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People died doing exactly what they were told to do

For all our preparation, it was pure luck that my family survived.

WE MOVED into our classic mud-brick house amid rolling paddocks and bush in Cottles Bridge, on the north-eastern outskirts of Melbourne, 10 years ago. The community was welcoming, inviting us to Landcare events, where we learnt how to plant trees, and to Country Fire Authority briefings with tea and biscuits, where we learnt what we should do when the trees caught fire.

We integrated well, getting to know a host of neighbours in Strathewen, St Andrews and Kinglake. We become close friends with actor Reg Evans and his partner, artist Angela Brunton, both of whom perished on Saturday.

The CFA was wonderful in its outreach efforts. Its officers came to our house and assessed our risk. They showed us videos and gave talks about how to survive a fire.

Mostly they told us we could survive. What we needed was appropriate equipment, clothes and a fire plan. The idea, they told us, is you wet down your house and fill the gutters so that flying embers ahead of the flames don't grab hold. When the fire gets close, everyone takes the hoses and scurries inside to wait it out in the darkest corner you can find, away from the radiant heat. When the fire has passed you take the hoses out again and squirt those nasty spot fires. Nerve-racking? Sure. But effective? You bet!

So on Saturday we all did what we were told to do. We implemented our fire plans. We had our two fire hoses out taut and ready for action, our two petrol pumps primed, our all-cotton fire gear donned. But then the wind changed and the fire that was ripping through the lives of our neighbours just to the north of us turned away with minutes to spare. As we were waiting we could hear the news on the scanner and radio - people are dying out there. And these were people like us, good neighbours and citizens with assiduously maintained fire plans. Our friends and neighbours died on Saturday doing what they were told to do.

I have had plenty of contact with the CFA and Department of Sustainability and Environment over the years, from volunteer firefighters to community liaison workers to senior officers, and without exception they have been dedicated, generous, community-minded and good. It's not their fault that what they told us to do when we moved in reflected conditions that were even then being overtaken by a new and wildly different climate.

When we moved into our rural haven at Cottles Bridge the clock started ticking on 10 years of well-below-average rainfall. The summers became hotter and hotter until this year, when day after day of intense heat left the landscape looking like it had been left in the oven too long. And the leaves on the trees we had been boldly planting all these years were burnt brown by the sun and shrivelled while I heaved buckets of water around the place trying desperately to sustain them.

The fire that dropped from the sky on Saturday plunged us into a new reality. Environmental conditions had changed drastically before our eyes, but the advice to the community had remained the same. Even on Saturday the urgent words were streaming out of the radio: Be safe! Stay inside!

Had the fireballs come as far as our place our hoses and pumps and cotton clothes and every other piece of paraphernalia we had accumulated (such as wet mops and buckets and a bath full of water) would have counted for nothing.

This fire was not what the CFA had in mind when it encouraged our communities to stay and fight. This was something new. As I was standing out the back of the house on Saturday, just after I had heard about the first three deaths down the road at Strathewen, I suffered a moment of blinding clarity. There I was, hose in hand, equipment gleaming, fire plan laminated, just as I had been advised. But if the fire had come barrelling over the hill behind me I knew we'd be dead.

Philip Chubb is associate professor of journalism at Monash University.

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Posted By: Philip Chubb on 11/02/2009 12:58:35 PM | Comments (65)

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Did they tell you what to do when the rubber hoses were alight? Did they locate and tell all the residents such? wheres the proof journal of 'Work Performed'. They told you of 'brush fire proceedure plan' not a real bushfire. What scale of Fire rating were you advised of when to Stay inside? Medium, Red Alert, High, Extreme or what they screamed out of the car in main street "Go,Go,Go". You were lucky but still ill-informed. 181 good reasons to be critical now!

Posted by adaptapensioner.com, 11/02/2009 1:43:55 PM

YEP, there's no doubt Philip the fire plan scenario needs revamping as Adopt or Adapt has posted above. Spare a thought for Bendigo in central Victoria, too. The wildfires there came within a few kilometres of the CBD in a major regional city of 100,000 people.

Posted by Cedric, 11/02/2009 4:56:10 PM

Please don't lay any blame on the CFA ~ they have done a wonderful job and told you all what they knew at the time to be the best for you. It is so sad what has happened but we all have to be positive from this and learn and maybe stop the loss of life in the future. We know this is what you believe too . . hang on in there ~ our thoughts are with you

Posted by iceblueu, 11/02/2009 7:40:26 PM

Ths is such a wonderful piece of writing and it is absolutely correct. I lived in a fire prone area for over a decade. The weather changed, its as simple as that. The advice given to us did not change. No one in this current ongoing event should even be comtemplating staying, it simply cannot be fought under any circumstances. Any climate change sceptics left?

Posted by Annika, 11/02/2009 10:52:28 PM

Please can anyone give us information about people living in mainstreet Kangaroon Flat we are in Uk and cannot get information about what happened there, my god father and his family live there we are desperate for information

Posted by Maureen Woodgate, 11/02/2009 11:37:21 PM

Their is going to be a Royal Commission into this tragedy and I hope that we will see the authorities take the advice rendered and put it into action. Instead of the usual political speak and shelving of any plan or just implementing small bits.

Posted by Dodg, 12/02/2009 8:39:16 AM

If more hazzard reduction burns were done the fire would have moved a lot slower. All levels of Government need to look at their 'green' policy and make some adjustments so this never happens again.

Posted by Survivor, 12/02/2009 9:05:57 AM

Premier Brumby states publicly that his" Fight or Flee" policy is the only way to go. Could he please explain this: in the 07/08 California bushfire more than 1500 houses were destroyed (bearing in mind that many of these were "mansion" type homes of upwards of twenty persons. The total death toll was NINE which included eight firefighters and one civilian from a heart attack. Why the disparity? It doesn`t need a royal commission to come up with the answer. Two words: COMPUSORY EVACUATION

Posted by manxboy, 12/02/2009 9:43:25 AM

The bush in Victoria is designed to burn many plants will only germinate after a fire has been through, from the Mallee to the high mountains to the coast fire will come to your area if you live in an area of native vegetation. The reason it has evolved in this way is a result of the climate in this part of Australia. The question we need to ask ourselves is how big and how hot the fire will be when it finally comes. A bush fire above a certain intensity is only survivable in some sort specially designed fire shelter, as the intensity of the fire decreases the degree of protection needed becomes much less critical. So if you live in tall timber with high undergrowth and its bone dry you can forget the idea of stay defend on the other hand if you live in area surrounded by low grass stay and defend is very sensible.

Posted by Patpilot, 12/02/2009 10:16:20 AM

The problem with the 'get outta there' idea is that people always assume the fire is coming from the north and there is an easy direct escape to the south.... ideally this is the case. But, invariably, as has been the case of many many fires, lots of people die in the effort to get away (often too late). We can see from the Vic fires the chaos of those trying to escape as fires engulfed roads, smoke prevented clear visibility and fallen trees blocked the path in many directions - look through the photos of cars all over the place and we can see how chaotic the 'escape plan' was. The only way that a 'leave/evacuate' policy works is if people leave many hours before the fire gets to the property (when it is surely safe to do so). I questioned my partner last night about our property, if a fire was 50 kms away would she evacuate (ie if fires were in Maitland/Beresfield would people in Shortland be evacuated? - discounting that there is not too much vegetation in there, but gives you an idea of distance)- she said not until it got closer - I commented that fires in Vic were travelling at nearly 100km an hour and in 20 mins the fire would be ten mis away and then it would be too late to leave safely .... if you were taking the safest viewpoint and agree to evacuate everyone within, say, 30kms of a firefront, then you are faced with disaplcing potentially a million people. LAst week there were 40 fires burning in NSW and Vic - how can you, realistically, evacuate everyone within 30kms of those fires?????? and if you wait until the fires get closer, its often too late to escape, for the reasons set out above. I am simply trying to be devil's advocate here - and agree that there needs to be discussion on the topic. I once had to get away from a fire - and the smoke, other cares, emergency vehicles, fallen trees made it difficult to follwe a road that wavered along the edge of the fire front..... As a third option, what about the idea of a community 'bomb-shelter' type or arrangement in small towns?

Posted by King Idiot, 12/02/2009 10:38:46 AM

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