The worst may be to come

A VOLUNTEER firefighter fears that Black Saturday will not be the worst fires he sees in his lifetime.
Speaking at the Bushfire Royal Commission, CFA volunteer Ivan Smith said in 42 years of fighting fires he had never seen anything like the fires that razed the Bunyip State Park.
Comparing Black Saturday with Ash Wednesday, Mr Smith, a former Narre Warren North CFA member, said there was a vast difference between the two.
“In the Ash Wednesday event there was no designed fire management system,” he said.
“It was very much an ad hoc system. Although we still had the equivalent of division commanders and sector commanders, the incident controller, which I became, basically did the roles of incident control, planning and operations, so it was a lot bigger job I guess on one person in that respect.” Mr Smith was contacted by CFA Westernport operations manager Trevor Owen on 5 February, who asked him to prepare an operational contingency plan.
“He told me something that I already knew, there was a fire going pretty good in Bunyip State Park and he asked me if I could work on the Friday,” he said.
The idea was for the CFA, under the leadership of Mr Smith, to put together a team with the title of “contingency”, but the team would be devoted to strategic planning, focused on protecting communities and assets should the fire get out of control.
Mr Smith told the inquiry that he had never witnessed fire behaviour like 7 February in his 42 years working with the CFA.
“I have probably only seen five fires in my career like this, anything like this, but this was clearly the worst fire I’ve ever experienced,” he said. “It was bloody awful.”
He said no words to describe the fire could explain the enormity of the situation.
“Even things like this is an ‘extremely dangerous fire’ doesn’t resonate,” he said.
“I think it is just a big wildfire to me.”
Mr Smith said Ash Wednesday had left him with many experiences, but he wouldn’t forget Black Saturday.
“The trouble with it is I thought, when I had experienced first-hand, Ash Wednesday I had seen the ultimate fire and then I saw this one,” he said.
“It worries me that in my lifetime I’ll see a worse one.”