All that’s left of the weekend home Simon Crisp built near Longwood, 150km north of Melbourne, is the chimney and the bathtub. The rest is a pile of warped rubble and ash.
“I knew that eventually the fire would get to us, because for the previous 12 hours it had been coming in our direction, creeping up,” Crisp says.
He’s exhausted, has lost the place he loved and doesn’t know where he will stay tonight. But after patching up his fresh blisters at the Longwood command centre, the Country Fire Authority (CFA) volunteer is heading back out on a fire truck to help others.
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“I could be here for a few days,” he says.
Crisp is one of more than 700 Victorian firefighters who battled 40 blazes on Friday, as temperatures soared as high as 46C in parts of the state and 75,000 homes lost power.
Carried by strong winds and fuelled by dry bush, the massive Longwood grass fire has destroyed homes and community buildings.
On Friday morning, firefighters in nearby Seymour were preparing for the catastrophic day – watching maps, keeping track of new ember reports, and making a plan
“We have a term that we use in CFA, it’s ‘hurry up and wait’, that’s our big thing,” Capt Kylie Compt says.
“So that’s what we’re doing, waiting to see where it pushes out next.”
Compt says the crews have been briefed on what to prepare for – not just the fire but making quick, possibly traumatic decisions, including wanting to help battle a blaze but being unable to if conditions are too unsafe.
“It’s that kind of trauma that can sit with people, because then they can go back to the station, past the house and it might be gone, and you don’t even know if there’s somebody there left or not,” she says.
Half an hour later, the first truck from their station is called out – the fire had spread to Caveat, and 20 crews were needed urgently on the ground. The day had started.
In Avenel, Jane Russ is setting out brownies and makes cups of tea at the CFA station. Her husband is out on a truck, and she has decided to defend their house, if it comes to that.
“I was trying to text [my husband] before. I asked him to tell me if he’s leaving the area, because I’m on my own with the house, and he didn’t answer me. So that’s why I came up here,” she says.
The reception is bad but the radios are still working and her husband is safe.
“He left me with a generator. I’ve got a hose, there’s a neighbour home,” Russ says.
‘Everyone is coming together’
The White Hart hotel in Longwood is just kilometres away from the fire front – you can see the smoke burning from the beer garden. They’ve got no water, no power and no reception, but they’re staying open to help the locals. They hired a generator, aren’t worrying about making phone calls and, joke, if the bottled water runs out, they have plenty of beer left.
“We’ve got plenty of other liquid luxuries, fortunately,” publican Katrina Bowden says.
They’ve handed out the pub keys to locals so they can come and go, and have been dropping extra meals and ice to the CFA. The lack of reception makes it hard to know what to do, but they’re going to stay open as long as they can.
“Everyone is coming together,” she says.
By 1pm, it’s 42C in Longwood and the wind is up. Inside the CFA command centre, voices are quiet, nervous. The wind is getting worse, the fires faster. Houses that survived this morning may not be there by the afternoon.
A resident, frustrated, stressed and unsure what to do, blasts a volunteer – why haven’t they been evacuated yet? Is it safe? He’s given some food, more water, and has calmed down.
CFA volunteers start streaming back in for lunch – they’re sweaty, exhausted. An officer comes in to announce someone needs help – a young male suffering from smoke inhalation.
The CFA food service, People Supporting People, served 500 meals on the first day at the Longwood centre alone. They had given out 300 by lunch on Friday.
The fire map gets extended – the impact zone extends to the larger towns of Alexandra and Yea. Many of the towns devastated in the 2009 Black Saturday fires get a Prepare to Leave alert. The sky is an orange hue.
The major fires will probably burn for weeks to come, even as temperatures drop across the state over the weekend, chief officer at Country Fire Authority, Jason Heffernan, warned on Friday.
A total fire ban for the state will continue into Saturday.
“We are looking at at least a week or two of campaign fires in [the alpine and Gippsland regions, and hopefully weather is cooler for the next couple of days,” Heffernan said.
“It is summer in Victoria. So we do see now the commencement of a fire cycle – a peak fire day; a number of cooler, calmer days; and then a return to a peak fire day.”
For those on the frontline, it will be an exhausting few days ahead trying to curb the damage.
“Everyone is pretty worried and on edge,” Bowden says. “But for now, we just bunker in and help.”
