Ken Norris spent the night watching his Longwood East property burn but cannot believe how lucky he feels.
He and his wife, Sharon, have escaped to the Mornington Peninsula after bundling four dogs and two goats into their car.
It only took about an hour for a “wall of fire” to move over the couple’s block on Thursday afternoon, destroying nearly all their infrastructure, including their outbuildings, orchard and little vineyard.
“We still have our house – everything else went,” says Norris, 65. “We were very, very lucky.”
The Longwood bushfire in central Victoria continued to burn out of control on Friday, destroying both community and residential property in the nearby town of Ruffy, about 175km north of Melbourne.
Norris says he first saw the Longwood fire come over the hill towards his property at 2pm on Thursday.
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“I can’t quite describe the emotion,” he says. “You’re sort of panicked, but then adrenaline-filled, because you know you’re going to have to do a lot of shit in a short amount of time.”
After wetting down the outside of the house and any nearby grass, he and Sharon, who were advised to stay put, went inside and “continued to watch all the buildings and everything else burn” around them.
By 3pm the fire “had gone right through us”, he says.
But a few hours later embers started falling, as a dry thunderstorm came through with 60-70km winds that whipped up the remnants of the fire.
Norris says the two-storey house – which he is building as a retirement project and is partially complete – has an underground floor where they could hide if needed.
“The ember attack last night was probably as bad as the main fire itself. It was pretty terrifying.”
Norris says he and Sharon got up about 6.30am to the sound of chainsaws.
A couple of young men were clearing fallen trees that had trapped them on the property, after seeing his daughter’s desperate call on social media for someone to “get my parents out”.
“There were a couple of lovely mid-20s guys with their old truck and a couple of trusty old chainsaws cutting logs out just to get the road open for us,” he says. “And I thought ‘this is bloody terrific’.”
Norris says the “sense of community was just amazing”, including the staff at the kennels in Seymour who offered shelter for their goats and dogs – as well as a place for Norris and his wife to stay, if they needed it.
There were 58 fires burning across Victoria at 6pm on Friday, due to a severe to extreme heatwave combined with damaging winds and storms.
The state’s emergency management commissioner, Tim Wiebusch, said the fire potential was “catastrophic” across north central, northern country, south west and Wimmera – the first time such a warning had been issued since the black summer fires of 2019-20, with “extreme” conditions across the rest of the state.
As of 5.30pm Friday, there were more than 61 warnings in place across the state. A bushfire around Walwa near the New South Wales border was out of control, with people in many of the surrounding areas having been told to evacuate immediately.
However, the Bureau of Meteorology issued an update at 10.50pm on Friday night in which it said strong winds were clearing ahead of a cool change moving from west to east across the state.
“Conditions have eased across the west and central parts of the of the state this evening,” the update said, “but the risk of damaging wind gusts is likely to persist over the alpine peaks until Saturday morning.”
Norris says his first time being “inside” a bushfire was a “very harrowing experience” but he keeps stressing how fortunate he feels.
“We’re one of the extremely lucky ones,” he says. “We’ve still got a house. We’re all healthy. We’ve still got our lives. Our four dogs and our two goats got out with us.
“I’m not going to buy a TattsLotto ticket. I reckon I’ve used my luck up already.”
