Black Saturday
10 years on
Special commemorative edition
An eye on disaster By Casey Neill CFA firefighter and photographer Keith Pakenham has been reflecting on the 2009 bushfires - not just Black Saturday. Fires were already burning at Churchill and Callignee in the Gippsland area when the devastating blazes started on 7 February, he said. That’s where the famous image of the koala drinking from a firefighter’s water bottle came from. “It was not the Black Saturday fires,” he said. “We had fires all over Victoria for weeks.” On Black Saturday itself Keith started his day in the Labertouche area. “I could hear the radio squawking all day long,” he said. “It wasn’t just where you were that was burning. “It was Victoria that was well alight. “Rather than a bushfire, it really was a fire storm.” Later in the day he fought a grass fire that took hold in Narre Warren South and destroyed several houses. Post-Black Saturday, a bushfire took hold in Birdsland Reserve in Belgrave Heights, destroyed Upper Ferntree Gully Fire Brigade’s near-new truck and almost claimed the lives of three firefighters. “They got caught in the wind change that carried through there,” Keith said.
CFA firefighter and photographer Keith Pakenham. “That had massive potential of taking out all the houses down there.” The CFA veteran said he saw “an incredible outpouring of community” during this dark period. Businesses offered goods and services free of charge and individuals made donations and volunteered support. “You do see the good that can come from these disasters,” he said. Keith said the potential for losing lives to bushfire was increasing as more people established homes in the bush. “Unless you’ve actually been directly in amongst a fire, people can’t understand how quick it comes, the noise, the disorientation your body gets because of the thick smoke and the strong wind,” he said. “Your eyes are burning and stinging.
“The smoke is so thick you’re choking and coughing. “People get disoriented on the roads they’ve driven on a thousand times. “That’s when the panic sets in. “You can’t wait until that last second and flee. You need to make a plan.” He urged people living in bush areas to clear vegetation and wood from around their property for the summer, put sprinklers on their roof and clear a path for emergency vehicle access. “Make sure you’re aware of what’s going on outside,” he said. “If you think you smell something burning, do something about it as early as you possibly can. “If we had people knocking on doors telling you to leave, who’s fighting the fires?” He said heavily populated areas like the Dandenongs were a real worry. “We can’t remove every tree and all the undergrowth to make it safer because then it would be a bald mountain,” he said. “Because it’s so hilly and there’s only a few roads around the outside ... “Once a fire takes a hold, every man and his dog will get on the phones and take out the power in the area.” He urged people to print a map out and leave it in their car, rather than relying on map apps being available to guide them to safety.
Lessons learnt from resilience that day By Monique Kellett On 8 February 2009 I woke up to my mobile phone vibrating beside my head. It was my news editor calling and, blearyeyed, I could see she had tried to call twice before. I answered the phone and repeated back the firm instructions she had just given me, trying to muster as much professionalism and coherence as I could into my first words of the day. “Fire. Yarra Valley. Take camera. Notepad. Interview everyone. Got it.” In the car, the bushfire was all over the radio. After each news bulletin the news presenter stated very clearly not to go to the area and that “rubberneckers will be prosecuted”. Now fully awake, the realisation I was driving towards an active bushfire armed only with a camera and notepad was starting to sink in. I decided to call my news editor back. “You’re not rubbernecking, you’re working. Go!” It was a nice try. Being the only person at an emergency who wasn’t there to help had always been my least favourite part of being a journalist. I sucked up my survival instincts in favour of work ethic and continued on towards Warburton.
Swenrick
A plucky 22-year-old, I had started working in Healesville on the Upper Yarra Mail the year before. The weeks after that initial phone call were hectic. We would interview one person for a story, ask what they'd heard and the chain of stories would continue. I followed stories that broke my heart, took my breath away and some that were too horrible to print. I still think about the parents of Gareth Jones Roberts Junior and how proud they were of their loyal son who went out to get petrol for their generators and never came home. Then there were children of Chum Creek Primary School who would get spooked if a car drove too fast along the dirt road alongside the school. The dust blowing in through the school yard was too close a resemblance to bushfire smoke. Or their letters of thanks to firefighters and makeshift, hand-drawn school sign to replace the one destroyed by the fire. I remember the resilience of Russell Clements who lost his iconic 1953 FX Holden, The GAP Mobile, and his adamancy at rebuilding it. Then there were all the people who risked their own lives to save wildlife, loved ones and strangers.
Like most other people in the area, we kept going with life. Some days a veil of smoke settled along Maroondah Highway and it was a reminder that the bushfire was still very much active and threatening Healesville. I would write with one ear on the radio and two hands on the keyboard. My parents were fielding calls from worried family in the Netherlands who thought the whole of Victoria was on fire. The world was watching on television what the people I met were living or coming to terms with. They showed me how to survive in danger and how to keep going after tragedy. It felt like everyone let out a collective sigh of relief when autumn brought a cool change and the fires were declared under control on 14 March. Throughout all of it I kept thinking: “It’s 2009, how has this happened?” Natural disasters were something I expected to commemorate, not live through. How, with our communication technology and firefighting resources were we still being beaten by Mother Nature? Working in Healesville taught me how to be a ‘real’ journalist, but more importantly the residents I met and their resilience taught me how to be a better person.
Front-row to the trauma By Jade Glenn I was a 20-year-old cadet for the Mail's sister paper, the Pakenham Gazette, when I found myself in Healesville on 8 February 2009 covering the immediate aftermath of the Black Saturday bushfires. The day before I had been laying low in my suburban house, blinds drawn against the blistering sun. I knew about the fires because my mum, who lives in Healesville, had been fighting ember attacks at the property she worked at. I was worried, but had no idea about the extent of it. We had been covering the Bunyip Ridge Fire for a while - days? weeks? I don't recall - and so fire seemed a summer companion, ebbing and flowing with the changing weather conditions. I was born after Ash Wednesday. I had no idea. I was naive. We woke on Sunday to the realisation that something catastrophic had happened. Communities were irrevocably changed. My editor Garry Howe called and asked what I was doing and I told him I was going to Healesville - I don't know if that's where he wanted me to go but that's where I felt I needed to be. I had lived in Healesville and Dixons Creek for years and wanted to know what had happened, and wanted to see my family. Armed with a notepad and a camera, I drove up the mountain. I spoke to several people, including current Yarra Ranges Citizen of the Year Lesley Porter, whose photo I took ended up being the front page of the next week's paper. I was young and I am sure my stories were pretty average. I tried to report with sensitivity but don't know if I achieved it. There was nothing at university that prepared me for being front-row to people's trauma - I suppose nothing really can. Since then, I have read the Royal Commission report several times. Each loss as devastating as the next; people going about their lives, doing ordinary things, killed in an instant of unimaginable terror. I'm sure what is not in the report could fill several more volumes. Black Saturday changed the fabric of many communities, and many people. It changed government policies, and the way we respond to emergencies. Fire will always be a reality in Victoria. Now I know it is a reality to never be underestimated. If only there was another way for each generation to learn that lesson.
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