Apologies for the flare, nothing seems to suit. The recent weather has been quite triggering so I wanted to reflect on Black Saturday.
I’m linking a great documentary below on YouTube that’s helped me to understand some of the trauma of the day and the aftermath. My family was caught up in the Churchill fires, at the time it seemed all the news coverage was focused on the Kinglake area, but I realised many years later how widespread the devastation was, and what a truely catastrophic event this was for everyone.
Please feel free to share your stories your thoughts or anything else. Please take care of each other and yourselves. Don’t ever hesitate to pack up and leave when there’s a threat of danger.
Posted by DeepMath7813
19 Comments
When I was in year 12 we read kinglake 350 by Adrian Hyland, great insight into the science behind fire as well as stories from survivors. We also had a teacher at school who lost her family home in the fires who was kind enough to tell us her story from that day. I was in northern Vic and couldn’t get home to Melbourne without a fair detour to avoid the fires, I definitely fear days like we’ve had today with wind and heat mixed together, it’s so dry this summer.
This is truly horrifying to watch. But everyone should.
I think for a long time there was a culture of “she’ll be right” stay and defend. But how the fuck you’re supposed to defend let alone survive against a force like what these people faced….
Take it seriously. Your life and your families may depend on it.
While the fires didn’t directly impact me or anyone I knew, I remember waking up that day feeling sick to my stomach. My parents lived in a regional area and I called to check in on them at least twice an hour. The rest of the day I had news websites open and the tv on, obsessively following updates. I don’t know if I slept that night – it just consumed me, in a way that nothing else ever had or has since.
I lived in a small regional town well away from those fires. I just remember the look in the eyes of our local cop, when he talked about it in very limited detail after the fact. He was called away the day after to go and locate bodies there. Will never forget even hearing about the aftermath secondhand. Cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like to help organise the cleanup as such
Watched that documentary so many times… I was 13 at the time and I remember just sitting around the radio all day listening. I had my “fire plan” (put the cat and her kittens in a basket and go to the beach) going through my head all day even though we lived in Williamstown. Having asthma from all the smoke. Having a family friend who was a volunteer firey, living up north and not knowing if he was alright for days. All of it so vivid.
Seeing the catastrophic fire ratings for some of the state on Friday really scares me. I’m hoping we have just a quiet hot day
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I had family up in Marysville (that got out thankfully) but i remember going up with them to check on their place as soon as the roads were safe again, and i just remember the devastation. Kilometers of burned out trees looking like a WWI battlefield, the main town was absolutely obliterated except for the bakery in the middle of town which was totally unscathed, even the bushed out front were still green.
Black Saturday changed everything.
I grew up under the approach that you could stay and defend your house successfully. People frequently did, if they were prepared. The CFA even used to do training and seminars on how to prepare for that and why it was viable.
And then that day happened and it became clear that conditions and fires had changed, and they could now reach such an intensity that no amount of preparation would work. Instead of the house providing security from the front and embers being the issue, houses were basically exploding into flames.
It was absolutely horrific. I wasn’t in Kinglake but I knew people who were. And just being in a bushfire prone area the tension and stress of that day was like nothing else. The air was suffocating and you just knew the whole state was going to go up and it was just a matter of exactly where.
At the time our rating system went up to 50. They calculated that Black Saturday was sitting at something like 120.
And the stupid, stupid bureaucratic system that meant the fire warnings from the firefighters on the ground weren’t getting through to the broadcasters.
And our Police Commissioner going out for a nice pub meal while the state burned and then trying to justify it. She remains one of my most hated people.
And the horrific moment when we all heard on the radio that Kinglake and Marysville had been razed, with no warning.
Thanks for posting this. We should never forget.
As someone who was affected, it can be hard to relate to some people who were also affected at times – trauma is really different for everyone.
The reality is I wasn’t affected in the same way as many others – I was directly affected but was out of area in Bendigo, keeping an eye on fires there. As a teenager, I felt that me not losing anyone and not being there made me far better off than others, but in reality that’s just my coping mechanism.
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The events of Black Saturday are something the emergency services/management are still learning from – something that inspired me to chase it as a career, trying to figure out what to do when (and the reality is it probably is when) it happens again.
Thanks for sharing this OP, with fires occurring in previously affected areas today, there’s been a lot more anxiety compared to usual – sharing things like this can help those who’ll thankfully never relate, understand.
I hope you and your family stays, and importantly feels, safe over the next few days.
I live in Marysville. Hot, windy weather feels heavy with ghosts and the townspeople get uneasy.
I watched this a few weeks back again and wish I didn’t knowing what this week will be like.
I was in Bendigo and was sent to evacuate my brother and his unit was right on the edge of the fire, seeing those flames up so high in the trees behind us was scary as fuck and I was so thankful my neighbours watched my small children while I went to get him and were blissfully unaware of what was going on.
Later that night we all sat around listening to the radio in a shocked silence hearing how bad it had been all over the state.
Fingers crossed that we never see a day like this again ever!!
Saw a house burn down in the space 5 minutes to the foundation.
I got into emergency services well and truly after Black Saturday, but I have been in long enough to understand just how much of our system has been completely rewritten because of what we did and what we didn’t do that day. We are better prepared, we are better equipped, we have learned the lessons that were written in the blood of 173 people in 2009.
We’re not perfect. There is a decent chance there are more bloody lessons for us to learn. But things have changed a lot, and although Friday will be bad, I think people can be encouraged that the emergency services have not stood still since 2009.
We’ll get through it, team. It will be bad, I think, but we’ll get through it. Preparing for the worst gives us the best chance. Be ready, make good decisions, and protect those you love.
My dad’s rental at the time almost burnt down in the Churchill fire that day. Luckily he was in the city with us as he usually came down for the weekends, he worked for Hazelwood at the time and couldn’t believe how close it got to both Hazelwood and Loy Yang power stations, we were all VERY close to losing power to half of the state if one of them caught on fire. We’d been down there after Christmas and I still remember we drove around a lot and went through several towns that got burnt including Calignee. Still can’t believe to this day that it was arson, or that the arsonist is now walking free.
A friend tells of being at a birthday party, and hearing all the pagers start to go off, and the place emptying out.
I was involved in helping with distribution of aid supplies in Kinglake, and saw some pretty rough stuff the days after.
The lessons of that day came at a very high cost, but were learned well.
The changes and improvements in the Incident Command System have been applied worldwide.
The lessons about post event recovery were applied in Christchurch after their earthquake.
I’m sure those who know the Firefighting side can fill in more.
Always a bit sombre this time of year and the weather, especially when the wind picks up is definitely triggering for me too.
https://preview.redd.it/0vedtgzt8zbg1.jpeg?width=604&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0652ec01227cff3bcd13b08b4cdf3e1ef009f0c1
Apologies for the low res picture, but you see that tiny house circled in white? That’s my family home. Absolutely no idea how it managed to remain standing, given everything around it was decimated (aside from the mansion across the road as they had a full sprinkler system set up).
I was at Lake Eildon at the time on a houseboat with mates, and will never forget that day. The wind and heat were like nothing I’ve experienced before or since.
None of us were really watching the news, and didn’t realise how bad it was until a thick blanket of smoke descended on the lake. We had to spend the night there, because the smoke was so thick we couldn’t actually navigate the boat back to the marina.
Will never forget that smell – absolutely awful. Sleep was near impossible as it was still very warm, and the smoke was so thick it was hard to breathe.
Thanks for the post OP.
I’ve been living in a bushfire area for the last 3 years. This week is my first week of conditions like this and based on how the locals are behaving, we decided that we’re leaving today for a tiny beach getaway. The idea of fallen trees blocking some of our only paths out is just a terrifying prospect. No interest in dealing with that.