Cricket match in Melbourne
Following a fun day at the cricket match last Friday (and no, the streaker is not me!) this will be a sombre up-date to my blog in that I have experienced the deadliest wildfires in Australia's history, as of February 10, blamed in the deaths of 174 people and the destruction of entire towns and more than 1000 homes.
It started Saturday morning with a forecast of record temperatures and wind blasts creating the potential for a serious firestorm for the entire state of Victoria state. On this day I was on my way back from Ballarat, where I had stayed the night at the Steve Young house following our Australia New Zealand cricket match in Melbourne. It was already windy at 9 am, as I left for the 2 hr drive to Hamilton, and the winds were gusting from the north, the central part of Australia. I had one of the nifty DPI vehicles again , 
a Toyote Prius, which I have come to like quite a bit (seeings that there are no Jetta diesels!) and the vehicle's outside thermometer soon registered 40 to top at 41 when I reached Hamilton at 11 am. The wind speeds were close to 100 km/hr. and stepping outside the car it was like having a hair dryer blowing at your face.
a Toyote Prius, which I have come to like quite a bit (seeings that there are no Jetta diesels!) and the vehicle's outside thermometer soon registered 40 to top at 41 when I reached Hamilton at 11 am. The wind speeds were close to 100 km/hr. and stepping outside the car it was like having a hair dryer blowing at your face.We reached 43 later in the afternoon and as forecasted a cold front came in around 6 pm with winds changing to a south westerly direction and much cooler temperatures. By midnight it was 18!
These wind changes are common but raises havoc on the fire fronts, not a reduction in wind but from north to south west in a matter of minutes. Many people got stranded, blocked in by the fire change.
The state is in complete mourning over the losses and the images are horrific.
The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called it "an appalling tragedy for the nation." and it is extremely sad/infuriating that some of these fires were set deliberately. Mass murder, terrorism from within is part of the verbiage and one individual in New South Wales has already been apprehended.
There were many fires across the state but centered to the area north and east of Melbourne and we were spared in the Hamilton area. The closest fire was near Colleraine about 75 km west, a grass fire that only destroyed some houses and farm property.
I have copied a few of the stories, a change from my earlier blog but I felt it had to be shared, an unexpected part of my stay in Australia and I am considering myself lucky as I travelled through parts of these areas a couple of times in the last month. My job tasks will likely change as Farm Fire Recovery is within the mandate of DPI.
Some of the stories told over the last couple of days:
Witnesses have said the skies rained ash and trees exploded, as temperatures of up to 117 degrees combined with blasting winds to create furnace-like conditions. The fire storm tore through several small towns north of Melbourne on Saturday night destroying everything in its path. One family was forced to dive into a farm reservoir to survive while others took refuge in a community shed with firefighters standing between them and a wall of flames.
A badly burnt man in the town of Kinglake, where there were many fatalities, was kept alive for six hours by being partially submerged by friends in a pool until help arrived.
"It rained fire," said one survivor, showing his singed shirt. "We hid in the olive grove and watched our house burn."
On Sunday, the remains of charred cars littered the smouldering towns, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Melbourne. Some vehicles had crashed into each other as their drivers frantically tried to escape the fire.
"Out there it has been hell on earth," Victoria state Premier John Brumby said in a television address.
Police said the toll could continue to rise as they search the ruins of the wild fires and with 20 people with serious burns in hospital. Thousands of firefighters were still battling dozens of fires in Victoria and New South Wales state on Sunday night.
"We will find more bodies as we gain access to different parts of the fire areas," Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon told a news conference.
"We have found people in cars, it looks like they have decided late to leave their premises. We have found people who have been in properties, in their paddocks. We’ve found others in their houses. And the sad part is that we found children."
Nixon said some of the fires may have been deliberately lit.
A badly burnt man in the town of Kinglake, where there were many fatalities, was kept alive for six hours by being partially submerged by friends in a pool until help arrived.
"It rained fire," said one survivor, showing his singed shirt. "We hid in the olive grove and watched our house burn."
On Sunday, the remains of charred cars littered the smouldering towns, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Melbourne. Some vehicles had crashed into each other as their drivers frantically tried to escape the fire.
"Out there it has been hell on earth," Victoria state Premier John Brumby said in a television address.
Police said the toll could continue to rise as they search the ruins of the wild fires and with 20 people with serious burns in hospital. Thousands of firefighters were still battling dozens of fires in Victoria and New South Wales state on Sunday night.
"We will find more bodies as we gain access to different parts of the fire areas," Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon told a news conference.
"We have found people in cars, it looks like they have decided late to leave their premises. We have found people who have been in properties, in their paddocks. We’ve found others in their houses. And the sad part is that we found children."
Nixon said some of the fires may have been deliberately lit.
The previous worst bushfire tragedy was in 1983 when 75 people were killed in the "Ash Wednesday" fires. Survivors said the Victorian inferno reached four storeys high and raced across the land like speeding trains. "It went through like a bullet," Darren Webb-Johnson, a resident of the small rural town of Kinglake, told Sky TV.
TOWNS DESTROYED
"Hell and its fury have visited the good people of Victoria," said Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who announced a A$10 million aid package. "The nation grieves with Victoria. Many good people now lie dead. Many others lie injured," said Rudd. The army has been put on standby. Firefighters said more than 1,000 homes had been destroyed in the fires across Victoria state so far this weekend, the vast majority in the worst-affected areas north of Melbourne.
Wildfires are a natural annual event in Australia, but this year a combination of scorching weather, drought and tinder-dry bush has created prime conditions for blazes to take hold. Green lawmakers have been urging stiffer climate-change policies to reduce the risk of more such summer disasters.
Dazed survivors, wrapped in blankets, wandered through twisted and charred remains on Sunday, some crying, not knowing whether friends of family had survived.
At the town of Wandong, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Melbourne, one survivor said he had found the body of a friend in the laundry of a burnt-out house.
"Another 20 seconds and we were gone. We lost our dogs. There have been a lot of dead people. My next door neighbour didn’t make it," said one survivor.
KINGLAKE -- Survivors of Australia's deadly bushfires on Sunday described how a thick blanket of black ash blotted out the sun, leaving only a "horrible orange glow" as flames bore down on their homes.
Residents in the worst-hit areas northwest of Melbourne, where most the 84 fatalities occurred, told how they lost loved ones to the flames and desperately tried to help the injured, including children.
Entire townships were razed to the ground, with burnt-out cars strewn across the road outside one of the worst-hit communities, Kinglake, standing in mute testimony to residents who made doomed attempts to escape.
An AFP photographer who reached the town described how the cars had crashed into each other or into trees as towering flames put an end to their flight from the town.
Nearby, the once picturesque hamlet of Marysville was reduced to smoking ruins.
"Marysville, which was one the loveliest townships in Victoria, if not Australia, has just about been wiped out," said pastor Ivor Jones, whose own home in the town was destroyed.
More than 700 homes have been destroyed in total, many around Kinglake, where shops, petrol stations, the local police station and schools were also destroyed.
At least 22 died in the town, with the toll expected to rise as police complete the grisly task of sifting through the ashes for bodies.
Kinglake residents who fled ahead of the fire were kept out by police roadblocks when they tried to return Sunday.
Chris Harvey, who has lived in the town for 22 years and lost his home, believed authorities were trying to shield locals from the horrors awaiting them.
"There's a five-car pile-up on the road into town, all the cars are burnt," Harvey said.
"It's going to look like Hiroshima I tell you, it's going to look like a nuclear bomb. There's animals dead all over the road."
Some residents never even had a chance to flee, with Harvey's daughter Victoria telling of a local businessman who lost two of his children as the family prepared to make a dash for safety. "He apparently went to put his kids in the car, put them in, turned around to go grab something from the house, then his car was on fire with his kids in it and they burnt," Victoria said.
Witnesses told of trees "exploding" with the intensity of the heat and recounted fire fronts that raced towards them with terrifying speed.
Strathewen resident Mary Avola escaped the flames but her husband of 43 years, Peter, died after they fled their home in separate cars trying to reach a nearby sporting oval.
"He was behind me for a while and we tried to reach the oval but the gates were locked," Avola told Melbourne's Herald Sun website.
"He just told me to go and that's the last time I saw him." Authorities have found his body.
Marie Jones said she was staying at a friend's house in Kinglake when a badly burnt man arrived with his infant daughter, saying his wife and other child had been killed.
"He was so badly burnt," she told the Melbourne Age's website.
"He had skin hanging off him everywhere and his little girl was burnt, but not as badly as her dad, and he just came down and he said 'Look, I've lost my wife, I've lost my other kid, I just need you to save (my daughter).'"
Callers to national radio described how they were huddling in swimming pools as flames approached their homes, and of how children were terrified by the powerful winds, furnace-like heat and an eerie orange glow dominating the sky.
"It was so scary, my little girl, she's five years of age and... she's emotionally traumatised by what's happened today - the horrible orange glow," said a caller who identified himself as Roger from Traralgon South.
Jay Cherie described her family's nightmare drive from Kinglake to safety though a raging inferno.
"When the power went out I madly started to try and pack some things. My husband came running into the house and said, 'grab the kids, grab the cat, we've got to get out'," she said.
In the car "we had fire coming in on the right-hand side of us on a paddock and we had houses to the left of us on fire.
"My little girl was saying to me, 'Mum am I going to see my friends again?', she also said to me, 'Mum am I going to live tomorrow?'"
"Hell and its fury have visited the good people of Victoria," said Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who announced a A$10 million aid package. "The nation grieves with Victoria. Many good people now lie dead. Many others lie injured," said Rudd. The army has been put on standby. Firefighters said more than 1,000 homes had been destroyed in the fires across Victoria state so far this weekend, the vast majority in the worst-affected areas north of Melbourne.
Wildfires are a natural annual event in Australia, but this year a combination of scorching weather, drought and tinder-dry bush has created prime conditions for blazes to take hold. Green lawmakers have been urging stiffer climate-change policies to reduce the risk of more such summer disasters.
Dazed survivors, wrapped in blankets, wandered through twisted and charred remains on Sunday, some crying, not knowing whether friends of family had survived.
At the town of Wandong, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Melbourne, one survivor said he had found the body of a friend in the laundry of a burnt-out house.
"Another 20 seconds and we were gone. We lost our dogs. There have been a lot of dead people. My next door neighbour didn’t make it," said one survivor.
KINGLAKE -- Survivors of Australia's deadly bushfires on Sunday described how a thick blanket of black ash blotted out the sun, leaving only a "horrible orange glow" as flames bore down on their homes.
Residents in the worst-hit areas northwest of Melbourne, where most the 84 fatalities occurred, told how they lost loved ones to the flames and desperately tried to help the injured, including children.
Entire townships were razed to the ground, with burnt-out cars strewn across the road outside one of the worst-hit communities, Kinglake, standing in mute testimony to residents who made doomed attempts to escape.
An AFP photographer who reached the town described how the cars had crashed into each other or into trees as towering flames put an end to their flight from the town.
Nearby, the once picturesque hamlet of Marysville was reduced to smoking ruins.
"Marysville, which was one the loveliest townships in Victoria, if not Australia, has just about been wiped out," said pastor Ivor Jones, whose own home in the town was destroyed.
More than 700 homes have been destroyed in total, many around Kinglake, where shops, petrol stations, the local police station and schools were also destroyed.
At least 22 died in the town, with the toll expected to rise as police complete the grisly task of sifting through the ashes for bodies.
Kinglake residents who fled ahead of the fire were kept out by police roadblocks when they tried to return Sunday.
Chris Harvey, who has lived in the town for 22 years and lost his home, believed authorities were trying to shield locals from the horrors awaiting them.
"There's a five-car pile-up on the road into town, all the cars are burnt," Harvey said.
"It's going to look like Hiroshima I tell you, it's going to look like a nuclear bomb. There's animals dead all over the road."
Some residents never even had a chance to flee, with Harvey's daughter Victoria telling of a local businessman who lost two of his children as the family prepared to make a dash for safety. "He apparently went to put his kids in the car, put them in, turned around to go grab something from the house, then his car was on fire with his kids in it and they burnt," Victoria said.
Witnesses told of trees "exploding" with the intensity of the heat and recounted fire fronts that raced towards them with terrifying speed.
Strathewen resident Mary Avola escaped the flames but her husband of 43 years, Peter, died after they fled their home in separate cars trying to reach a nearby sporting oval.
"He was behind me for a while and we tried to reach the oval but the gates were locked," Avola told Melbourne's Herald Sun website.
"He just told me to go and that's the last time I saw him." Authorities have found his body.
Marie Jones said she was staying at a friend's house in Kinglake when a badly burnt man arrived with his infant daughter, saying his wife and other child had been killed.
"He was so badly burnt," she told the Melbourne Age's website.
"He had skin hanging off him everywhere and his little girl was burnt, but not as badly as her dad, and he just came down and he said 'Look, I've lost my wife, I've lost my other kid, I just need you to save (my daughter).'"
Callers to national radio described how they were huddling in swimming pools as flames approached their homes, and of how children were terrified by the powerful winds, furnace-like heat and an eerie orange glow dominating the sky.
"It was so scary, my little girl, she's five years of age and... she's emotionally traumatised by what's happened today - the horrible orange glow," said a caller who identified himself as Roger from Traralgon South.
Jay Cherie described her family's nightmare drive from Kinglake to safety though a raging inferno.
"When the power went out I madly started to try and pack some things. My husband came running into the house and said, 'grab the kids, grab the cat, we've got to get out'," she said.
In the car "we had fire coming in on the right-hand side of us on a paddock and we had houses to the left of us on fire.
"My little girl was saying to me, 'Mum am I going to see my friends again?', she also said to me, 'Mum am I going to live tomorrow?'"
Other disasters
Here is a list of Australia's deadliest natural disasters, as chronicled by official Web sites:_*
CYCLONE MAHINA, 1899: struck Cape York in the country's far north, causing the greatest death toll of any natural disaster in Australia's recorded history. More than 400 people died, including the crews of about 100 pearling fleet vessels, and an estimated 100 local Aborigines.
GUNDAGAI FLOODS, 1852: killed 89 of the southern rural town's 250 inhabitants. More people would have died were it not for the heroism of local Aborigine Yarri and his friend Jackie who saved more than 40 people using a bark canoe.
VICTORIA BUSHFIRES, 2009
ASH WEDNESDAY BUSHFIRES, 1983: Fires erupted across Victoria and South Australia states, killing 75 people, including 12 volunteer firefighters. More than 2,000 houses were destroyed in Victoria and several hundred more in South Australia.
BLACK FRIDAY BUSHFIRES, 1939: Fires broke out in Victoria state, burning almost 2 million hectares (20,000 square km) and killing 71 people. Whole townships were destroyed, prompting a landmark inquiry that led to measures being taken to protect life and property in the event of future bushfires.
CYCLONE TRACY, 1974: struck the northern city of Darwin on Christmas Eve, flattening the city and killing 64 people and injuring many thousands. More than half of Darwin's population of 43,000 was left homeless.
TASMANIA BUSHFIRES, 1967: fire ripped through 264,000 hectares of forest on the southern island of Tasmania in just five hours, killing 62 people and destroying 1,400 homes.
Here is a list of Australia's deadliest natural disasters, as chronicled by official Web sites:_*
CYCLONE MAHINA, 1899: struck Cape York in the country's far north, causing the greatest death toll of any natural disaster in Australia's recorded history. More than 400 people died, including the crews of about 100 pearling fleet vessels, and an estimated 100 local Aborigines.
GUNDAGAI FLOODS, 1852: killed 89 of the southern rural town's 250 inhabitants. More people would have died were it not for the heroism of local Aborigine Yarri and his friend Jackie who saved more than 40 people using a bark canoe.
VICTORIA BUSHFIRES, 2009
ASH WEDNESDAY BUSHFIRES, 1983: Fires erupted across Victoria and South Australia states, killing 75 people, including 12 volunteer firefighters. More than 2,000 houses were destroyed in Victoria and several hundred more in South Australia.
BLACK FRIDAY BUSHFIRES, 1939: Fires broke out in Victoria state, burning almost 2 million hectares (20,000 square km) and killing 71 people. Whole townships were destroyed, prompting a landmark inquiry that led to measures being taken to protect life and property in the event of future bushfires.
CYCLONE TRACY, 1974: struck the northern city of Darwin on Christmas Eve, flattening the city and killing 64 people and injuring many thousands. More than half of Darwin's population of 43,000 was left homeless.
TASMANIA BUSHFIRES, 1967: fire ripped through 264,000 hectares of forest on the southern island of Tasmania in just five hours, killing 62 people and destroying 1,400 homes.
When I ar
rived back in November I was surprised, as ignorant I was at the time, over the fire preparedness everyone had incorporated into their daily lives. Staff at DPI were rotating on "on-call" for fires and the Country Fire Authorities (CFA), small one bay shops to larger, fire stations were numerous and scattered across the landscape.
rived back in November I was surprised, as ignorant I was at the time, over the fire preparedness everyone had incorporated into their daily lives. Staff at DPI were rotating on "on-call" for fires and the Country Fire Authorities (CFA), small one bay shops to larger, fire stations were numerous and scattered across the landscape.I spend a fair bit of my time at Helen Anderson's Dunkeld "bush property" a beautiful 25 acre lot on the edge of the Grampians National Park about 30 km east of Hamilton. It is rustic, secluded and an authentic bush experience with crimson rosellas, kookaburras (famous laughing bird), emus, eastern grey kangaroos, wallabies and numerous small song birds calling this home as well. Fire preparedness is in the form of a water tank (which the birds and this wallaby enjoys also) hooked up to a fire hose and in these pictures some excavation of a trench to install metal sheeting to prevent embers from blowing under the house. Glen Dixon (wife of Peter from Henty Estates) brought her little Daedong (a very nice Korean tractor) out for some dirt moving and spreading some gravel along the driveway of the house.
Sprinklers will also be hooked up to the water tanks to dowse the walls in an emergency. The domestic water comes from the Dunkeld surface filled reservoir (actually very nice water to drink) but this is too unreliable in afire situation. One the plus side in Dunkeld there are plenty of evacuation routes and the terrain is not nearly as hilly as the properties north fo Melbourne.
The fire events have ,however, resulted in a Royal Commission to look into the disaster, a criminal investigation into the causes and also the way in which people reacted, too many too late and out of shear panic. The recommendation has historically been that it is your choice to leave or stay, but authorities will prevent folks from going back in once they have voluntarily left. The speed with which these fires come at your at and the intense heat has typically allowed the houses to function as the best shelter. The fires typically blow through quickly and, once over, the task is to get out and mop up the small fires left behind. The fires of the weekend, especially in the heavily treed areas, were however so hot that many of house windows exploded and the houses no longer providing any safety. At that time it was too late to evacuate. Others simply took the warnings too lightly and left too late. New discussions are focusing on underground shelters, not unlike the ones in the US tornado-prone areas, with modification undoubtedly as the fires consume the oxygen and a hole in the ground needs to have some provisions for that.
Oh, and then we have the floods in the north east Queensland, way up north in the tropics (a 3 hr flight from here) many areas up there receiving 700mm in three days. The rains are continuing. We just had a light shower here at the office, the temps are only 20 and on Mt. William, which we hiked a good week ago when Laura and Linda visited,the overnight temp was 5! Nothing like the weather, I thought the Alberta scenario was unique!
Heading for the Beef Expo Thursday, so a little cattle talk next time.
Cheers
Kim
