Greetings Bob,

You're right, of course, but there are people who get twitchy if you imply their disaster is not more devastating than someone else's; not knowing anything about Guest, I chose to avoid the risk.

My understanding of the American "brush" is that is not as tall as Oz "forest"; most professionals in Oz use a version of Ray Specht's structural classification of vegetation, where "woodland" has its upper canopy ~15m high and "forest" has its canopy well above that, often reaching 100m. I suspect US "brush" is more similar to Oz "woodland" than to our "forest" and flame heights of 100-200m are truly awesome; I doubt many would confuse such a conflagration with a brushfire.

Cheers, Rowan