisscrossed the town center. The library near its intersection had become an emergency shelter, a tireless Wallaby assigning cots and handing out blankets. The Geckos who ran the nearby grocery freely handed out food and water. A Brown Snake, one of the teachers, lead a chorus of songs at the playground.

The town's mayor, a Wallaby who'd taken over the post office as a centralized command center, was also busy calling in airborne doctors an old ham radio. With the smartphone towers down or just gone for dozens if not hundreds of kilometers in any direction, one used the means at hand.

The local firefighters cleared the surviving structures for re-occupation, stopping only to shake a grateful paw or accept well-meant words of thanks.

The sheriff, a graying Wombat no one would ever think of replacing, coordinated the efforts of his deputies and volunteers via walkie-talkie. Collecting the random lost pet, and keeping a section of north-south strip's northern end clear for the rush of essentials and camping supplies that were said to be on the way.

Down the southern end of that street was where the fire had carved its foothold. Where there was now smoke and debris where there had once been laughter and love. The firefighters had moved on. The police and volunteers had more pressing places to be. Only those that had personal reason to be picking among the ruins were there. Including a short-statured Echidna and her son. They wore thick hiking boots, and gardening gloves. A pair of old cooking aprons each sufficed to keep the soot getting on their clothes to a reasonable level. Their long snouts were protected by white masks. Their own target was the Heritage Center, which had been a museum and visitor's center both. At its forefront lay the gutted remains of pneumatic drills, a dredging rig, mobile stone crushers and other assorted artifacts from a mine long since emptied out. Black and mangled and smoking as any tank or plane lost to war. The main building had collapsed utterly, the roof caving in as walls disintegrated. The small cobblestone and concrete pyramid that had stood near the building's front door was broken possibly beyond repair. The top had been apart by heat, the larger pieces scattered about a two-meter radius were cracked and pitted. The base itself had disappeared under twisted remnants of wood and metal.

But it was here that the female was set on going first. She carefully moved half a door and dug around until she found what she'd come for. A metal dedication plaque, blacked on one side, its details clogged with a dried mud formed of ash. Her thick-clawed hands gingerly removed the grey crust line by line. There, amid the shattering of her livelihood, she found satisfaction enough that the words embossed upon it were still intact:

**The citizenry of this town, on the 17th of December in the year 1953, do hereby establish this monument to mark the victims of the Wullabura Opal Mine Collapse.

GLENN WARREN

ZACHARY MICHALES

DAVID JEBSON

And shift supervisor MELVYN SOLEKI, whose heroic actions saved the lives of twelve others.**

"Take this to the street corner to start the salvage pile," she told the youngster, who was picking his way about a half-buried dial which had once directed an industrial-scale dirt vacuum. "But don't dawdle, son. We're just getting started."