:wah: Don't know about that OP but thanks. I'm not a career firey I'm a volunteer, most of the CFA is.
The sound of a bush fire is like a freight train, or hurricane, it' gets louder as it approaches. Then at 4:00 am in the morning when the humidty is high and the temperture is cold it's just a crackle like in an open fire place. That's one thing that really gets me about all of this, during the day we were sweating like pigs and on the night shifts we were freezing . I was literally shivering, you stop for a rest and you needed the fire blankets to keep warm on top of the heavy black urban fire coats. Your uniform is wet and you seek out a good hot spot to stand in front of to keep warm. The irony huh?
I remember that woman screaming at us to get around the back of her property where she had her newborn calves housed. She had too many spot fires at her door step to put out herself. then, thank you, thankyou, thankyous. I think she was okay after that, she just needed a bit of a hand. We got screamed at a lot that day. I was prepared to fight fires and do a job, I wasn't prepared for calming people down. Speak to them in a calm friendly voice and smile. Actually smile at them. Bizzarre under the circumstances. I knew instinctively these fires weren't normal and they must have known too.
Why did that older couple want to get to their house? They could see fires all around them. what were they going to do when they got their? tumble some things into the car and turn around and come back again? what if we couldn't control the fires? What were we supposed to do then?.....save them? All those stupid questions keep going around in my head .............what if? We have no power or authority to make people leave, we can only watch and hope they are going to be okay. We couldn't even give advice when it was asked and people needed that little bit of a push to leave the area. That's when I said to a woman and her son "if it was me I'd be going". That woman had no idea of what we had just come through and seen. We knew better than her and we couldn't pass on the info to help her make the decision. Why? Because we be sued.
it all happened just too quickly . There were no radio warnings because the transmission tower was burnt. And it came too quick for proper warnings so people only had us for communicaton. And we're standing there thinking the same as them " what the **** is happening here?, where the hell did this come from?". Saturday is a normal trading day, people were still at work. Their neighbours were ringing them to come home. We had cars rushing everywhere. Fortunetly people were switched on enough not to block our path.
I didn't want to use the radio, the traffic on it was mental at one stage. Team leaders and captains were calling for trucks and strike teams and more trucks. I just didn't want to be apart of that traffic. There were strike team leaders losing patience and you could hear it in their voices. residents were screaming at police at road blocks, blocking their path to their homes. But the law is very clear on this , if you leave you can't get back in again. Women complaining that they left their kids and animals in the house. ( ****ing idiots) :-5 then the police have to escort them to their homes tying up resources. :-5
The one thing that stands out about that day was the lack of information. Granted it couldn't be helped because you can't pull radio waves out of your arse if there is no transmission tower. but it left everyone in a state of chaos. Knowledge is power as they say . At least it would have helped people with the decisions they had to make. But then again so many areas were blocked off like major highways and such that people couldn't get out of the region anyway. Fires were everywhere. Victoria is as big as the entire land mass of Britain. Could you imagine these fires and the number of hectares that has been burnt over there? How many major roads freeways and highways would it encroach upon? people did make a run for it and got through but others didn't and are now dead.
I hope the royal commission into this turns out some useful advice.
Sitting down talking to my husband as to whether we're going to let the house burn is a conversation I'll probably have again in my lifetime, I just hope it's not too soon.
It was made very clear that there is no such thing as a safe area for people to go anymore. There is no such thing as a refuge. There is a point to register your details but you can't rock up to a refuge and wait out fires. You have to be prepared and ready to be responsible for your own actions. Reason? Ask the coppers who had to escort 200 people from a refuge point in Marysville. They were all congregated a the local football oval thinking it was safe, it went up in flames too. They got out through flames just in time.