February 11, 2009 06:00am

UPDATE 10:16am PREMIER John Brumby was today unable to deny reports that up to one in five Marysville residents perished in the bushfires.

Fire authorities fear that up to 100 of its 519 residents may have perished in the blaze that left only a dozen homes standing in the town, northeast of Melbourne.

Mr Brumby, speaking on ABC Radio National's Breakfast program, said that he had visited Marysville since the fires and saw first hand that "there is nothing left".

"I went there (to Marysville) as a kid, I can remember that, I think three million Australians have been to Marysville and done Stevenson's Falls, there's just nothing left of the town," he said.

“It's so eerie – there’s no sound, there’s nothing," he said.

"There’s no activity, there’s no people, there’s no buildings, there’s no birds, there’s no animals, everything’s just gone. So the fatality rate will be very high.”

Asked if he expected more bad news on the death toll from the fires, which stands at 181, Mr Brumby said: "The number will continue to increase.

February 11, 2009 12:00am

CONDITIONS for a perfect firestorm led to Australia's greatest natural disaster at the weekend.

Drought, hurricane-force wind and record temperatures after a record heatwave combined to create Victoria's deadly Black Saturday bushfires.

The University of Melbourne's senior lecturer in fire ecology and management, Kevin Tolhurst, said conditions on Black Saturday were some of the worst the world had seen for a potential outbreak.

He said the fires were so hot the energy they released could have supplied Victoria with electricity for at least two years.

Up to 80,000 kilowatts per metre of heat was expelled as the fires raged on Saturday.

Dr Tolhurst said this equalled about 500 atomic bombs landing on Hiroshima.

"Eyewitness accounts said they didn't see evidence of fire and then all of a sudden they felt the area around them was exploding," Dr Tolhurst said.

The unprecedented bushfires were so savage because of the previous week's heatwave. He said this sapped up the vegetation's moisture, making the land tinder dry.

"What was quite unusual and unique about it was the fires took so readily and developed so quickly. The conditions were so dry the fuel ignited," Dr Tolhurst said.

Department of Sustainability and Environment fire behaviour specialist Peter Billing said spot fires, travelling up to 15km from the fire front, rapidly accelerated the blaze.

"Spotting defeats the control of the fire,' Mr Billing said.

The front then fragmented, creating fingers and tongues of fire rapidly spreading up spurs and gullies.

"Bits and pieces of a very ugly fire will go all over the place," he said. "The original fire, the parent fire, can fragment so it is not a clean edge and you cannot determine exactly where it is."

He said prevailing wind, with gusts reaching hurricane force levels up to 120km/h, initially drove the fire.

"But once it is established it becomes a monster of its own physics," he said.

CSIRO senior fire researcher Andrew Sullivan said Victoria was ideally placed for bad fires because of its climate, vegetation, topography and the phenomenon of hot and dry wind from the continent's centre.

"The conditions on Saturday were typical of bad fire days like Black Friday in 1939 and Ash Wednesday in 1983," Mr Sullivan said.

"Victoria is the perfect spot to have really bad fires."

The Herald sun is selling that Koala pic for $20 a copy and all the money goes to the CFA.
Here's th video link to that picture

http://player.video.news.com.au/heraldsun/#Reay9LDBRJjZcvLwFEDVTVmNzvM39fBl

Hey Mr Willbe its nice to see you posting again - I'll be selfish and say - I've missed you and I'm over the moon your OK and have survived the heat and the deadly fires down your way!

Willbemine Thank you for all of the information that you have been giving us on the fires..We get a few things about it here but like i would like to have it..so thank you again !!

Shadow :o)

Bells i hope that coles has good day of sales..

i am just so glad that you and most of my friends in here were away from the fires..

I am so glad that digger and his family got through it ok..

as before my prayers are with you all Shadow

I know you Aussies do not beleave in the death penlty but in a case like this one..He/she should be put to death for the suffering he/she casused to so many people he/she is mass murderer..And deserves it..

But i respect your views on this matter..

Just my opinion Shadow

Hmmmmmmm i hope they catch them all ..
;o
Shadow

SHAWN Stavang is the saviour in the sky for hundreds of Victorian bushfire survivors.

Flying the famous Elvis Helitak above the deadly flames, he provides hope for those desperately trying to defend their properties.

In his 16 years of fighting bushfires, the Californian has never seen devastation on a scale like this.

"On Saturday it didn't matter how many aircraft you had," he said.

"There were just too many fires. I don't know how they all got started, but they're just everywhere.



"I started working on the ground driving a fuel truck to the fires in 1992 in the US and I've never seen death like this."

Mr Stavang has been working 12-hour days dropping 9000lt water bombs.

When he's home, he's skiing in Lake Tahoe, driving a snow plough and going to drag races.

He left his favourite companion, his dog Diane, at home on the mountains of Lake Tahoe to come here to help fight Victoria's worst bushfires.

Last week he arrived in 40C heat and watched from the air as Victorians lost an unbeatable battle against nature.

He has been living on sandwiches, wolfed down in minutes as Elvis gets refuelled every two hours.

During his two-hour stints in the air, he refills Elvis' tanker about 30 times from nearby dams and ponds.

It takes less than a minute before he heads back to the fire front.

Mr Stavang repeats this over and over, until late night when he catches a few hours sleep in a motel room near Essendon Airport.

When he's flying 150m above the raging fires, his main concern is to avoid people on the ground as he drops nine tonnes of water on the ground below.

"When the fires really kick off there's nothing you can do, plus they're so big you can't stop them. Just go to asset protection," he said.

"I see people working with buckets trying to save their stuff. We're just trying to work out where they're at so we don't drop down on them."

When asked about arsonists, he hesitates.

"You get pretty mad. Most of the people in this line of work don't care for them," he said.

"A lot of people are putting their lives in danger to try to stop something that one person started.

"It needs to be treated severely, the rehabilitation of people like that I guess is not good with a lot of repeat offenders."

Living in a tall timber area himself, Mr Stavang said he would never underestimate the danger of a bushfire.

"I'm not going to stay there and try and fight it in those kinds of conditions," he said.

"Just leave it, grab a couple of things that you want, more than a couple of days of clothes and just hope it doesn't burn."

Five mates cheat bushfire death in concrete bunker
Article from: Herald Sun



Jane Metlikovec

February 13, 2009 12:00am

FRANK Gissara and his mates shared a few beers on the roof as they waited for the flames to hit Callignee on Saturday.

And they shared a few more just hours later to celebrate their miracle survival -- thanks to an old concrete water tank.

Mr Gissara, 32, had called friends Paul Andreou, 37, Tony Fleischer, 40, Brett Crosby, 35, and Colin Aylett, 38, to give him a hand defending his property when fire reports started ringing in from around Gippsland on Saturday.

When the mates arrived they set up the fire gear and climbed on to the roof to keep a lookout.



They had no idea the fireball would descend on them with such speed or force.

"I was still on the roof when I first saw the flames and jumped straight off," Mr Crosby said. "By the time I hit the ground the shed was already on fire, the flames were going that quick."

Earlier that day, Mr Gissara and his mates had formulated a plan to fight the fire from the ground and retreat behind the tank if necessary. They were quickly robbed of each choice.

"The petrol pump caught fire and that was it," Mr Gissara said.

They made a break for the tank and were able to pull open the manhole.

"We all knew you shouldn't jump into a tank in a fire, but we had no other option," Mr Gissara said.

The five piled in, and the tank, which was full to their waists, started filling with smoke. Fire started shooting through holes in the concrete.

They took off their shirts, soaked them in the water, and plugged the holes.

As smoke filled the tank, they took turns giving each other a boost up to the manhole to quickly gulp in oxygen.

They also used the brief moment to glance towards the house and their cars to assess the damage.

"We'd come back down and have to tell someone their car's gone," Mr Fleischer said.

"Then they would go up, come back down and tell someone else their car was gone too."

The group kept up the routine for an hour as gas tanks exploded against the tank and the concrete started cracking.

"It sounded like fireworks were going off," Mr Andreou said, but the men kept fighting.

"It was a great team effort," Mr Aylett said.

"It was pretty tough going, but without that tank we were gone for sure," Mr Gissara said.

When most of the flames had passed they emerged from the tank to find one car had somehow survived intact.

The house, two speedboats and shed had been destroyed.

The group raced to the car and drove to Traralgon.

When they reached the safety of the Latrobe Valley town, they picked up a slab of beer, headed to a mate's garage, and began reliving their horrific experience.

As they toasted their survival, fellow Callignee couple Robin and Gwenda Jones were stunned by theirs.

The husband and wife escaped their home just before the flames hit.

But as they were driving away, the fire caught their car, and it started melting.

Luckily, a CFA fire truck was passing and stopped to collect them.

The firefighters dropped them back at their home, where they fought the blaze.

They saved their house, and saved their lives.

Where dreams died in Kinglake




John Ferguson

February 13, 2009 12:00am

THE road to carnage is just 510m long. In that short journey on the dusty, single-lane bush track, the fire was at its worst.

Every house was razed on Pine Ridge Rd -- 31 in all.

It is the last road before Kinglake National Park.

Witnesses said flames leapt over the road from the southwest at up to 100km/h.


He knows the sorrows down its driveways.

"This is the worst I've seen," he said.

Of the 31 houses down that track, five have lengthy pieces of blue-and-white police tape fluttering in the wind.

This tape marks death - the sign to authorities that once-happy family homes are now crime scenes.

There are two crime scenes at the start of the road, a couple in the middle and one at the end, where as Pine Ridge Rd becomes a fire trail and disappears into forest.

Stuart Nechodiuk was there on Saturday night when the flames started sweeping up through Kinglake West. He left before the embers flew in.

Mr Nechodiuk lost everything. Yesterday he sat by himself on his charred property with a six-pack of apple cider and a vision for the future with his wife, Kerri, and their two daughters.

"I'll definitely build again, for sure," he said.

"Start again? That's all you can really do."

Mr Nechodiuk lost many neighbours on Saturday and the tradesman has heard rumours that up to nine people died in one house.

Like everyone else, he can't be exactly sure. But he does know that each survivor will have their own story to tell, just as he has a tale of its path up and through Pine Ridge Rd.

Pointing to the scarred trees, he said no one could have predicted its path.

"It must have come up and went sideways, zig-zagged."

That explains why in nearby National Park Rd, one 1980s brick home is an absolute standout.

The home, named Cotswold, is unique because it is still standing.

Fire engulfed two-thirds of the large block, swallowed a greenhouse and smashed a window. Five big trees came down in the firestorm.

But it still survived. Around it, dozens of homes were razed.

The next big challenge for the owners is to sell a home which just happens to be uncomfortably close to the road of the damned.

A Raine and Horne sign proudly spruiks Cotswold's many positives, including three bedrooms, study, large block and double garage.

Now they can add "Australia's luckiest home" to the billboard.

Police chaplain Peter Owen spent yesterday helping federal officers deal with the gruesome task of searching for bodies found in the Pine Ridge houses.

Police believe a serial arsonist lit deadly Churchill bushfire




Jane Metlikovec and AAP

February 12, 2009 01:55pm

UPDATE 3:00pm: PREMIER John Brumby has added a fire at Mansfield to the list of blazes blamed on arsonists.

Mr Brumby's comments come after Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland said fires that have claimed the lives of 21 Gippslanders might have been the work of a serial arsonist.

Mr Brumby said there was every indication that the Mansfield fire, which started yesterday, was deliberately lit.

"There would seem to be no doubt at all that that fire's been deliberately lit. It's devastating," he said at the Healesville Memorial Hall east of Melbourne, which has become the town's emergency relief centre.

"Again what do you say about this except that we have a huge police team which is out there trying to track down any of these people responsible."

Water bombing aircraft were used to quell the 15-hectare Mansfield fire, which broke out in a pine plantation southeast of the town.



Speaking in Morwell this afternoon, Mr Overland said police were close to releasing a photofit of the suspect in the Gippsland fires.

"There has been a serial arsonist in this area for some period time and we have been working on that," Mr Overland said.

"It's too early to say whether it was that person that was responsible for the fire that happened on Saturday, but that's obviously something we will follow through."

Mr Overland refused to be drawn on rumours that the person police were looking for could be a teenager seen riding into pine areas on a dirt bike.

"We are concerned about any information that might lead us to the person responsible," he said.

"The public has been wonderful passing information through to us and we ask them to continue to do that.

"Even the smallest pieces of information are important and it could be that one piece of information that helps us put the jigsaw together."

Mr Overland said the two people arrested earlier today for suspicious activity near Taggerty were not lighting fires.

However, they are continuing to assist police with their inquiries.

More than 150 detectives are working on investigating fires across the state.

Bushfire early warning system is ready to go


AN early warning system that has been bogged down in bureaucracy for four years could be operating within weeks, its developers said yesterday.

But as Telstra said the technology was ready to go, Premier John Brumby called for another trial of the potentially lifesaving system in the wake of the Victoria fires.

Mr Brumby's comments staggered police and emergency service officers familiar with the results of trials of the Community Information and Warning System in 2005.

Those trials, in Mt Evelyn, Stawell and Halls Gap, were regarded by emergency services as highly successful.

The then premier, Steve Bracks, said in 2005 that the "extraordinary system" had the potential to change the way emergency services handled crises.

Retired senior policeman Murray Adams, who was then the state emergency response officer, said yesterday it was nonsense to suggest the system needed to be tested.

"We've got the technology and we've proved that it works," Mr Adams said.

"All they've got to do is sign on the dotted line."

The system enables all landline and mobile phones in a nominated area to be rung simultaneously or sent a text message to notify a community of an impending threat.

It also records the response from each call so it is known which homes or phones have not received warning of an impending emergency.

Mr Brumby said he would like to see a trial of the system carried out in Victoria.

"The communications systems haven't been quite ready yet for some of the systems in place and that's why we need a trial," he said.

"I don't think you can say if it had been in place (last weekend) it would have worked."

Mr Adams, who was responsible for police emergency management for 11 years and was awarded an Australian Police Medal, disagreed.

"I believe it would have. Any system that can be guaranteed to reach people and give them information they may not receive otherwise has to be a good thing," he said.

State Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin told the Herald Sun on Wednesday there were undoubtedly circumstances in which the system would save lives.

Telstra group managing director for public policy and communications David Quilty said the technology was "ready to go" and could be introduced in weeks "if there's a real will".

"It could be done very quickly if people wanted to give it priority," he said.

Mr Quilty said the South Australian government asked Telstra to use its broadcast system during a heatwave a fortnight ago.

Time to heed the warnings




Andrew Bolt

February 13, 2009 12:00am

JOHN Brumby says he will call a royal commission into the fires that have so mauled us.

"We want to put in place whatever arrangements are necessary to ensure nothing like this ever happens again."

Good, Premier. But the question is: will your government this time listen?

Every time we suffer a disastrous bushfire it's the same. In our agony, we set up an inquiry.

Cold months - even years - later, that inquiry tells us that we must especially do more fuel reduction burns to stop forest litter from mounting so high that it turns a fire into a turbo-fuelled inferno, impossible to fight.

And each time governments ignore them. Or forget them. Or hear too late.

In fact, no government has ignored them more completely than this one, doing fewer and fewer fuel reduction (or prescribed) burns over this past 10 years, until time had run out.

Here, let me quote the Department of Sustainability and Environment's fire manager of the very region which contains the now annihilated towns of Kinglake and Marysville, where so many of our 200 dead perished.

Here he is, just 16 months ago, telling a parliamentary inquiry how far behind the DSE was on its paltry targets for prescribed burns - and why:

"It is hard to put a finger on, to say in this urban interface environment how you can increase that level of prescribed burning - double it, to get up to our target - without having a huge influx of resources." (My emphasis.)

Those resources never came.

But resources sure were there for the green causes this Government preferred to chase.

That DSE fire chief again: "Climate change was the focus of our annual conference this year with the CFA at Lakes Entrance, and we managed to make it rain down there for two days!"

In fact, there was stronger support under this government for prescribed burning that helped nature than for burning that helped humans.

Read that in a 2003 report to the premier by the Emergency Services Commissioner: "The number and area of burns for fuel reduction has declined more markedly through the 1990s than has that for regeneration burns."

How many times have Victorian governments ignored such warnings, letting the fuel in our forests mount to these lethal levels?

Well, ask the federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, which in 2007 wrote to yet another inquiry into bushfires to suggest that rather than ask for more advice, Victoria should just act on the advice it had been given already.

"DAFF would also like to draw the attention of the Inquiry to the outcomes of the national inquiries held after the 2003 fires . . .

"There is concern that some of the recommendations from the national inquiries have not been implemented by land management agencies."

In particular, "prescribed burning (in Victoria) has been reducing in recent years".

But by then we were already so mad with tree worship that one of the shires worst hit by the fires this past week boasted that "the Shire of Yarra Ranges has not undertaken prescribed burning on public land under its control for a number of years".

Bizarrely, Mitchell Shire Council even made a ratepayer, Liam Sheahan, pay $100,000 in fines and costs for clearing his own fire break, which last weekend saved his Reedy Creek home from the fire storm which destroyed many houses around it.

And Nillumbik Shire, which contains Kinglake, last year warned ratepayers it had just fined two people for clearing trees from around their own homes, and another for simply picking up dead wood from the roadside.

"Nillumbik values its large tree canopies, they are major contributors to the landscape and character of our shire, and provide a familiar habitat for our precious wildlife," the mayor wrote.

His trees now? Gone. The houses, too.

No, stop. You are right. I'm too angry, given that just two days ago I said this was not yet the time to point fingers.

I'm too vehement, given there is no firm proof yet that experts are right in saying high fuel loads in our forests, and trees left to loom over houses and roads, made a fatal difference.

And I'm too damning, given that politicians tend to do only what the dizzy media and public demand.

So let's just agree for now that many things probably conspired to make these fires so murderous, from the failure of governments to set up a telephone warning system, to the public's tree-change complacency about the bush. From slack building codes to a lack of fireproof shelters.

But let's also agree on this: that this time we will not ignore the findings of this inquiry as we ignored the most urgent warning of the many before it.

So rather than say more, I'll just show you how often that warning was given so you can decide for yourself: Is it answers we lack, or the will to act?

1939 Judge Leonard Stretton, royal commissioner investigating the Black Friday fires:

"The amount of (controlled) burning which was done was ridiculously inadequate."

1984 The Bushfire Review Committee on the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires:

The amount of fuel reduction burning was "too low", and "mitigation and preparedness (should) be enhanced and maintained in the future".

1992 Auditor-General's report on fire prevention by the Department of Conservation and Environment:

"The failure of the department to achieve its planned fuel-reduction burns each year has resulted in an increasing accumulation of fuel on forest floors. This makes Victoria's forests and protected lands more susceptible to the occurrence of fires . . .

"Those areas warranting the highest level of protection to human life, property and public assets had in fact received the lowest level of protection."

1994 CSIRO's then chief fire expert, Phil Cheney, on the findings of a national fire management conference:

"(O)bservations of firefighters and wildfire case histories have convinced royal commissions, committees of enquiry and coroners that fuel reduction, by prescribed burning, is an essential component of fire management in eucalypt forests . . .

"Over the 10 years prior to 1994 there has been (a) decline in the area prescribed burnt for fuel . . .".

2003 Federal parliamentary report on fires in Canberra, NSW and Victoria:

The committee heard a consistent message right around Australia: . . . there has been grossly inadequate hazard reduction burning on public lands for far too long . . .".

2003 State inquiry into Victoria's 2002-03 fires, by Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Elspin:

In recent years, areas that have been prescribed burned in the North East and Gippsland . . . are below rates likely to be satisfactory either for fuel reduction for purposes of asset protection, or for the ecological needs of plant communities . . . (T)he trend, at least, should be for more prescribed burning rather than less."

2003 David Packham, academic and former CSIRO bushfire scientist, in a study for Nillumbik residents of roads around Kinglake, where many have now died:

"The mix of fuel, unsafe roadsides and embedded houses, some with zero protection and no hope of survival, will ensure that when a large fire impinges upon the area a major disaster will result."

2003 Nillumbik Ratepayers Association in a letter to WorkCover:

"The threat is that many of the roads including major ones and access roads to some schools and aged-care facilities have developed dangerous levels of fuel that on extreme fire danger days could generate fire behaviour that would not be survivable . . .

"This risk has been created by application of Government and shire planning controls that have prevented fuel reduction on roadsides."

2004 Athol Hodgson, former chief fire officer for the Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands:

"Another top priority is to restore prescribed burning programs in forests . . . (I)n 2003 the Auditor-General found that since 1994, fuel reduction burning has never met the department's planning and operational fuel reduction targets."

2007 Evidence to State Parliament's Environment and Natural Resources Committee from the Department of Sustainability and the Environment:

"The East Port Phillip region fire district . . . includes the fire-prone municipalities of Yarra Ranges, Nillumbik . . . Over the last 10 years, the district burns an average of . . . 1345ha (which) falls somewhat short of the East Port Phillip Fire Protection Plan target of 2307ha . . .".

2008 Environment and Natural Resources Committee report:

"That in order to enhance the protection of community and ecological assets, the Department of Sustainability and Environment increase its annual prescribed burning target from 130,000ha to 385,000ha."

December 5, 2008 News report, just four weeks before the fires:

"The State Government pledged yesterday to increase controlled burning across the state, in the wake of a horror bushfire season two years ago.

"It will spend an extra $10 million working with the community to develop and implement large-scale planned burning."

To "develop". To eventually "implement", after "working with the community", the burning that almost every inquiry or report since 1939 has said was urgent, or falling behind.

I suspect Brumby's royal commission will repeat these old warnings.

But will we this time act?

February 13, 2009 12:00am

UPDATE 10.25am: RESIDENTS of the eastern suburbs have been warned to expect smoke-filled skies as fires burn close to Healesville.

The blaze comes as authorities put the tally of houses destroyed in bushfires across the state at 1830, with 7000 people displaced.

i dunno about in Melbourne but its now been raining for 5 days in NSW

i hope your not getting this (HEAVY) rain coz i'd be worried that with no vegetation left you might get land slides down there.

Where was the rain when you needed it ? May have helped save some lives. Now I hear there are flood issues.

The flood issues are not near Melbourne Dream - But they are happening in Australia

Melbourne is down south - the floods up north Queensland way but the Hunter river is getting high in NSW.

The biggest problem I see for those in Melbourne is their water catchments have ash in them and I can't see people being able to afford bottle water to drink - and what is there I think people that can afford it will buy it like its going outta fashion.

If I was there I would be boiling the water than boiling it again and than refrigerating it and than i dunno if that would be enough.

A few years back Mr Wilbe Brought me a water cooler filter system and I think he'll need it more than me now.

I won't drink any water that's not boiled and filtered after Yr 2000 when the Sydney water board contaminated our water - I got so sick and I never want to experience that again in this life's span - the funny thing is when I went to the Olympics I never even drank the water all I did was wet my face and neck but stupid me rinsed my mouth out and that was enough to do it.

So I'm worried for everyone in Melbourne at the moment any water that's contaminated scares the dickens out of me.

I bet the fucker who lit the fires never thought past his fuckin nose to think of the damage he has caused not only for those who have past away and their grieving families - all the homeless and every other person that lives in Melbourne that is suffering and who will suffer for a long time to come.

Storms and floods are a freak of nature deliberately lit fires now thats a whole new ball game.

The guy they have at the moment i believe would be safer in gaol {jail} coz if he ever gets out i'm sure shadow people would like to string him up.

My personal opinion - I think he should be tied to a tree in the bush and everyone who lost a family member should get to douse him in petrol and get to throw matches at him

but that would be to quick a way to be punished - maybe every family member should have a burning hot poker to slowly burn him to death.

Ok I'm babbling but he shouldn't be allowed to live with 3 meals a day in gaol or anywhere else.

Now to the floods - I do hope those that are isolated are getting enough fresh spring water to drink and I do hope they are getting food and there is enough people assisting them to evacuate from any of the unsafe locations into safety.

Apart from Strokes I really don't know anyone personally up that way - I do have a few cousins in Queensland but the floods are no where near them.