Calm before the storm...

I will start from the start…try to hold some order to my story so it can be followed.

A very important friend suggested that to me after reviewing my initial posting (thankyou, you know who you are!) and it makes sense.

Some periods in this time are as clear as if it happened today. Others became a blurry mess – days and nights literally running into one another like I was riding some hallucinogen rollercoaster of the mind…

So some of my chronology may be…inaccurate. I know though the start, everything.

So…here it begins.

When people ask me if I can sum up my experience – I am stuck for words. Truly, no words CAN do it justice. Sometimes I wish I could project the images and deep emotions in my mind into another’s mind so they can “see it”. Because words cannot describe. All I can say is…we knew it would be bad…but no one on the right side of sanity could have seen HOW bad.

It started, really, a week before. Victoria was gripped in a shockingly long and hot heat wave, the likes of which had never been seen. Mid to late January temperatures were daily in the early to mid 40’s – when the odd 40 degree day is considered the summer norm in this state.

There was a silent and building tension within the fire brigade. We knew the heat and tinder dry conditions were turning the state into a funeral pyre…and it was just a matter of time.

Every time my pager sounded it’s all too familiar “emergency” tone to indicate a fire callout, I dreaded seeing the words “grass”/”scrub”/”wildfire”/”bushland”/”forest”. Perversely, I could almost relax to see a call was “just a car fire” or even, horrible as it is to admit, “just a house fire” – because that meant it was contained to one place.

It was like being trapped between a rock and a hard place. It was just too late in the year to do a thing about it. Back burning and vegetation clearing was desperately needed but impossible to do safely in those conditions. The state’s environment department, DSE, had attempted it in early January and just lost control of their burns (much to our chagrin, as we had to control their mess) so that was halted. It got to a point where the heat was so dangerous, farmers were not venturing into grasslands and machine operators who’d be normally clearing fire breaks were banned from working – in case they sparked or were trapped in a fire.

It was like knowing there was a ticking time bomb…but when was it going to go off?

Where? How?

Several bushfires started in late January. I was back home in the south west of the state and responded on one 44 deg afternoon to a call of “undefined fire/black smoke” approximately 15km from town – this was a bushfire that had started inexplicably (it was never resolved…I personally suspect stupidity or arson) and rapidly took off. It quickly cut a major highway and I remember standing on the back of the truck, in the middle of this highway, watching as the fire “crowned” – that is, roared through the crowns and tops of trees and just JUMPED the highway – our trigger to attack it from behind. It is mildly intimidating to say the least.


That fire went on for 3 days and burnt several hundred hectares and one building. It took a fair effort but it was like a drop in the ocean compared to Black Saturday.

Elsewhere, I was receiving daily updates on a bushfire burning in dense forests in Gippsland in the state’s east…but that was it…so far.

Each day leading up to it was just worse and worse. I normally love summer but this summer I hated the paranoia – waiting for a spark. For it to all come undone. I for one have vocally protested the government’s pandering to green groups – frankly, this was the problem – “urban greenies” from Melbourne had demanded for years that back burning and fire control cease to protect the environment – and the government gave it. Suddenly, in the past two years to 2009, we’d been banned from back burning in all but the most controlled small areas – a token and useless gesture.

All this had combined to create a MASSIVE fire risk.

I was being phoned several times a day by concerned friends, asking me to come to their houses and review their fire plans and readiness, assist them – all non-firefighters and even they knew it was getting bad. I stayed positive and smiled for their sake, assured them the risk “wasn’t so bad”…at least, it felt like the right thing to do. Reassurance? Even though I had to firmly direct a lot of them to clean up – especially those on farms – move fire risks, cut grass, clear gutters, etc…

I still to this day wonder if I wasn’t harsh enough. If the fire service (CFA) as a whole wasn’t harsh enough about it all.

But there was an undeniable tension growing within the ranks of the service – that sooner or later, things would go wrong.

We were anticipating perhaps a major fire campaign like the Grampians in 2005/06…or the North East in 07…the previous fire season had passed without a major campaign fire.

But no one expected a firestorm of simply unforeseeable force.

How wrong we were…