From the Fire Ground - The Police Association Victoria

8 Special report
from the
fire
Ground
March 2009 The Police Association Journal
Photography by gregnoakes.com
www.tpav.org.au

9
Saturday, February 7, 2009 will go down as one of the blackest days in Victoria’s
history. Grim warnings from the weather bureau proved to be brutally accurate.
Savage bushfires exploded around the state. More than 1800 homes were destroyed
and 7,000 people displaced. More than 200 people lost their lives.
It is a day all Victorians will never forget and some
will never recover from.
Police around the state showed incredible courage
in protecting their communities and helping people
flee the fire ground. They shun the notion that they are
heroes. They were just police doing their job. But they
also have to deal with the knowledge that they couldn’t
save everyone. Some lost their own homes while they
saved others. Some lost friends and family members.
These are some of their stories.
Marysville has been literally wiped off the map.
The one resounding emotion in Marysville is disbelief.
The bakery, a motel, the CFA base and a handful of
homes are all that remain of the beautiful, historic,
tourist town.
On Saturday afternoon Senior Constable Peter Collyer
was at home in Buxton, due on duty at 6.00 pm. The
temperature hit 44.5 degrees and the smoke seemed
much closer than the reported fire at Kilmore. Just as
a precaution, Peter decided to pack up his family and
their precious possessions and get them to the relative
safety of Alexandra. At 5.30 pm he left them in the
police station and headed in to Marysville with a
member from Alexandra.
This was the beginning of a nightmare.
Local Senior Constable Ian Thompson had rostered
himself on to a day shift and was in town. When Peter
spoke to Ian as he headed in to town, Peter arranged
to go straight to Ian’s home and tell his wife and
children to evacuate.
Knowing the Thompson family was heading to safety,
Peter went to the CFA where he found Senior Constable
Ken Dwight from Woods Point. In an amazing gesture,
Ken had come from his remote community to help.
Together they went to the oval where there were up
to 50 cars and the trees along the edge were starting
to go up.
“We told them they had to go. No one was frantic yet
the fire was right there,” recalls Peter.
Constable Belinda Dawson lost everything in the Kinglake fire.
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Marysville.
Marysville.
Sergeant Kevin Graham and Jenny search through what is left of their home.
The Marysville Police Station.
“I had no idea of the time. Five minutes seemed like
a long time. It was daylight and then it got really dark.
It was like an eclipse. I had to shout for Ken to hear
me over the roar of the fire. I can only describe it as
a massive tidal wave or a hundred jumbo jets taking
off at once. It was time to get out.
“We were the last car that I am aware of to leave town.
It was frightening. We couldn’t see flames but we could
hear them. The fire was almost on top of us. Embers
were starting to spot all over the road. This was the
death knock. We had to get out of there.”
As they drove out of town Peter and Ken visited
properties, telling people to evacuate. Some wouldn’t
take their advice. They were going to stay and defend
their properties. A woman motorist they spoke to
wanted to go back to Marysville to get her husband.
Peter told her if she headed back she would die. Another
wanted Peter to talk to her husband who had refused
to leave. He couldn’t - there just wasn’t time. “It would
have been suicide to stay.”
“That’s how we hopped, skipped and jumped to
Buxton. We out ran the fire and got to Buxton ahead
of it. There were people in the main street and we told
them to go. There wasn’t any time for them to go to their
homes and pack. They just had to leave. An older man
didn’t have a car so we took him with us. We drove with
the siren on and beeping the horn. It was possible there
were people in their homes not even aware. There are
homes quite deep in the bush, on dirt roads. We drove
down some of them. I was thinking the further we drove
down the more chance we had of cutting ourselves off.
Most people seemed to have left.
“The smoke was right behind us. It was a red haze and
it was difficult to see the highway. The dull continuous
base thud of the fire was always there. There was only
so much we could do.”
Peter and Ken met up with the CFA at Taggerty, where
they were going to make their stand. Eventually they
headed north to Alexandra.
“It was a long night. And it is strange, but I can’t
really remember what happened. I didn’t go back
to Marysville that night.
“In this job you get a false sense of immortality
and you tend to do things you wouldn’t do normally
without thinking about it. My big fear when we left
Marysville was if the road got cut we’d were all in
trouble. I wondered if we’d left it too late or if we
shouldn’t have gone up that last street. This was more
fearful than anything I’ve done in my career. If I’d
made a mistake here ...”
Sunday, February 8 is a day Peter will never forget.
“It is just scorched earth and little white squares of
powder dotted all over the place. Twisted tin lays over
everything. That is what is left of people’s houses. It was
a pretty long day, going round to addresses looking for
bodies. We probably located about a dozen bodies over
the course of the day. Some places we couldn’t find them,
but we knew they were in there. The hard thing is we
know these people. We know the houses and the people
in them.
“The bodies were badly burnt. I’d never seen burnt
bodies before and in some ways that made it easier.
I didn’t see them as the people they were. The most
tragic one I saw was a young woman we found on the
footpath. She was probably making her way to the oval
and she didn’t make it. She was probably overcome by
the radiant heat.
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“In this fire there were bones that were non-existent.
The cars bled silver, trails of molten metal. The gear
box housings just vaporised. The alloy just disappeared.
That’s a lot of temperature. Windscreens became as soft
as gladwrap and moulded around the shape of the car.”
Apart from the tragedies there are some miracles.
Peter’s first contact for the day was with a local who had
survived. His house was standing.
“The tragedy is his wife walked away from the house,
seeking refuge in the Cumberland Resort which she
deemed to be safe. She died that night.”
Marysville’s Sergeant Kev Graham and his wife Jenny
lost everything. They lived in the police residence next
door to the police station. Jenny was lucky to escape
with her life. Kev, currently on long-service leave, was in
Melbourne, feeling helpless and hopeless as the town he
has grown to love over the past four years was razed by a
fireball that came straight from the gates of hell. While
losing their possessions has saddened them, what moves
both Kev and Jenny is the loss of close friends, members
of their community that didn’t escape the inferno.
The Police Association Journal returned to Marysville
with Kev and Jenny a couple of days after the firestorm.
Back in their hometown, they stood in disbelief,
looking at was their home, now a pile of rubble and
asbestos dust. Even their campervan was gone. Kev and
Jenny had to don protective suits before they could see if
there was anything left to salvage.
On Saturday, February 7 Jenny was home alone. She’d
been keeping an eye on the weather and knew things
were not right. She grabbed some photos, a pair of
undies, a cardigan, the first quilt she ever made and the
family dog. When she was getting papers out of the safe
Jenny thought she’d also saved Kev’s police medals, but
she’d only grabbed the empty boxes. The medals were
on his uniforms, hanging in the hall cupboard.
When she heard sirens she knew it was time to go,
but she was scared she wouldn’t get out the traffic was
Senior Constable Peter Collyer outside what is left of the Marysville Police Station.
so heavy. A near collision created a break in the traffic
that enabled Jenny to get onto the road and out of town.
She was wearing shorts, a top and a pair of thongs. She
even left her cosmetics and toiletries behind. She truly
believed she would be coming home.
“I thought I’d be coming back. I left a beautiful quilt
on the lounge room wall because I didn’t want to
damage the plaster on the wall. There is no wall there
now. I left tubs of photos in the cupboard because they
were too heavy to lift. I thought about other things as
I drove away, but I wasn’t turning back. I wasn’t going
to die for them.”
Kev Graham may not have been in town on the night of
the fires but he certainly heard of the heroic work by both
his off-siders – Senior Constables Peter Collyer and Ian
Thompson. They put their own safety at risk, evacuating
as many people as they could from the town and
surrounding areas. He knew they would feel inadequate
because there was no way they could warn everyone.
Rummaging through the rubble, Jenny found a gold
bracelet and a plaque made by their daughter, Lauren
when she was still at school. Kev found the spanners his
father made when he was working in the Scottish mines
as a young man. That is about all that survived – apart
from the welcome sign outside their front door.
“It has been devastating to come back. It is just so surreal.
It is eerie. I just can’t believe that this was our town,” said
Jenny. “We’re so lucky. We survived – that’s the main
thing. We can rebuild, but some have lost their families.”
At Kinglake the fire was moving at a hellish pace.
It moved 13 kilometres in just 10 minutes. “It was flying,”
says Sergeant Jon Ellks. “It was a nightmare.”
Everyone in Kinglake has lost something or someone
or knows someone who has – and that includes the
police who live and work in the community.
Leading Senior Constable Roger Wood was on duty
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Kinglake West.
on Saturday. The only way he can describe what
happened is “it was a holocaust”.
In the morning a woman who was new to the area
came to the police station and asked Roger for some
advice. What should she do? She didn’t have a fire
plan. Roger told her she should get off the mountain.
Thinking back on it in the days after the fire, Roger was
relieved he gave her that advice. “Imagine if I’d told her
to go home,” he shudders at the thought.
As the day wore on the fire activity in the area grew.
Roger knew it was getting dangerous. His wife was in
St Andrews. Flames were coming over the hill when she
rang him. He told her to get blankets and shelter in the
bathroom. For hours he didn’t know if his family was
alive or dead.
Senior Constable Cameron Caine lives in Pheasant
Creek. He wasn’t due to work until 6.00 pm but he knew
there were fires in the area. He went to the police station
and fired up the generator, just as a precaution. He told
his wife and children to head there and then went to
meet up with Roger at the Kinglake West CFA.
They tried to get back to Kinglake. Cars were heading
out of town through a wall of smoke. The fire was
over the road. Cameron was hoping his family hadn’t
headed into the inferno.
“It went black and a big glow came over the hill.
I thought we were in strife,” says Roger.
They headed back to Kinglake West and passed the
Pheasant Creek store. There were about 50 cars parked
there and the fire front was only minutes off. Cameron
knew it wasn’t a safe place to stay. There were gas
cylinders at the store, a pine plantation across the road
and a fire bearing down on them.
Roger went ahead to make sure the road was clear
and Cameron moved the residents towards the CFA.
While he was there Cameron saw his wife and children
drive past – heading to Kinglake West. It was an
enormous relief.
“There was no panic. Everyone did what they were
told,” says Cameron.
Marysville.
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He jumped into a residents car and as they drove off the
flames shot across the road. The wind picked up and
then it got as “black as midnight”. It was a close call.
There is nothing left of the Pheasant Creek store.
Everyone sheltered in the CFA shed until the fire front
passed. There was one CFA truck and the fire fighters
were hosing everything around the shed. That is what
saved them.
While the fire raged a message came through that
15 kids were trapped in the Kinglake West rec hall, near
the CFA shed. It was surrounded by fire. Cameron and
Roger headed over and searched, but they couldn’t
Marysville.
find anyone. They just made it back to shelter when the
fire roared past. It was their second lucky escape.
At some stage during the night Roger got the call
he’d been waiting for. His wife and children were safe.
The fire missed their home by less than a kilometre.
Both Roger and Cameron admit they ran on
adrenalin all night. They spent the night answering
emergency calls. One was to an off-duty member
trapped by the fire. They couldn’t get through the fire.
Luckily the member and his family survived.
The stories of survival are amazing. Some saved
themselves by sheltering in the local broccoli farm.
Another man hid with a mob of kangaroos in a
cleared paddock.
Roger and Cameron found people sheltering at the
footy oval. One of the fathers from Roger’s child’s
school was there. He told them his wife and son-in-law
had been following him in another car and they never
arrived. “I think he knew then they didn’t make it,”
says Roger. “They were trapped by falling trees.”
When they headed back in to Kinglake, about 2.00 am,
it was like a bomb site.
There were about 1,000 shocked people walking
around. There was a sea of injured people lying on
the floor of the CFA building. There were people
helping those that they could. The ambulances
couldn’t get through the fire to help the injured. The
fire front was long gone but the area was still burning.
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Pheasant Creek.
Kinglake.
Kinglake SES Depot.
Roger, Cameron and TMU members on the scene
transported critically injured people to Whittlesea.
“It was a burning hell to get down the mountain.”
Roger and Cameron say the locals remained calm
throughout their ordeal. Cameron thinks that could
have been because the fire came so quick and was so
unexpected. Locals have told them how reassuring it
was to see friendly faces of their police in town.
“We were very, very lucky,” says Cameron. “I thought
we were gone a couple of times but we were in the
right spot at the right time...not like a lot of these
unfortunate people.”
When the sun came up it hit Cameron. “I looked
at the carnage. I drove around with a tear in my eye.
This is my town. I couldn’t believe it. It was eerie.”
Sunday was a day filled with horrors.
“We located five in one house, four in another. We
went up to the top of the hill and found two in the
driveway. There were four across the road in another
house. It was shocking,” says Jon Ellks. “It is later on that
it hits you – afterwards. The first week was shitful. The
second week was better.”
Every member from Kinglake helped with the search
for bodies in the first couple of days after the fire. On
Tuesday the locals were pulled out of the house to house
searches. It was too personal. They knew these people.
Cameron searched one house where a friend had lost
two of his children. They had gone to their grandmother’s
home because it would be safe. The children perished.
Their grandmother is fighting for her life in hospital.
The family home was untouched by the fire.
“That was the worst thing for me,” says Cameron.
“It was shocking.”
For Cameron it was very personal. He found 11 bodies
in three houses.
An elderly resident who was part of the extended
police family in town fled his home with just his wife’s
ashes. He died cradling them. His death rocked them all.
The Kinglake locals are a tough, resilient lot. The
police think they will bounce back. The die-hards will
stay. Some of the newcomers will go. And the police?
They’ll stay.
Wind changes saved the homes of Jon Ellks, Roger
Wood and Cameron Caine. Constable Belinda Dawson
wasn’t so lucky.
Belinda moved to Kinglake six months ago and had
only been in her lovely, rented stone house overlooking
the valley for two weeks. A pile of rubble and tin is all
that is left. Part of the roof is at the end of the driveway –
half a kilometre from the house.
“I knew the fire was in the distance, but I didn’t really
think it was going to come,” Belinda says, back at work
in a new uniform. “I had my young niece staying with
me so I decided to go to my mum’s when it got so hot and
windy. I left about 4 and the fire hit half an hour later.”
Belinda loved her country retreat. Roos and deer grazed
nearby and she had a spectacular view. The animals
and birds are gone now. Some lie dead near the ruins
of the house. Others have just vanished.
“Maybe they’ll come back one day,” she says wistfully
as she turns her back on the ruin and heads back to work.
Sergeant Bob Lawler stands in the ruins of his home.
The Boolara fires hit the week before the catastrophic
fires of Marysville and Kinglake. Sergeant Bob Lawler
knew his home overlooking the small township of
Boolara, near Morwell, was in a fire risk area but he
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Senior Constables Cameron Caine and Roger Wood at the Pheasant Creek Store.
loved the solitude and the beauty. He had his own
resident koala and a wombat roamed through his
garden. It was an idyllic location and well worth
the long train trip to Melbourne to work at the VPC.
Bob was part of the tiny community and had never
considered moving back to the suburbs.
On January 30 the fire risk was high so Bob organised
to work from home. Fires had been burning in the
surrounding area for more than two days. They were
moving slowly, but fires are unpredictable – a wind
change could turn the slow moving blaze in to an inferno.
As the day progressed the risk grew. Fires were blazing
on three sides of the town and they were moving in on
Bob’s little piece of heaven. During the afternoon the
CFA announced they could defend the town but the
surrounding property owners would have to fend for
themselves. Bob was one of those property owners. He
had turned an old cement tank into a bunker, but when
a local CFA firefighter told Bob the fire was approaching
from all sides and he had just 10 minutes to flee he
decided to turn his back on his home and protect his life.
He didn’t even think about what he could save.
“The fire was coming over the hill, bearing down on
my home. When I saw how fierce it was I knew I didn’t
have a chance. I had to get out,” says Bob as he looks
around the ashes that were once his home.
He grabbed his mobile phone, car keys and a spare pair
of glasses and fled. The road leading from his home to the
town was already ablaze. Bob drove overland, heading
to a neighbour’s home further down the valley. Together
they blacked out spot fires, protecting that house.
Two 5,000 gallon water tanks next to Bob’s house
melted. The heat of the blaze melted his aluminium
window frames, leaving trails of reconstituted molten
metal across the blackened ground. Bricks exploded and
walls cracked. His fridges melted. Guns inside his gun
safe were burnt. Even the concrete slab will need to be
replaced. Bob estimates the fire must have been burning
at or above 900 degrees, yet a small ornament still stood
on the mantelpiece – a reminder of what had once been.
It is the irreplaceable items that upset Bob the most...
things that belonged to his grandfather and a lifetime
of photos. The loss will not stop Bob Lawler rebuilding
his Boolara home. When The Police Association Journal
visited him he was already discussing his plans with
local builders. One thing Bob won’t be having is trees
close to his home.
The irony wasn’t lost on Bob when he pointed out
a blackened sign on a tree at the bottom of his driveway.
It said ‘Back burning – May 2009’.
These are just a handful of the stories of commitment to
duty and bravery shown by countless members during the
firestorm and the days and weeks that followed. Members
across the state protected their communities, putting
their own safety at risk. Members lost their homes and
possessions. Some lost friends and loved ones. What they
have been through is unfathomable to the rest of us. What
they have seen and endured will stay with them forever.
The Police Association salutes you – one and all.
YOU CAN HELP YOUR COLLEAGUES
The Police Association has received many messages
of support and offers of help from our interstate
and international police colleagues.
The Association is pleased to announce that
it has now established a fund whereby donations
can be made to assist our members affected
by the bushfires.
Donations can be made by direct deposit to
Police Credit (Victoria):
TPA MEMBER SUPPORT FUND
BSB No. 704230 Account No. 100374936
FOR INTERNAL TRANSFERS
6-digit member number: 603769 s1
www.tpav.org.au The Police Association Journal March 2009