Parliament told of fires’ fearful fury

“When Ivan Smith’s face came on my television on Saturday afternoon – he was my district group officer during the Ash Wednesday bushfire – I knew we were in trouble. He is a very experienced incident controller.
“I knew that the fire was out of the Bunyip Ridge state forests and on the move.
“I was immediately drawn back to that day at Beaconsfield when my team was pulled from the fire 15 minutes before the crews that went in before us died.
“I was immediately reminded of the next day, heading with my crew and my truck up to Upper Pakenham.
“I had the best driver I knew in the town, Greg Atkins, a great team and a good truck, but I was wondering one thing: will I bring these people home?
“I know that goes through the minds of the Ivan Smiths and the Peter Schmidts – Peter Schmidt gave us a briefing yesterday – and the Brian Petries.
“They are all over this great South Land, these people. Their names you do not know – they are just men and women who do their jobs extremely well.
“When I was at Warragul on Sunday at the refuge centre, my friend Gary Blackwood, the member for Narracan, said, ‘I have just spoken to my mate. They stayed to defend the house. They expected the ember attack and then the fire front to go through. But instead of that, two lines of flame came at them, straight out of the scrub. They hit the shed wall and went straight up the shed wall, across the shed roof, down to the floor, across the ground and into the house, and the house blew up.’ This was in a matter of seconds.
“They were ready for everything, and they were mentally prepared too.
“The awesome fury of the fire coming out of the Bunyip state forest just before it broke into open ground ripped out a 200-foot mountain ash, threw it into the air and dropped it on the ground as if it were a twig.
“The awesome fury of this fire cannot be comprehended by the thinking of any reasonable person.
“The Bunyip Ridge fire was an incendiary device sitting for four days waiting for the north wind.
“I will not say how the fire started, but four fires went up at the one time on the one road way back in the forest.
“That fire sat there against as much effort as the DSE could put into it for that time, and we knew about it and we had a plan for it.
“Just to the east of that, you then have Noojee and Walhalla, where there are five fires burning. Way to the east, we have the Dargo fire. Behind us, we have the Churchill fire, which is just coming up again through increased wind right across Victoria.
“There is also the Healesville fire closer to the north of Melbourne. If we do not have rain, those fires will join together. The Bunyip Ridge fire has a 21-kilometre front at the moment. That is going north by one kilometre.
“In the worst case, the Healesville fire will join the Bunyip Ridge fire and the Noojee fires … if a northerly wind changes, we are then threatened all the way to the south from that fire.
“I know how people felt on Saturday afternoon. I changed into my boots, my woollen socks, my cotton jeans and my pure cotton top, and I got my overalls ready and went outside and picked up the hose that was going to protect us.
“I turned it on and it blew straight back over my head and I knew then that what I was facing was nothing that we could normally do something about in our household.
“So I put it down and went back inside and said to Bronwyn, ‘Get the dog, get the bucket, put it in the car. The moment we see anything go up to our north, we move.’
“I know there are people who will wake every morning believing that it was all a dream; that it did not happen. And then they will realise it was not a dream and they will cry and cry again.
“We are going to need every resource that this government and this parliament together can muster to respond to what has happened, what is happening and what is ahead of us.
“To those who pray, I say: pray now; do not leave it until next Sunday. To those who fight, I say: all strength to your arm; stay safe. To those who serve, I say: we in this parliament stand with you as one.
“In times such as these of unprecedented trauma when faced with an inescapable disaster from a near indestructible force, all we can rely on is each other.”