"INSIDE THE FIRESTORM" "NARRATOR:" "Saturday, February 7, 2009." "Temperatures have been soaring above 40 degrees for days." "Now the winds are rising and Victoria holds its breath." "NEWSREADER:" "Well, there's simply no way of underestimating the fire threat Victoria is facing over the next 24 hours or so..." "During Saturday a gale-force north wind will combine with extreme heat, and that's not a good combination in terms of fire potential." "..and fire authorities are warning the public to prepare for the worst." "NARRATOR:" "But what happens proves to be beyond even these dire warnings." "It was a wall of flame that came up that mountain." "MAN:" "Slow down." "Slow down." "Slow down." "Keep it going." "I remember holding Matilda in my arms and I just thought," ""She's just gotta keep breathing."" "MAN:" "Everything was on fire around us, literally everything in all directions, in the 360 degrees that we could see." "WOMAN:" "He said, "We're just stuffed." ""There's no CFA." "We're stuffed." "We're completely surrounded."" "I said, "Can you get out?" He said, "We can't do anything."" "I didn't know how long I could hang on, just because I knew how bad it was." "I thought there'd be no-one coming." "NARRATOR:" "This is the story of Australia's most devastating bushfire... ..a day of disaster as it unfolded to those who were there... (WOMAN YELLS) Get in here!" "..the eyewitnesses caught in the path of the firestorm that would rewrite history and change all the rules." "MAN:" "I'd never seen anything like this and I..." "I...freely admit that I was terrified." "45 kilometres north-east of Melbourne in the country township of Kinglake," "Mick and Jen Clark are packing for their long-awaited holiday." "They leave on Monday." "Oh, we were looking forward." "I'd marked down 100 days before we go and I crossed them off my calendar." "99 to go...98 to go..." "That's how anxious I am to go." "Hi." "My name's Neeve, and this is my house." "I'm going to show you around today." "And my granddaughter Neeve, she's a great help." "She's buzzing around us and running wild." "This is my cat, Gigi." "Say hi, Gigi." "WOMAN:" "She was unpacking, putting in the fridge, and working out what was going on the holiday with us and what was being left for Danny, 'cause Danny had just started holidays and he was in the house...he was home." "He was going to be home the whole six weeks that we were going away." "NARRATOR:" "Part of the holiday plan is for Mick and Jen's son Danny to stay and look after the home and their wilting plants." "MICK:" "Yeah, I asked him to make sure he waters them and he says, "Yeah, I'll do that," you know?" ""Or feed the chook or something," you know?" "So, yeah." "That's another thing he said, that he'd feed the chook." "So... (LAUGHS)" "NARRATOR:" "Across the road the Kinglake CFA captain arrives on shift." "He is one of 7,000 Country Fire Authority volunteers and staff, who are like soldiers waiting for a war that may never happen." "I fully expected to sit inside the fire station, in nice, air-conditioned comfort, and nothing happen for the whole day." "That's what I expected." "I suppose you gotta look at the history too." "I mean, how many times has a fire come through our area?" "I mean, your '26 fires were pretty bad." "I think the '39 fires." "I think there's something happened in the '60s that came up from the south." "But there was captains sitting in, probably, stations all over Victoria, expecting the same thing." "NARRATOR:" "Mid-morning in Melbourne and senior firefighters are gathering." "They're studying the Fire Danger Index, combining temperature, wind speed, humidity and fuel data." "It measures the risk of a bushfire on a scale of 0-100." "Today the index is peaking close to 200." "MAN:" "In my mind, I'm worried." "I'm concerned." "I'm thinking to myself, "This is a day that..."" "You know, "It's not going to be an ordinary day." ""It's going to be an absolutely horrible day."" "Yet I know I've faced days like this before and, through providence, nothing actually happens." "NARRATOR:" "If a fire does start, there's a well-established chain of command." "Reports of fires from the front line are published on the Authority website." "Armed with this information" "ABC Radio, the designated emergency broadcaster, transmits the warnings." "WOMAN ON RADIO:" "77 4 ABC Melbourne and ABC Victoria, your emergency services network -- bushfire information." "NARRATOR:" "The system is immediately tested." "An hour's drive north of Melbourne, 60-kilometre-an-hour winds tear down powerlines at Kilmore East." "A fire ignites." "MAN:" "The Kilmore East fire, you probably had less than 10 minutes, probably somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes from the time it ignited to the time it started." "Now, it seems as though it's probably been about 15 or 20 minutes before the fire authorities actually were aware of that fire, and then you have to actually get to the fire, and then you have to start working on it." "So it was well beyond suppressible stage by the time firefighting authorities were actually there." "NARRATOR:" "The fire is out of control, but nothing Australia hasn't seen before." "As it drives towards the Hume Freeway, concern is tempered." "The 100-metre-wide barrier should stop a regulation bushfire dead in its tracks." "MAN:" "Jesus Christ!" "Where's the road gone, mate?" "But this fire isn't normal." "Within the hour fire crews on the Hume can only watch." "MAN OVER RADIO:" "We were heading down the Hume towards Wandong." "At the bridge, there's a fire." "MAN 2:" "Watch it." "Watch it on the right there." "Watch it on the right." "Keep going, mate." "Keep going." "The four-lane freeway offers no resistance." "Gale-force winds hurl burning bark and embers across to the other side where new fires start." "The fire hardly hiccuped when it saw the freeway." "It basically moved across the freeway as if it wasn't there, in reality." "Eyewitnesses are worried that the fire is already outrunning the authorities." "WOMAN ON RADIO:" "Kevin from Kilmore East had just phoned." "Hi, Kevin." "Which fire are you?" "The Wandong?" "MAN ON RADIO:" "Yeah, the Kilmore East-Wandong fire, but it started about 500 metres from my farm." "Wandong and Heathcote Junction, I believe, are going to be..." "They'll be singed." "They've both got to go on full alert." "But there's no announcement saying that they've got to put their fire precautions in place." "But it's the wind on top of my hill, on the farm, and the wind's blowing at 80-100 kilometres an hour, and it's going to build up and the fire trucks are not making any difference at all." "So I don't know why Wandong and Heathcote Junction haven't been alerted, 'cause they're so close." "NARRATOR:" "Within minutes of this call warnings are issued, but it seems the system is already being stretched." "As the day unfolds it will all but collapse." "In Wandong, Steve Varga and his brother-in-law Ed are in the direct path of the fire." "They're not relying on warnings." "Instead, Steve has faith in his purpose-built, fire-resistant home." "It's embedded into the ground with double-brick walls and a steel roof." "MAN:" "There was shutters over the front windows so that when you operated the shutters it completely closed the front of the house off." "It looked more like a factory than a house." "That was about it." "It was a completely closed-up box." "NARRATOR:" "Steve stands ready to stay and defend." "This is the textbook way to survive a normal bushfire." "You either leave early or fight and then shelter as the fire passes through." "STEVE:" "A bushfire, as I've always understood it, will have a front that comes through for 10 to 20 minutes, you know?" "We could go inside, wait for the front to pass, and come out and put out any embers or anything that might have ignited or, you know, deal with the problems." "NARRATOR:" "With the smoke rising, Steve puts his plan into action." "STEVE:" "The time came and we decided to start the pump, and I was hosing down the roof and Ed started yelling that it was time to get inside." "I could hear this noise." "It was a bit like a jumbo jet, I think." "I was still holding the hose up there and Ed started screaming, absolutely screaming, to get inside now and so I just dropped the hose." "And in the midst of all that there's this noise like the jumbo jet was about to land on us." "Then all of a sudden, there's this huge 'boom' as the fireball hit and the entire carport was just torn off its posts and blown away." "I just couldn't believe it." "It was phenomenal." "And at that point, the whole world, everywhere around us, just went red." "It was like a tornado more so than a fire and the house actually shook." "It's buried in the ground, and it shook." "Ed's eyebrows sort of go up and I go, "Jesus," you know?" "It said it all." "We just didn't know what was going to happen next." "NARRATOR:" "The fire has passed through with such ferocity that everything outside is relentlessly burning." "There wasn't a 20-minute front." "There wasn't a front at all." "There was this explosion, which we could call the front, and then there was this intense burning for, like, two and a half hours." "So when we got out of that house it was ground zero outside." "Everything was gone." "Steve's fire-resistant home is a smouldering wreck." "Hours after he took this picture it collapsed completely." "The Vargas have lost everything they own." "Their neighbours lost much more." "Steven Lackas stayed to defend the family home." "His wife Sandra and son Bailey left with minutes to spare." "Steven perished." "Black Saturday has claimed its first life." "Wandong burns, and the fire moves onward and upward into the Mount Disappointment State Forest." "As it rises, so too does the wind, sweeping the flames to the south-east." "Nestled on the other side of the range, directly in the fire's path, is tiny Strathewen." "Mary and Peter Avola can't see what's coming." "WOMAN:" "Pete, you know, had the pump on and he was keeping things moist, and I'd made some port wine jelly with blackberries and strawberries and things in it, as it was hot, and I said, you know, "Would you like that?"" "He said, "Yeah." "I'll have that with some ice-cream, and that will do me."" "And I think the cricket may have been on on that Saturday." "So we just sat for a little while and watched the cricket and then he said, "Oh, I'll go back out and move the hose,"" "and still we were calm and enjoying it." "NARRATOR:" "The Avolas feel the heat but not the danger... ..and there is a failure of the system." "CFA staff prepare a draft message, predicting that the fire could hit various towns, including Strathewen, but the warning is not sent to the control room to be uploaded onto the CFA website." "Mary and Peter have no idea what's heading their way." "MARY:" "I said to Peter that I'll just get on the internet and have a look and see what's going on." "So I got onto the CFA site, but all the fires that were going on were sort of a long way away, and the time element..." "You know, there was nothing at all about anything that was near us." "NARRATOR:" "It's 46.4 degrees in Melbourne, the city's highest temperature since records began." "Victoria is the hottest place on Earth." "MAN ON RECORDING:" "I'm in our backyard in Melbourne." "It's the hottest day ever." "NARRATOR:" "Unofficially, the temperature's even higher." "MAN:" "As you can see, our little thermometer, which is just sitting on the rubbish bin in the shade, has blown itself out." "It's reading its maximum of 51 degrees, and I think I'm gonna go back inside before I faint of heat stress myself." "NARRATOR:" "Victoria is becoming a furnace." "A second major fire is blasting through the Black Range State Forest." "It's less than 50 kilometres from where the Kilmore East fire sparked, but this time fallen powerlines are not to blame." "Sickeningly, it seems this fire has been deliberately lit." "It's racing towards the Murrindindi River and a popular picnic retreat." "Within minutes state emergency crews are on their way." "You could see the plume already within 10 minutes." "It was big and black and you could see it was building, and on a day like that, with a strong wind, the smoke was laid over and it's not a good sign, and I knew straightaway first attack wasn't going to be an option." "Even if you had a hundred tankers there, it wouldn't have mattered." "I knew already, even before I got there." "NARRATOR:" "Jenna Pritchett, her partner, Josh, and their two young children are cooling off down on the river when they're caught completely unawares." "With 15 other daytrippers, they make a run for it." "WOMAN:" "I could just see this wall of flames just beside us." "There wasn't bush anymore." "There was just flames." "That's it." "And, yeah, I just kept on driving as fast as I could until we ran into the DSE guys, at which point Josh told me to slow down because we'd passed the fire and it was all burnt" "so we thought we'd be able to get out." "I was looking in the windows of these cars, and there's kids." "There's a lady holding a baby, and I was just, "Gee, where have these people come from?"" "So I looked back and there's horizontal flames across the road and there's no way of knowing if we could get those people back the way they came." "It was then that I decided to take a stand in the river and use the river as a refuge." "NARRATOR:" "With fire surrounding on all sides and thick smoke descending," "Jenna, two-year-old Kayla, and Matilda, just seven months, are bundled into a DSE truck." "JENNA:" "I remember holding Matilda in my arms, and I was just looking down at her while she's just laying there." "I'm trying to give her the bottle and I just thought, "She's just gotta keep breathing."" "(CHILD CRIES)" "MIKE:" "The kiddies, they were petrified." "Every time I opened the door up, they were screaming." "The adults, they were worried too." "I could see it in their eyes." "JENNA:" "No doctors, no ambulance." "Nothing could get in to help us if they suddenly stopped breathing from all the smoke." "(CHILD CRIES) MIKE:" "There's heaps of embers." "Embers are flying across, probably as quick as the wind, probably 60, 80 kilometres an hour." "You just hope that one of those big trees isn't gonna come and clobber the whole lot of us who were standing in the river." "JENNA:" "I did think I would get out." "I didn't think the kids would." "I thought, "I'm gonna be here with the kids and they are gonna die."" "And that's basically..." "Yeah, that's what I thought." "NARRATOR:" "It's almost two hours before the fire finally dies down." "Jenna and her children make their escape." "JENNA:" "I just remember just gasping for air." "It's just like there wasn't a lot of oxygen in the air." "It was that hot and that stuffy, and you're just breathing in smoke." "You could barely even breathe." "MIKE:" "The toughest moment for me would undoubtedly be when I opened a door of one of the vehicles up where the kids were in, and I took a little girl out and she just hung onto me so tight." "I just kept saying to her, "You're gonna be OK, you're gonna be OK,"" "and I was trying to hold...cover her from the smoke, and it was only about 10, 15 steps and we were in the vehicle and she was safe anyway, so that was good." "That was the hardest moment and the best moment, probably." "(CHUCKLES FAINTLY)" "MAN ON RECORDING:" "Murrindindi is 15-20 k's away." "That's where the seat of the fire is." "NARRATOR:" "A keen amateur cameraman films the fire that almost claimed Jenna and her family." "MAN:" "The wind is blowing across in front of me from my right to my left, in which direction the smoke is." "But, like hell, I hope the fire doesn't change direction." "NARRATOR:" "Just a few yards away, his heavily pregnant daughter Emma, son-in-law Jonathan and three-year-old grandson Otto are at home in Buxton." "With the fire heading away from them, things are fairly calm." "MAN:" "Hello." "Hello, everybody." "There's young Otto," "Emma, who is expected to produce at any day... (SIGHS) Dear, oh, dear." "MAN:" "There was a woman actually sunbathing down at the river." "WOMAN:" "One of our neighbours from the other side of the river was lounging, you know, on a banana lounge chair with her stubby." "And I went and said, "Um, there's a fire,"" "and she said, "Oh, I've been in the country 30 years." ""That's alright." "Know what to do in fires."" ""I'll jump in the river," she says." ""I'll just jump in the river."" "I went, "OK." "That's A plan, I suppose."" "Then I kind of went, "You might want to turn around because..." ""Look over there."" "Then all of a sudden, in the 10 minutes we'd been down at the river, that little plume had gone into..." "Now it was this wide and now it was black, and then you could look up and it was like..." "The smoke wasn't going over us, of course." "It was going directly across." "Moving away." "But all of a sudden it was Mount Vesuvius." "It was just incredible." "NARRATOR:" "By mid-afternoon, the catastrophe has begun." "10 uncontrollable fires are now burning." "Nine major roads and highways are blocked and closed." "Beyond the Kilmore and Murrindindi fires, the west is ablaze at Horsham and Coleraine, and to the south-east in Bunyip, containment lines are breached." "Not since the worst bushfires in Victoria's history, in 1939, has Melbourne been so surrounded by fire." "And it's getting even worse." "In the south-east, yet another fire is well underway at Churchill, the second of the day to be deliberately lit." "The worst-case scenario is unfolding." "The board literally lights up, and so you get fire after fire after fire breaking out, all in and around, generally speaking," "150 kilometres odd of Melbourne." "So you've got resources already heavily committed to Kilmore, to Bunyip, just being committed to Murrindindi, and we literally had, at that point in time, regions running out of fire trucks." "Every single fire truck they had in their region, in our strongest capability, got depleted." "Everything." "NARRATOR:" "The troops on the ground are being stretched to breaking point." "This tanker's been brought in as backup to fight the first fire of the day at Wandong." "But all the crew can do is save themselves." "MAN:" "Stay in survival mode?" "That's an understatement." "Jesus!" "MAN 2:" "That's coming straight at us." "Just keep an eye on that that it doesn't hit the truck." "NARRATOR:" "The battle's already been lost, and the fire marches on." "A wall of flame, it charges across Mount Disappointment State Forest." "Burning bark and even whole branches are picked up by hurricane-strength wind and carried 10, 20, even 35 kilometres ahead of the main front." "Never before have such spotting distances been recorded." "At 3:45, the monster fire reaches the ridge above the tiny township of Strathewen, and explodes." "DR TOLHURST:" "Strathewen was in a valley downwind of this major ridge, the Sugarloaf Ridge, so the embers that were being launched from that Sugarloaf Ridge into the valley area below were basically acting like a cluster bomb." "You really don't have anywhere much to go because, if you like, 10 kilometres in almost any direction is being lit up with fires." "We had hundreds of fires starting, and they were all starting to interact." "So it's basically what we describe as being a firestorm." "MAN:" "And I turned round and I looked at the mountains, and the scene that confronted me was indescribable because it was spotting through the mountains and the spot would go to the size of a tennis court, then the size of a football oval," "and then the timber in between would explode, the bush would explode, and you'd have this monster." "And you'd look five, six kilometres to the east, into Strathewen, and it was burning there, and no matter where I looked there'd be a fire and...and..." "Yeah, it was like something I've never, ever seen before, even though I've got a lot of experience." "I'd never seen anything like this and I..." "I...freely admit that I was terrified." "NARRATOR:" "Strathewen still hasn't been warned." "It seems the town is completely off the radar." "Mary and Peter Avola have minutes to defend their home." "MARY:" "It was getting hotter, noisier, windier." "The sky was red and swirling." "All around our property there were fires under the pine trees." "Peter was saying to me he was getting hot, his legs were burning, and we'd better go." ""Get in the car." "Get in the car and go." "I'll follow you."" "There were flames around and under the car." "I waited for Peter, and by the time I sort of looked around, the road was on fire." "He was then behind me and there was no going right anymore." "You just couldn't see what was happening." "It was just burning and burning." "(FIRE ROARS)" "I'd hoped that he would follow me and when he didn't, I didn't know what to think." "You hope and hope that, you know, he's safe or he would have got somewhere." "But I knew there wasn't anywhere to go, only he'd either stay with the car or he'd, you know, run for his life." "NARRATOR:" "It'll be three long hours before Mary hears what's happened to Peter." "At the same time, a friend of 40 years, the local CFA captain, is trying to get into town." "david McGAHY:" "I'd got about 100 metres in, down this road." "Um..." "I thought, "I'm going to kill everyone, myself included,"" "because the flames were all over the top of us and I thought, "I'm going to kill everyone,"" "'cause I know the road intimately." "I live on the flaming' road, so I knew the road." "I knew that the bush got heavier and heavier as it got into Strathewen." "I thought, "I'm going to kill everyone," you know?" ""You're a fool, man."" "So I stopped everyone and we backed out." "MAN:" "Behind us, mate." "Behind us." "NARRATOR:" "As David mcgahy battles to reach Strathewen, refugees stream the other way." "Taking to the road is supposed to be the most dangerous thing to do, but for some it's the only choice." "Mary Avola's neighbours stop to rescue others." "MAN:" "Look." "People are trying to evacuate." "(GIRL YELLS) Get in here." "MAN:" "Got a spot down here." "GIRL:" "In here." "MAN:" "Just come in, mate." "MAN 2:" "Look at it behind us." "It's bloody scary, man." "We were just wondering which way to go to get to the top of the hill." "NARRATOR:" "With everyone on board, they head for the presumed safety of Kinglake township." "As they do so," "CFA staff prepare an urgent threat message for various towns, including Kinglake." "But the message inexplicably goes missing and never appears on their website." "It's another half an hour before the warning is broadcast." "Radio is relying on overwhelmed CFA officials for information." "MAN OVER RADIO:" "The communities of Clonbinane, Mount Disappointment," "Kinglake, Heathcote Junction, which is actually next to Wandong," "Upper Plenty, Humevale, Reedy Creek and Strath Creek may be directly impacted on the fire in the coming time frame." "(FIRE ROARS)" "NARRATOR:" "Half of the places singled out for warnings are already on fire." "Kinglake still waits." "The Clarks have put their faith in the CFA website." "It's a case of 'no news is good news'." "Jen and Danny were on the internet, checking out all the fires, what's going on, 'cause we knew that one was in Kilmore." "And we said," ""Well, it's not going to affect us so we're fine." "We're alright."" "It's only something that starts pretty local we get worried about, you know?" "25 kilometres from the Clarks, fire is threatening Whittlesea." "Mick's daughter Beck is in the town." "I was really nervous but I wasn't thinking about me." "I was more concerned about my family." "So to me, it wasn't coming to me." "It wasn't going to get me." ""I'm in the middle of a town." "It's not going to burn down a town."" "So that's how I looked at it." "NARRATOR:" "Two of Beck's teenage sons are at home, 13-year-old Aiden and 15-year-old Mackenzie." "With the possibility of the fire coming their way, dad Ross puts a well-rehearsed plan into action." "ROSS:" "Talking with my wife in Whittlesea, who was under threat, it was still agreed upon to stick to the fire plan and to move..." "..our prized possessions further away." "So I grabbed Mackenzie and I grabbed Aiden, and Mackenzie helped me move the big, huge photo box with all our possessions without a problem." ""No worries, Dad." He was grouse." "And off we travelled... ..to Nan and Pop's house." "NARRATOR:" "Mick and Jen aren't just further away from the fire in Whittlesea." "They also live in a brick home, which has been designated as a safe house by the local fireguard group." "That's when Ross, my son-in-law, came up with the other kids, the two grandchildren," "Mac and Aiden, and their dog, Jazz, and a big box of photos." "(CHUCKLES) And he put them out in the patio sort of thing." "And it only seemed to be minutes after that that Mac came in and said," ""While I'm there, can I have a cold bath, Pop?"" "And I said, "Yeah, go for it."" "When he finished, he said, "Will I let it out?"" "I said, "No, leave the water in the bath" ""because it's always handy to have."" "NARRATOR:" "By late afternoon the sun is still high, but Victoria is black with smoke, and a part of the state is about to become an unlikely victim of the day's events." "Yet another fire has been deliberately lit, this time just five kilometres from the city of Bendigo and its 100,000 residents." "Tim Pascoe is completely unaware." "I'm tidying up the house, just doing all that stuff that gets neglected over the week, with, yeah, the new air conditioner going." "It was working like an absolute treat." "It was gorgeous." "I'd just got it put in the week before." "The house had never been so comfortable in summer." "The fire is quickly spreading, but, living so close to a city," "Tim is one of a majority to see no need for a plan." "TIM:" "And mobile phone starts ringing." "I go outside to take the call and it's Mum from..." "She's up at my auntie's place in Yarrawonga, and they're having trouble with their TV, so she's wanting some advice." "While I'm talking to her, well, as soon as I walked outside," "I'm talking and I'm looking up at the sky and it was like, "What the...?"" "Just this intense grey sky and just the slightest smell of smoke." "But it was just like, "What is this?"" "First I'm thinking it's a bomb, which seemed really illogical, but then the next thought was," ""No, it's a fire." "It's definitely a fire."" "(SIRENS WAIL)" "NARRATOR:" "Within the hour, there are spot fires in Bendigo's outskirts." "MAN ON RADIO:" "So, people living in the Maiden Gully and Long Gully area are being asked to please implement their fire plans." "WOMAN ON RADIO:" "So it's literally in the CBD, Jonathan?" "Not quite the CBD, but it is certainly approaching built-up parts of Bendigo." "Goodness me." "NARRATOR:" "Standing between Tim Pascoe and a looming wall of flames is a garden hose." "We've gone running out the back just in time to see this monster fireball just hurtling right at us." "All we had time to do was drop the hoses and just scream, "Run!"" "and we ran for our lives, basically, up the side yard and up onto Union Street." "Turned around and, like, this first wave's hit the back of the house and you could almost..." "It almost shook the house." "Like, it was like it was a solid object hitting the house, you know?" "And then there was another wave." "Whack!" "It's hit it again and she's just gone up like... (CLICKS FINGERS) .." "like that." "NARRATOR:" "Tim's house is one of 58 destroyed in Bendigo." "TIM:" "It was tragic, but at the end of the day we walked out of there." "A lot of people, yeah, couldn't do that." "Tim's neighbour, 48-year-old Mick Kane, died in his driveway... ..his wife, Carol, and sister Jill helpless as he tried to escape." "The fire that moved so rapidly towards Strathewen has more towns in its sights." "In Kinglake West, yet another family are in range." "MAN:" "I had a fire pump which was always kept in the shed." "That connects onto a ring main that I had under the ground, just a two-inch ring main, with three 36-metre hose reels round the house." "Jason Lynn has everything he needs to protect the family home." "Since records began, only one person has died defending a defendable house." "The plan is for his wife, Ruth, and their two young children to stay with him and shelter." "But at the last minute" "Ruth's not convinced that sticking to the rules is a good idea." "JASON:" "I'm thinking what they tell you -- if you're gonna leave, leave early, or shelter in your house 'cause you'll be safe." "So she said to me, "Well, if there's a fire close, I'm going,"" "and I said, "No, you better not."" "I said, "I can smell it." "If I can smell it like that, it must be close." ""You'd better not go."" "And she said, "Please let me go." "Please let me go," and I said..." "I said, "Well, if you want to go, go now."" "According to CFA advice, Ruth has made the worst possible decision, to take to the road when a fire is approaching." "She put my daughter..." "Julia was asleep in her cot in her nappy." "Just in her nappy." "That's it." "She grabbed her and my son and I just seen her..." "She said, "I'm going," and she took off down the road." "(LOUD RUMBLING)" "NARRATOR:" "A few hundred yards away," "Ross Buchanan has returned from dropping off his teenage sons at their grandparents'." "When I came outside the sun had disappeared, and when I looked across the paddocks the flames were coming." "And there it was." "There was the fire at my place." "It was disbelief and, you know, it's a nightmare." "So I did my best, spraying water all around, doing what I can." "Some people from the DSE race up the road, 'cause I live in a one-way street, so there's only one way out." "And they come racing up the road and they said," ""Ross, the whole street down the road's gone." ""Just get out, mate." He says, "I can't force you."" "He says, "Just go,"" "and I realised, you know, we're in trouble here." "It was just dead calm, not even a breath of wind, and I thought, "This is good," you know, like, "What's going on here?"" "Like, it's just so still, 'cause it was just such a windy day, such a hot wind, and then that wind stopped and I thought," ""This won't be too bad." "Maybe the fire's not coming now."" "And then I could hear it." "I could actually hear it." "I could still smell that real strong eucalyptus-burning smell, but I could hear the noise of it before you could see it." "It just was crashing and smashing like a storm, and then the wind picked up again and that's with the fire come through with it." "I was standing there, out the front, with the hose running, flat-out hosing the house, and I could just see..." "It was just like a tidal wave of fire and I sort of felt weak at the knees, sort of thing." "I always thought that was just a saying." "But, yeah, I felt weak and I was thinking," ""When's the bit you're meant to go inside and shelter?"" "I thought, "Well, I'm not going inside with this."" "And then the fire pump just stopped and my heart just sunk." "(LOUD ROARING)" "JASON:" "I just thought," ""Well, I'll go down and see what's wrong with the pump."" "It was dark and hard to see, but as I got down towards it I could see the fire pump on fire." "So I just turned around and walked back to the house, yeah." "NARRATOR:" "Meanwhile, Ross is overcome and tries to escape in his car." "I would get through the paddock-side areas and it was just smoky, and I would get to the bush-side parts and the flames were..." "surrounded both sides." "I can't say whether I'm panicking." "You know, maybe it is." "My heart's racing." "I'm doing lots of swearing." "I'm not really thinking about anybody or anything." "You know, when I got out, I thought..." "I did say to myself, "That was stupid."" "NARRATOR:" "Jason's fight for his life is just beginning." "JASON:" "I could start to see parts of the house burning, and as I'm moving away" "I could hear all the windows smashing in the house, and I knew that we're gone." "You could see from one end to the other." "It was like when they build a house, it just looked like the frame, and I could see everything perfectly." "It was just brilliant orange, just bright, and I could see our bed, my wife's gym equipment and my daughter's cot." "I could see everything right through, from one end to the other, and it was all just burning and the whole lot was on fire." "And the second floor was starting to lower down, like an elevator or something." "It just started lowering down." "Yeah." "I could see through the skylights of the shed into the shed, which was bright orange." "So I thought, "The shed's gone." "There's nothing left, just me."" "And then it blew up and it sort of was just like being king-hit, like, it just..." "It just, like, nearly knocked me out." "I just took off to get to, like, where the dam is." "I couldn't see anything but then I ran into a fence." "I thought, you know, "Is this it?"" "Just...just sort of..." "I don't know." "I just sort of sat there for a while." "I thought, "I don't know what I'm going to do" ""'cause I'm stuck in the fence,"" "and if I was stuck in the fence today" "I reckon I could just take one step backwards and step around, but I couldn't think to do that." "I just thought, "I'm stuck." "You know, "It's only a couple of wires, but I'm stuck."" "NARRATOR:" "Just 11 kilometres up the road, the Clarks have no idea that Kinglake West is burning." "So I'm happy just hosing everything down and mucking around until the power goes, and that's when...that's when everything stops." "Phone stops, no power." "You're gone, you know?" "You got nothing." "There's still no warnings." "So the TV doesn't work, the computer doesn't work, so I've got a little radio thing and had that going." "But we had ABC on, listening to the reports." "Still nothing dangerous, you know?" "23-year-old Melanie Chambers and her younger sister Penny live around the corner." "They know that the Clarks' house is one of the safest in Kinglake." "And the girls rang me and said, "Can we come up?" to our house because it's deemed a safe house." "It's brick, and they only lived in the weatherboard shack they rented, so I said, "Sure, come up."" "NARRATOR:" "It's just after 5:00pm." "At the bottom of the mountain, directly below the Clarks, a fire has engulfed St Andrews." "With the ground cleared around his house," "Jim Baruta feels safe enough to arm himself with nothing more than a video camera." "MAN:" "How safe can you be, you know?" "I mean, you'd think if anyone's got a chance, it's someone like me." "You know, I haven't got the trees up to the house and things like that, so I thought I'd be fine." "But then when the fire came it was nothing like I had expected it to be." "JIM ON RECORDING:" "There it comes." "JIM:" "You could hear the noise." "It sounded like trains or jets coming towards you in the distance and it kept getting louder and louder." "JIM ON RECORDING:" "That house is on fire next door." "JIM:" "It's like all the trees were exploding from heat." "People say it's the leaves, you know, the heat of the oils in the leaves, in the eucalypts." "They just go off." "And it's like gas going off too." "It's just burning like crazy." "(ROARING)" "NARRATOR:" "The gases from the eucalyptus trees are escaping so quickly that they race upwards, mix with the air and explode." "The fire is feeding itself, the flames four times the height of the 20-metre trees." "JIM:" "Once it starts climbing up the hill it just starts accelerating even faster and faster, and it just builds up this momentum and it's just eating everything in the way." "It was just like you were in the middle of a hurricane." "It WAS a hurricane but it was on fire." "There's all this debris going everywhere and anything that was not bolted down was in the air, flying around, and it was gonna hit you." "NARRATOR:" "A fire tornado has now developed, ripping through tens of acres in seconds." "At well beyond 1 ,000 degrees, it makes an oven of earth and air." "This firestorm can now kill from 200 metres." "JIM ON RECORDING:" "Shit." "Shit!" "JIM:" "I stood behind the brick pillar out there and there's no way..." "If you put your hand out like that it would have been burnt." "It was like putting your hand in front of a furnace." "And then I realised that there was a problem with the air that I was breathing." "I wasn't breathing properly." "The fire is less than 300 metres away." "Jim's in danger, not of being burnt to death but of suffocating." "But he's got a backup plan." "I thought, "I've got to get out of here" ""and I've got to get to the bunker."" "I had to step out into the storm with my back to it and it was all hitting me on the back, and I walked past the side of the house into the bunker and I shut the door." "Whatever was gonna happen was gonna happen and I couldn't stop it." "The fire sweeps over Jim and he survives." "Less than five kilometres away at the top of the mountain, the Kinglake CFA captain is trying to stop confused residents fleeing towards the flames." "People were stopping and saying, "What can we do?"" "And I just said to them, "Well, you can't go down that road" ""because I've just come up from there" ""and it's just blocked by fire."" "I'm not real sure on Kinglake West." "I heard that the fire had come through a fair way there." "And I don't know what the road to Hills was like 'cause the fire...you know, you could see the plume of smoke from where we were, heading across that way towards the Melba." "So, you know, to give anyone advice on actually which way to go just didn't seem right to me, to say, "Oh, look, you can go that way." "It's safe."" "I mean, the only thing I could say was," ""Look, I think all I can offer you is the main street of town," ""'cause this is where I'm gonna be."" "NARRATOR:" "The blaze that started an hour and a half ago near the Murrindindi River has been pushed by the hot winds across the Black Ranges." "Sitting a few kilometres to the north, out of the fire's path, is the picturesque town of Marysville." "I just looked directly up above and here was what would normally have appeared to be cumulus clouds -- except that it was pretty obvious it was smoke -- directly above me, like 12-o'clock high, and covering half the town." "I mean, that was pretty dramatic." "I really had no idea." "But I thought, "That has got to be very, very close."" "Amateur cameraman Daryl Hull works at the Crossways Inn." "His boss, Greg, and his wife, Pam, have been busy there all day." "It's only now that they notice the smoke." "A fire plan hadn't come into my mind at that stage." "But at 5:00 I did ring my daughter and spoke to her husband and said, "Have you heard anything on the news, or can you have a look?" ""Can you check websites?"" "And they quickly did that while I was on the phone, some of it." "There were no updates at that point, about 5:00, and I just said, "We'll try to keep in touch." ""This feels, to me, very grim."" "DARYL:" "The sensation was that," ""I don't think we're doing a night's work tonight." ""Something's very, very close."" "So we had to keep our eyes on it." "At which point I started to walk towards the oval, just to see what was there, and the first shots I took of the oval..." "It was empty, which I thought was unusual." "The rule in town was if ever there was trouble of any kind in town, that you'd head to the oval." "And after I'd been filming for a while" "I heard the siren go off twice, and I'm thinking, "Right, danger is upon us,"" "and then it cut out." "NARRATOR:" "However, the siren is not to alert locals but CFA members... ..and because they're already out fighting fires, it's switched off." "When the siren cut out I automatically thought," ""False alarm." ""OK, I don't have to worry to the degree that I would have."" "If the siren had kept going, you would know we've got trouble." "MAN ON RECORDING:" "They're sprinkling their house and Jonathan's up on the roof." "He's filled the downpipes with rags." "NARRATOR:" "Just 10 kilometres north of Marysville, the Densems in Buxton have been preparing their home for well over an hour." "As city dwellers for much of their lives, they've never confronted a bushfire before." "JONATHAN:" "I'm interested in how much of our way we'd set up the fire plan and stuff, how much it was predicated on not wanting to look bad, that we're not idiot blow-ins from the city," "that we're just as tough and fire-hardy as the locals." "Jonathan leaves the hosing and his pregnant wife to take a look at the smoke from the nearby ridge." "Just as I'm looking at it, dully trying to make up my mind, the flame came up." "I could see the fire at the top of the far ridge, which is probably about two kilometres away, maybe a bit less." "The big ridge above Buxton." "You could actually see the flame." "(CHUCKLES) And all of a sudden, instantaneous decision." "The moment I saw that, I went, "What am I doing?" "That's enough." ""Let's just leave while it's safe." "Why don't we just leave now?"" "NARRATOR:" "In Kinglake West the fire has passed through, but the area will burn for many hours yet." "This house is saved, but just down the road Jason Lynn lays in the middle of his paddock, barely conscious, everything around him destroyed." "And then his mobile rings." "His boss is on the line." "He said to me, I can remember him saying to me, "Get in the dam."" "Yeah. "Get in the dam."" "So I kept going." "I must have..." "I don't know if I just hung up on him or what." "I just thought, "Yeah, I'll try and find it." ""I'll give it another go 'cause it's just getting too hot laying here" ""and I'm just getting too weak."" "So I just crawled along and I felt the downwards bit, and I just crawled down, felt where the water was, turned round and just crawled in backwards, and just...yeah, just lay there." "I didn't know what was going to happen to me." "I didn't think anyone would come up." "I didn't know how long I could hang on, you know?" ""If I die like this, this is just worse."" "And I suppose too I was actually thinking, like, my kids..." ""What will it be like for them growing up?"" "NARRATOR:" "Jason's children, Joshua and Julia, and their mother, Ruth, fled just before the fire arrived." "Their whereabouts is unknown." "But it seems Jason, at least, has been found." "JASON:" "I could hear people's voices but I couldn't shout out and say, "Oh, I'm down here" or anything." "I'm just laying there and then I heard someone say, "He's down in here."" "I could hardly talk and he said, "Can you squeeze my hand?"" "and I could squeeze his hand, and he said to me, he goes, "Oh, well, if you've made it this far" ""you'll be right now, mate."" "And then straightaway, almost instantly, your mind shifts to my wife, Ruth, and my two kids, Joshua and Julia." "What happened to them?" "Jason's next-door neighbours have already lost their fight to survive." "The former Channel 9 newsreader Brian Naylor and his wife, Moiree, were fully prepared to stay and defend." "14 more perish in Kinglake West alone." "It's just after 5:30." "An enormous smoke plume hangs over pretty Marysville." "The town receives its first official radio warning." "MAN ON RADIO:" "So we've got an existing threat message out for the community of Narbethong, which came under ember attack this afternoon." "We're now extending that threat message to include the communities of Marysville and Buxton, which we also expect to come under direct attack from this fire." "NARRATOR:" "Less than a kilometre from the oval, spot fires have already broken out on Kings Road." "The CFA captain is at the scene." "We ended up with both the Marysville tanker and the Marysville pumper, so, um, virtually, we had our entire crew, um, up there." "We, you know, um..." "And we're all good friends and mates." "Um, my son Kellan was, uh... ..was on...on the pumper crew." "So, of course, I was, um... ..I was quite concerned for Kellan's welfare." "Pam, at the Crossways Inn, knows it's time for her and her husband, Greg, to make a decision." "PAM:" "I went out the back and said to Greg, "What should I do?"" "Because the winds suddenly became so very strong." "I said, "Should I go?" "Should I stay?" "Can I help you?"" "He said, "At this moment," ""every person must make their own decision."" "And he went on with his work and I said, "I have to go."" "We didn't really have time to say anything else or goodbyes or good-lucks or anything." "I left him with the hose." "(CHUCKLES) Yeah." "NARRATOR: 6:15, and CFA strike teams from other towns are on their way to help." "I was aware of cars fleeing in the other direction intermittently at high speeds and of the horrible purple-brown-black, boiling, cumulus column of hell above Marysville, and I remember saying to Jamie in the front seat," ""Jamie, this is something beyond anything I could've even imagined."" "NARRATOR:" "Daryl Hull has already taken refuge at the oval." "DARYL:" "Smoke was very evidently over the back of Mount Kitchener." "It was apparent that there was trouble looming " "I mean serious trouble." "And then at around about that time, the police came screaming down." "PAM:" "I saw the police car come into the oval." "And they did a circle and they were just telling people to head for Alexandra, to get out, really." "Pam was very concerned that I should get in the car with her, but I couldn't do that." "I didn't like the thought of a convoy of cars." "And with that thought that the fire was possibly already ahead of us, the only vision I could think of was burnt-out wrecks beside the highway where people had died in cars, and I thought, "That's not going to be my end." ""I'm not going to do it that way."" "I was going to the lake, and I was going to make sure that happened." "NARRATOR:" "Others in Marysville are going nowhere." "Greg Cherry is ready to defend the Crossways Inn." "His wife, Pam, leaves in a police convoy." "I glanced quickly at the Crossways." "I just hoped he'd got in another car and gone already." "There didn't feel as though there was time to stop, and I knew he wouldn't come if he was still here." "He wouldn't leave." "He'd already said he'd stay." "Yeah." "Stay with the place, try and save it." "NARRATOR:" "Glen Fiske has left the spot fires on Kings Road and is on the way to the CFA shed." "But first there's his wife, Liz, and youngest son to see." "When I got up the driveway, Dalton met me at the door." "Um... ..and said that Mum was on the phone." "I said, "Oh, leave Mum on the phone." "You're looking pretty right."" "He was dressed in his, um... ..in overalls, and he had goggles and he had gloves on, he had...had his...had, um... ..firefighter's boots on." "He was, um..." "He'd done all of his...his preparation." "I said to him to look after his mum and to make some good decisions." "Um..." "And I left them there then, and proceeded back to the fire station." "NARRATOR:" "By early evening, 90 fires are raging right across the state." "Another major blaze will soon start at Beechworth." "Towns have already been obliterated, at least 50 lives already lost." "But everything is about to get worse, much worse." "Gale-force northerly winds have pushed all today's major fires to the south-east." "But the wind is starting to shift direction." "The southerly change begins to push the fires north-east." "The effect will be devastating." "RUSSELL:" "It's the fear of everyone." "That's everybody's fear, is that if you haven't got the eastern flank of the fire controlled, it's going to turn and push." "And that's what it did." "That's what it does, and that's what it did." "Then what happens on the wind change is that 50km flank of the fire then suddenly becomes the head of the fire, so instead of having about a 5km- or 6km-wide fire, we've now got a 50km-wide fire after the wind change." "NARRATOR:" "And this is exactly what's happening to the fire that started at Kilmore East." "The 50km flank, stretching to Strathewen and St Andrews, is now the huge new front of the fire." "Many more towns are in range." "At the top of the mountain, Kinglake is one of the first in line." "No panic, no fear, no..." "None of those emotions." "Just put the plan into action and the fire will go over the top of your house, and then when it's gone over the top of your house, you come out with your mop and bucket and you put out the embers." "We knew the plan." "We had been told it a hundred times." "We knew it off by heart." "The Clarks' house is full." "Mick and Jen wait with son Danny and their grandchildren, 15-year-old Mackenzie, 13-year-old Aiden and 9-year-old Neeve." "Neighbours Melanie and Penny, the Chambers sisters, also shelter." "I was still in shorts and a shirt and thongs, sort of thing." "And Danny, my son, come out and told me to," ""Go and put your fire stuff on, your woollen jumper and your tracksuit."" "And I said, "Yeah, righto,"" "and he said, "I'll just spray out here with the firefighter,"" "what was going." "So I was lucky he come in and told me to do that." "So that was one thing he, you know..." "And he's still arguing with me and saying, "Oh, you're silly." ""You're doing it wrong, you're doing this wrong."" "'Cause he always said that to me anyway, you know." "I was always doing something wrong." "So, anyway, he made me go and change, which was good." "I started to get the kids...told the kids to get into thicker clothes and helped Neeve get into hers." "The two young lasses down the street had come up by this time." "And they came in with their animals, and I said to them and to all the children," ""We need to wet some towels and put them in front of the doors."" "NARRATOR: 5:58." "Kinglake has been warned once on the radio." "And an urgent threat message has just flashed up for the first time on the CFA website." "But with the fire racing towards the main street, warnings are now irrelevant." "PAUL:" "There was a lot of smoke, a lot of embers and wind." "There was people crowding in at the fire station, people panicking -- you know, kids or...people crying." "There was..." "Yeah." "It was crazy." "It was a wall of flame that came up that mountain." "It came up so fast that, um... ..I've never seen the likes of." "(SMOKE ALARM BEEPS)" "NARRATOR:" "As the town is engulfed, those on the main street scramble for cover anywhere they can." "This cafe becomes an emergency refuge for the stranded." "While just yards away, the Clarks cling to their plan." "When the embers started coming, it was like a hailstorm of embers coming across the top of the roof and landing on top of me, which..." "It's just coming down." "It's like hail, but it was embers." "So I started..." "Danny yelled out." "He said, "The front's on fire."" "And I directed the hose over the roof, into the front." "And that didn't seem to be doing nothing." "And that's when they said, "You'd better get in the house,"" "so I came racing..." "I just dropped the hose and raced into the house to help them in there." "And by this time, Jen had blocked all the doorways up with wet towels." "And the girls were laying down, the Chamber girls, and Mac and Danny and my dog, Pearl, all in the hallway." "And Aiden and me are stepping over the top of them to carry the buckets to the lounge room." ""I need to get a hold of Mum and Dad." ""I need to let them know that Ross has got fire" ""and that it could be coming towards them."" "And so..." "I rang and I rang, and eventually Danny answered my..." "my brother Danny answered the phone and said, "Beck, we're stuffed."" "And I go, "What's wrong?" And he goes, "We're surrounded by fire."" "I said, "You're kidding." He goes, "No, we're surrounded by fire."" "I could hear the smoke alarms and I could hear the dogs and the kids all crying and screaming in the background, and, uh..." "He said, "We're just stuffed."" "He said, "There's no CFA." ""We're stuffed." "We're completely surrounded."" "I said, "Can you get out?" He said, "We can't." "We can't do anything."" "And I said, "OK, mate."" "I said, "I'll let you go." "Just do your best."" "And that was it." "I wished..." "I wished I'd made him give me the phone to one of the kids so that I could have at least talked to them." "I walked into the lounge room to make sure that... ..that...that everything was sort of alright, and I've got -- had -- floor-to-ceiling windows, four of them, in the lounge room." "And they just all blew in simultaneously and the fire was in the lounge room." "They were breaking and popping." "And then...then... ..the curtains caught on fire, which we hadn't taken down." "It's another thing we had no time to do, which we knew we had to do." "So once the curtains caught on fire, smoke filled the house up and you just couldn't breathe and see." "And we're..." "Aiden and me are carrying buckets of water and we're throwing them on the..." "on the windows, trying to douse the fire." "And then... ..we...we... ..had to get out for our own..." "We couldn't get the kids out." "We yelled at 'em." "And they couldn't hear us." "So we... ..open the front door, and the fire's still burning, but I went out and had a look and said, "Come on." "We've got to get out this way."" "And I grabbed Aiden and Jen and said, "Come on, quick." "Get out."" "And we yelled to the other kids, "Go out the back door." ""Go out the back door." "You'll be right."" "'Cause they're all down the hallway, where the back door was." "And...we..." "Aiden, Jenny and me got on the front lawn... ..and they didn't come out." "And we called and called their names." "And Aiden was hanging onto the..." "hanging onto me still." "And then I thought I might be able to get round the side and get in through the laundry door, and I tried to run around that side and... ..and you couldn't get through." "The fire was just burning the house down." "And she was still screaming and screaming and screaming, "The kids, the kids,"" "and I'm saying, "Nothing we can do, sweet, nothing we could do."" "And she said, "Oh..."" "And she started to feel the pain and...with all the burns then, and they started to affect her." "And with all the smoke she's taken in, she couldn't breathe." "And then I knew that I had to ring Becky to let her know, 'cause I couldn't have that, um..." "..I couldn't not let her know that her children were dead." "And..." "I don't know, I just..." "Aiden just dialled the number and..." "Don't ask me why, but we got through." "And I told her." "And she said, "Beck, they're all gone."" "And I go, "What do you mean, they're gone?" "Gone where?"" "She goes, "No, Beck, they're all gone." "They're dead." ""The house has burnt down." "I couldn't get 'em out." ""They're gone."" "And she screamed and screamed and screamed." "And then their phone just went dead." "NARRATOR:" "Danny Clark, his 15-year-old nephew Mackenzie, neighbours Melanie and Penny Chambers... ..and little 9-year-old Neeve all lost their lives trying to protect one another in the same home." "(WIND WHIPS)" "The wind change has hit Gippsland, in the south-east." "The fire that started at lunchtime in Churchill is now being pushed in a completely new direction." "It reaches up into the Strzelecki Ranges... ..the steep inclines pushing the fire quicker and quicker." "Temperatures scorch beyond 1 ,000 degrees, hotter than a kiln." "By 7:00, the fire reaches Callignee, where a veteran of Victoria's worst-ever bushfires in 1939 takes to the trenches once again." "Charlie and his neighbours receive their first radio warning more than an hour after Callignee begins to burn." "MAN ON RADIO:" "We are bringing you information as soon as it comes to hand, and, as we speak, I'm handed a printout here of an urgent threat message -- the Glendonald Road fire is currently burning in and around Traralgon South and Callignee" "and Callignee North and South." "Residents may be directly impacted by this fire." "NARRATOR: 7:00 in Strathewen." "It's more than three hours since the cluster bomb of fires enveloped the town." "Mary Avola's still not heard any news about her husband, Peter." "He was behind me in another car." "And it, you know..." "He'd gone off the road a bit further up, and I'd sort of waited for him and expected to have him follow me." "But, you know, at that stage, he hadn't, so he was up there somewhere." "NARRATOR:" "The inferno's burnt so ferociously, it's only now that CFA crews can force their way in." "Well, I came over the hill." "And the first sight I saw was... ..young chap that was driving me, his parents' house fully enveloped, just a blazing inferno." "That house was fully enveloped, and there was not one thing in Strathewen that wasn't burnt." "What are you gonna do when you're faced with something like that?" "I'd never joined the CFA to... ..confront this." "Not the magnitude and the... ..and the catastrophe that was." "NARRATOR:" "But David grimly makes his way further in and discovers the true loss." "We got up to the oval and the..." "I can still, uh... (LAUGHS)" "I can still see it now." "The, uh... ..him lying out there." "NARRATOR:" "David had known Peter Avola for almost 40 years." "Peter never did make it through the fire as he tried to escape in his car." "He waved his wife, Mary, on, hoping that she, at least, would survive." "And apparently Peter must have got out of the car, and he... ..he ran from where the car was..." "..through a field and across the oval, and he was only perhaps 400 metres from where I got to safety." "And he wasn't burnt." "He'd just suffocated." "He was still a whole person." "And he was only... ..that far from me." "I met him at a dance." "And he... (LAUGHS)" "He had his white shirt and his black vest on and his black pants and his pointy shoes." "And he had slicked-back hair with the kiss-curl on his forehead." "And he was the most handsome thing I'd ever seen." "And he's always been that gentle person... ..that we all love so much." "NARRATOR:" "Peter is not alone." "Haydn McMahon was due to start a graphic-design course the following week." "This is the last photograph taken of him." "Robert O'Sullivan should have been celebrating his 48th birthday." "He was fully prepared to stay and defend." "In all, 22 lose their lives in a township of just 250." "MAN ON RECORDING:" "Red alert -- we can actually see the fire from here." "What do you want out of here?" "It's a bit critical." "We're about to take off." "But apparently the fire is heading this way." "NARRATOR:" "In Buxton, the wind change is upon them." "After packing for the past hour, the Densems finally realise fighting fires isn't for them." "JONATHAN:" "Clearly, we actually had an option." "We've got Otto, we've got a 3-year-old, and Emma's pregnant, and I couldn't believe it'd taken that long to come up with that decision." "MAN ON RECORDING:" "Looks a bit ominous -- smoke billowing round." "Um..." "The prediction is the fire's headed straight for Buxton, and us." "We paused, and I said goodbye to the property, really, looking at the flames." "Mmm." "And then we just..." "then we drove." "NARRATOR: 10km away, but just minutes by fire, is Marysville." "For 70 years, it's felt safe, nestled in a valley." "But this very fact is about to be the town's undoing." "As the wind change hits, the postcard-perfect setting becomes a firetrap." "DR TOLHURST:" "Because Marysville's basically surrounded by mountains around there, the embers aren't gonna continue to blow up the hillsides." "They basically find this calm area to basically fall out." "So Marysville itself then becomes a bowl." "It's capturing all the embers that are being produced from the fire on the range." "NARRATOR:" "Marysville is attacked from above." "Thousands of raining embers explode onto the town." "Fire crews are helpless, forced to seek cover at the oval." "JOHN:" "The truck was just being blasted continuously by debris." "The air was just full of stuff, branches and rocks and burning embers and..." "It was just absolute..." "like soup." "And I think the speed and intensity with which the fire just enveloped and..." "..just completely surrounded and covered Marysville -- it was just...just staggering." "Just staggering." "Just went from being dark and eerie to everything was on fire just in an instant." "Everywhere, as far as we could see." "With the town burning, Daryl Hull, guided by a hand of fate, swims to the middle of the town's lake." "The ember storm was so significant -- like a meteor shower, really -- that I knew I was going to need some protection, and the strangest thing was that I just reached out my arm, and there was a branch, a perfect umbrella," "green and wet, almost with a handle attached, just waiting for me to pick it up." "And I suppose I had that uncanny sense that, um, something was looking after me." "MAN:" "It's John here in front with the trailer." "Uh..." "Um..." "There seem to be fires all over the place." "NARRATOR:" "The Marysville inferno is already chasing the Densems." "But they have no idea about this or any other fire." "EMMA:" "We had been listening to ABC Radio all the way in the car." "So we were trying to keep on top of where the fires were because the potential was that we could have been driving into a fire that we didn't know about." "JONATHAN:" "And we were going, "What's going on?"" "Because we knew how close the fire was to Buxton." "So they weren't even then giving Buxton warnings, let alone saying Buxton was under any kind of attack, which...we know that it was by 7:30, 8:00." "So that was..." "Emma made the really good point that we knew some stuff about the fires that's not being said on radio." "So, what else is not being said on radio?" "NARRATOR:" "Having survived in the lake," "Daryl has made it to the oval." "DARYL:" "I just started filming as carefully as I could, you know, the horror that was going on around us." "I suppose I was just amazed to find myself there, that I'd got through it." "I had no idea if anybody who'd tried to escape town had escaped town." "And I had no idea of what lives might have been lost in any of the buildings I saw." "It's very hard to stand on the oval and realise that the entire town was going up." "It was just impossible to think about." "JOHN:" "Everything was on fire around us, literally everything in all directions, in the 360 degrees that we could see." "Every building was on fire." "Every bit of vegetation was on fire." "There was..." "All the gas cylinders in the town were venting and exploding in huge fireballs and there was shrapnel flying around and trees were burning through and falling down, and it was an incredibly dangerous and hostile environment." "And the horrendous and the frustrating part of being trapped there was that our pagers were going off incessantly with fire calls, with pleas for help, for people that were trapped in houses and trapped in cars on roads," "and it was just an endless procession of pager messages pleading...begging us to help." "And we could do nothing." "We couldn't even move off the oval." "NARRATOR:" "Patients are slowly trickling into hospitals." "The Northern is the nearest emergency department to the worst-hit areas." "One of the first patients to arrive is a 35-year-old man from Kinglake West." "His eyes are melted shut." "He's motionless, but somehow alive after sheltering in a dam as his home burned." "I can remember Dr Helen coming in and saying...introducing herself and asking me questions, how I felt and that, and...and saying that, you know, I'm in the hospital now, sort of thing," "and that I'll be alright." "He had significant difficulty opening his eyes, and I would need to raise his eyelids." "I would try to get him to engage with doing that." "He just couldn't." "So there really wasn't much communication at all." "What he certainly did say was," ""Where is my wife?" "Where are my children?"" "Jason's wife, Ruth, and their two children fled minutes before the fire arrived." "Hospital staff will try to discover if they're still alive." "In the meantime, they do manage to call Jason's mother." "I said to her, "Oh, I don't know where..." "".." "Ruth and the kids are," you know." "And she said, "I'm sure they'll be right."" "NARRATOR:" "Jason's home town is obliterated, and in Kinglake, the injured are being brought to the CFA's shed -- among them, Jen Clark, who has suffered 30% burns and can barely breathe." "Her husband, Mick, comforts her, but there is no comfort." "They've lost a son and two grandchildren." "No-one seemed to know what was going on." "Everyone was telling everybody that they're trying to get help in, the ambulances are coming, and we knew they weren't coming because they couldn't get anywhere, they couldn't get up any of the roads to reach us," "and the helicopter couldn't land because it's full of smoke and fire." "There's nowhere for it to land." "So we knew that was out." "There's no anything." "There's no medication." "There's no nothing." "And someone, I don't quite know who, broke into the doctor's office and stole...well, he didn't steal, but...got the oxygen and brought it over." "At this stage, I'm feeling terrible." "I think I was gonna lose Jen." "(SNIFFS) And then... ..that would...that'd be the end." "That's what I thought -- "I'm gonna lose her."" "I didn't care." "I felt it was probably... ..probably right, you know, in a sort of a way, that, um..." "..that, you know, I'd been... ..I'd been the one on duty and I'd not got 'em out." "That's it, in a nutshell." "That's what I felt." "And all of a sudden, these police arrived from sort of nowhere, three carloads of 'em." "God-sent, they were." "Yeah." "Really good." "NARRATOR:" "The police will convoy the Clarks to Whittlesea, 25km away." "A medical relief centre is being set up in the town." "Their daughter Beck is already there when her husband arrives." "Someone tells me, someone came and said," ""Beck, I think Ross is here."" "So I came out looking for him and..." "It was just, you know, hug and hold each other and cry our eyes out together." "So..." "And he, you know, asked me all the same questions." "You know, "Are you sure?" You know, "Is this for real?" "Is it...?"" "Whatever, you know." "And I just said, "Yeah."" "I said, "I spoke to Mum," you know." "So, yeah." "That was about it." "What do you do?" "What do you do?" "And so, you know... (SIGHS)" "We just held each other and cried." "Tried to get your head round it." "NARRATOR:" "Jen and Mick drive through scorched earth and a devastation that is beyond the physical." "MICK:" "I was just looking around in amazement." "I couldn't believe." "Both sides of the roads are on fire." "Trees are on fire." "Cars are all...on the side of the road or in the ditch, all burning." "And all of a sudden, you drive and there's nothing." "There's no-one on fire." "It's missed a little bit." "And you go a bit further." "And it's missed another little bit." "And all of a sudden, both sides of the road again are burning and joining together." "And the fire was still burning out of control." "Someone mentions that another police car's coming." "And so we waited and it pulls up." "And they pull out this woman and they put her on a gurney, and the people that I were with said, "That's not Mum."" "And I looked and I said, "Yeah, it is."" "I thought I had failed my daughter and that how could I go on when I'm in charge of her children?" "How can I ever go and face her again?" "And..." "So, yeah." "She was covered in blisters on her arms, and her legs were just burnt and blistered and..." "She was quite messy and...um, looked like she was in a lot of pain." "Then Becky came in, and she said... ..came over to me, and she said..." "She came down, she said, "Don't you fuckin' die on me." ""Don't you dare fuckin' die on me." ""I need you." "I cannot get through this without you." ""Don't you dare die."" "So I thought, "Oh, I'd better bloody not."" "NARRATOR:" "Jen Clark only just survived trying to save her loved ones." "Others in Kinglake died doing the same thing." "Rob Davey and his wife, Natasha, lost their lives alongside their two children," "Jorja, three, and Alexis, eight months, at their home on Bald Spur Road." "15 perished on this one single street." "But the fire that destroys Kinglake has just one more cruel card to play." "It heads north into the townships of Hazeldene and Flowerdale." "Those living on the ridges are hardest hit, their homes undefendable." "But the Flowerdale pub still has a chance." "Out in the open and protected by a main road, it's an unofficial refuge." "The landlord and a handful of locals have decided to stay and fight." "When it got dark and you could really see the fire coming through, you know, in the ranges and everything and..." "You know, that was both, um... ..spectacular sight, I've got to admit -- it was quite mesmerising." "But I also wanted it to come because I was sick of waiting for the bastard." "'Cause I was just sick of waiting and being able to do nothing at all." "We're all beginning to get very, very scared." "We're all getting very, very conscious of what's about to take place." "And we could see it coming from the Kinglake area towards us as well, so by this stage, it's almost 360 degrees around us." "We had fire bearing down on us straight down the highway, coming through the kind of paddocks, coming up the creek." "We had fires behind the pub." "We had fires just to the north of the pub." "There were spot fires just wherever you looked, and it was a matter of just going over there or yelling at someone else to get out there if they could." "It attacked the rear paddock closest to our motel units." "We had just a fence line that was about a metre from the units." "And I remember we made the conclusion it wasn't gonna get past there." "We weren't gonna let it get past that point." "And we just hit that paddock and we made sure it didn't get any further." "You know, we really didn't have much to fight an actual fire with." "You know, it was bucket and mops." "It was chaos." "It was absolute chaos for hours." "Absolute hours." "NARRATOR:" "But Steve and his mates are in luck." "A drop in the wind and a gust of local initiative favours the defenders." "After fighting for six hours and more, the 90-year-old timber pub is saved." "You know, we weren't CFA people." "We weren't under any centralised management." "And it just seemed to me that people seemed to know with a kind of instinctual thing how to work together and kind of what to do." "NARRATOR:" "In the surrounding hills, there is only sorrow." "The fire that started over 12 hours ago at Kilmore East has claimed nine more lives in the precincts of Flowerdale and nearby Hazeldene." "Well to the south-east, in Callignee, they're still fighting." "97-year-old Charlie Richardson has watched his home go up in flames." "Badly burnt and alone for three hours, he suddenly sees hope." "Think I was the first vehicle that had a spare seat, so he jumped in my car and we drove him back down the hill." "Took us a while to get down." "We had to move some more trees off the road on the way back down." "But, um..." "He was just happy to have a drink of water." "And, as I found out later, his gumboots had stuck to his feet and he was very badly burnt, but he did not complain once." "NARRATOR:" "11 of Charlie's neighbours perish in the pitiless lottery of the fire." "Alfred Frendo and his son Scott fled their home only to be killed on the road as the fire missed their house." "10:00 in Melbourne." "lnformation from the disaster zone is so sketchy that news of the day's first deaths is only now coming through." "(NEWS THEME PLAYS)" "WOMAN:" "Police have confirmed that 14 people have been killed in today's bushfires across Victoria." "Six have been killed at Kinglake, four at Wandong, three at Strathewen and one at Clonbinane." "You get in the car to go home and you feel like... ..you feel absolutely terrible." "And you get home, which I did, and, you know..." "I walked in the door and I said to my wife what was going on, and she said, "That's terrible."" "You know, she said, "I've just heard on the radio."" "And I said to her, "It's gonna be a lot worse."" "And she said, "Like what?"" "And I said, "A real lot worse."" "And she..." "I distinctly remember, she tried to put numbers into my mouth." "And I couldn't say it, because I didn't know, but I knew it was going to be worse." "NARRATOR:" "For those in Marysville, it doesn't look like it can get much worse." "The fire has moved so quickly and communications are so stretched that the tragedy here is not known to the outside world." "WOMAN ON RADIO:" "There's been an update from the DSE on the Marysville township." "The DSE understands that everyone's safe in Marysville and they're assembled at Gallipoli Park." "So, just repeating that -- the DSE understands that everyone is safe in Marysville and they're all assembled at Gallipoli Park." "JOHN:" "I remembered ringing my wife up at Marysville when we're on the oval, and she was at work at the Northern Hospital, and she's a wonderful CFA wife, and she knows the score and she knew the..." "..she could see the fires in all the ranges and, of course, the hospital's been impacted by fires and..." "She never has her mobile phone on, ever, and the phone rang a quarter of a ring and she answered." "And I said, "I'm OK."" "And she said, "Where are you?"" "And I go, "I'm in Marysville."" "And she said, "Oh, well, that's fine."" "And I said, "No."" "Nobody knew." "Nobody knew about Marysville at that point." "And I said to her, "The whole town has gone, Mandy."" "And she said, "Oh, it can't be,"" "and I said, "The whole town has gone."" "And it was." "NARRATOR:" "For those who managed to escape, refuge has been found." "But confusion reigns." "Pam, from the Crossways Inn, is safely in Alexandra, 40km away, but she's frantic for news of her husband, Greg, who stayed behind." "PAM:" "I would hear from one source that he was OK." "And then I met other people coming in saying," ""We haven't seen him and the Crossways is gone."" "So I was getting different reports, really, all night." "People thought that everything had burned." "So I'd actually text... ..sent phone texts to my brothers saying, "I believe the Crossways has gone." "I haven't heard from Greg."" "NARRATOR:" "Pam isn't the only one desperate to know of loved ones." "The CFA captain returns home with a local policeman to discover if his wife and youngest son have survived." "GLEN:" "We...we went around." "Um..." "Up the...up the driveway." "Our driveway's fairly steep." "We get up to the... ..the top of the driveway and, um..." "It's very hot." "The house is...is still..." "is still burning ferociously." "It, um..." "Yeah." "And it was very, very hot." "There was obviously no signs of..." "of Liz and Dalton there." "There were sort of... ..big chunk of time between the last time that I'd been there." "Yeah, I wasn't sure of..." "I really wasn't sure of what had...what had happened." "But I was hoping that they'd..." "When there was no obvious signs of them, well, I was hoping that they'd got away, that they weren't there, was what I was hoping." "Um..." "Yeah." "NARRATOR:" "One of the most popular tourists towns in Victoria is all but razed to the ground." "DARYL ON RECORDING:" "So most of the main street's gone." "Oh, my God." ""This is just impossible." "It's simply got to be impossible." ""I don't believe I'm looking at this."" "And that's all that's left of that beautiful church." "NARRATOR:" "There are too many grim sights." "But amidst the destruction and the devastation," "Daryl Hull is about to make a remarkable discovery." "I filmed up the street and realised that the Crossways was still intact." "It was unbelievable that it was still intact." "Greg has saved the Crossways." "Oh!" "Pam's husband, Greg, has spent half the night throwing water on the Crossways, the other half sheltering for his life." "The Densems have been fleeing the fire that destroyed Marysville for the past six hours." "There was no room at the inn at Alexandra, but after a 150km zigzag journey, the expectant couple find somewhere for the night." "Finally got into bed, almost exactly 2:00, I remember, thinking, "God, it took so long." ""How are we gonna get any sleep before Otto's up?"" "Yes." "Two seconds after the lights went out, Emma goes, "Jonny!"" "I'm like, "Oh, now I have to get up, find her a biscuit," ""get her another cup of tea." ""What do you need now?" "."" "And she just goes, "My waters have broken."" "And I said, "Ohh..."" "NARRATOR:" "While the Densems make their way to one hospital, at the Northern Emergency Department, one of the patients, Jason Lynn, has every reason to fear the worst." "A priest who has searched for his wife and children returns." "He was walking toward me with a big smile on his face." "And he said, "Oh, we've found them."" "And I...needed clarity, and he said, "Oh, the communications, the phone calls." ""We've found them." ""Jason's wife and two young children are safe and they're in Nagambie."" "And it was... ..certainly a response of, "That's fantastic for this young man."" "NARRATOR:" "Jason's wife, Ruth, broke all the rules when she took to the road with her two children, Julia and Joshua, as the fire bore down." "RUTH:" "The fire was from the ground to the sky and as far as you could see sideways." "And... ..once I saw what was coming, I was sure Jason would die." "But I had to keep going to save my own life and save the life of my kids." "I wanted to open my eyes when they started to tell me... ..when I knew that they were telling me something about my wife and kids." "And they said, "They're safe."" "I thought, "Oh, my God, he's alive."" "You know?" "." "I couldn't believe it." "So there was that, the shock of knowing that he was alive, the relief that he was alive and that I still had a husband, my kids still had a father." "Because all that time I thought he was dead, and he thought I was dead." "(HELICOPTER WHIRRS)" "NARRATOR:" "Sunday, February 8, 2009." "Marysville." "DARYL:" "I could see blue smoke drifting around the garden." "And I could hear this helicopter, and I..." "I realised that that night was over and I seriously did not want to wake up, because I knew the sort of devastation that one was going to be looking at." "Well, I didn't want to know what I was going to be looking at." "GLEN:" "At first light, I decided that, um," "I need to go back to home, have a look." "Chris and I, one of my very good mates, we went back to the house." "And, um... ..we found Liz and Dalton." "(SIGHS)" "NARRATOR:" "Every member of the Marysville CFA crew lost their home." "Their captain lost much more." "As Glen tried to defend the town and its people, his wife, Liz, and 15-year-old son, Dalton, perished trying to save the family home." "34 lost their lives in Marysville." "No town in Victoria would see so much death on the nation's darkest day." "The devastating scene is repeated across fire-ravaged Victoria." "More than 7,000 left homeless, the equivalent of a quarter of a million football ovals burnt out." "The next morning..." "..I just remember the greyness of the road." "It was just like ash, and it was... ..barren and grey." "And you want to look at what's happened, but everything looks..." "It looks like a bomb went off and there's nothing there." "And then all of a sudden, green and normality in just a few hundred metres." "Not even a kilometre from where it had all been, it was fine, just like nothing had happened." "NARRATOR:" "But there is new life amongst the ruins." "Casper Densem waited for the fires to pass before arriving on the stroke of midday." "It was just fantastic." "And yet, to where you're having that feeling of," ""Wow!" "This is just brilliant!"" "you just couldn't lose that feeling at the pit of your stomach that, um, all was not right with the world, even though it felt so good where we were." "The Densems' joy is tinged with sadness." "Jonathan, a teacher, learns that one of his students, Matthew Liesfield, died alongside his mother and brother." "They're amongst 173 people who lost their lives on the day that will be forever known as Black Saturday." "For those who survived Australia's worst bushfire disaster, life goes on." "SubRip: easytobeaman"