The Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, apologized for taking a holiday to Hawaii, while his country is facing the wildfires. (Image via BBC)

Australian PM apologizes for taking holiday amid wildfire

The Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, apologized on Sunday for taking a vacation to Hawaii with family when his country is facing bushfires. The bushfires, raging in several Australian states, have destroyed homes and took the lives of two firefighters.

Due to the anger and backlashes of his people, the PM cut the vacation short. He arrived in Australia on Saturday and made the statement on Sunday morning while visiting the Rural Fire Service in Sydney. Morrison reasoned that he already promised the vacation with his “kids” and by having a vacation, he would have “better judgment”.

Morrison emphasized that he accepted the criticisms as his responsibility as a PM.

Instead of seeing the criticisms as something bad, Morrison said that the criticisms reflected Australians’ wish for the PM to stay home with them despite not being a capable “firefighter”; and, he does it not for scoring any “political point”.

Amid the criticisms that the Australian government is slacking in battling climate change, Morrison said that it is not “credible” to link climate change with bushfire; there are other factors that contributed to causing the unprecedented number of bushfires during the record-breaking heatwave in the country.

An image, spread on the internet, showed that even the heatwave map was out of color to describe the heat in Australia.

Since Thursday’s bushfire, dozens of homes were consumed in fire. including the Gospers Mountain blaze that covered more than 460,000 hectares.

Rural Fire Service in Sydney described Saturday as an “awful” day as strong southern wind fanned more than 100 new fires in New South Wales (NSW). On Saturday, a fire-generated thunderstorm caused a blaze in Shoalhaven.

About 30 firefighters from Canada and nine from the United States (U.S) came to join the battle against the bushfires on Sunday.

Source: https://bit.ly/2sTjIFE