GLOBAL IMPACT
Australian Bush Fires
Australia will rise as a phoenix from the flames of bush fires East Gippsland in Victoria was a focal point for the devastating Australian bush fires which have ravaged the tinder dry land since September. Rotarian Janne Speirs, who lives in East Gippsland and is Chair of the Emergency Management Committee for Rotary District 9820, tells her story.
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of the area had already been in drought for approximately three years, so it was tinderbox dry. The very isolation that makes many of these communities so attractive became a threat. Evacuations became essential, not just for residents, but for holiday makers too, some driving out while, and others being evacuated by Army helicopters and naval vessels. Following the disastrous events of December 30th/31st, when temperatures hit 40C, and 30,000 residents and tourists were urged to flee East Gippsland, available members of the local Rotary cluster met on New Year’s Day to form a committee in accordance with our District Emergency Management plan. For those who stayed to defend their properties, they have endured almost two months of disturbed sleep, emergency and evacuation warnings. They have been faced with the terrifying spectre of fire fronts descending on them, then moving back, only to reform a few days later on another temperature or wind change. So far, some 2,000 homes have been lost, plus sheds, fencing, equipment, livestock and wildlife. 28 people have been
confirmed dead nationally, in Australia. Displaced families are either ‘couch surfing’ or in temporary accommodation but often with no real timeframe on a return home. There is no short-term fix to our situation. East Gippsland is a vast area and as Rotarians we have a mammoth task in front of us. We are a ‘recovery organisation’, but even then, cannot do everything. Rather we are focused on helping local families and communities on a priority basis.
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OTARY 9820 is one of five districts in Victoria, stretching from the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne, the Mornington Peninsula and Phillip Island through Gippsland to the New South Wales border. Our neighbouring District 9790 is also dealing with a current fire crisis! Our District has a varied and beautiful landscape, from coastal flats and ‘Victoria’s Riviera’, including towns like Mallacoota and Lakes Entrance, for whom this is normally the busiest time of year with thousands of tourists, to the world renowned Fairy Penguins of Phillip Island. There’s Wilsons Promontory National Park, Mornington Peninsula, wineries, dairying and pine plantations. Ours is a truly beautiful state. Travel further east, and you enter a different world with small isolated farming communities in amongst magnificent bush in the mountains of the Great Dividing Range. Here are the Buchan Caves, High Country and Snowy River, of Banjo Paterson’s ‘Man from Snowy River’ fame, and its mouth at Marlo. It is in East Gippsland that lightning strikes started fires in November. Much
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