It's actully been blown up this story a bit. Yea it's been hot, even here in Hobart, 41 degrees (sorry I don't know what that is in fahrenheit) on Saturday but today it's only 16 degrees. The real fire problem and loss of houses was due to that one day here in Hobart. Were only 40Km's from the front and it actually rained a bit of ash. There was about 60 houses burnt basicly the whole town of Dunally but apart from that no other major loss of property across Australia, yet and no loss of lives reported. So in terms of 2008's Black Saturday nowhere near as bad, esp if you think there was 173 deaths on that day. But summer has only really just begun here in Oz and who knows what some nut job might decide to do on another extreme fire day.
Peace Ben