Black Saturday documentary (remastered 720p25)

foreign 2009. temperatures have been soaring above 40 degrees for day now the winds are rising and Victoria holds its breath well there's simply no way of underestimating the fire threat Victoria is facing over the next 24 hours or so during Saturday a gale force North Wind will combine with extreme heat and that's not a good combination in terms of fire potential and fire authorities are warning the public to prepare for the worst but what happens proves to be Beyond even these dire warnings it was a wall of flame that came up that mountain I remember holding Matilda in my arms and I just thought she's just gotta she's just got to keep breathing everything was on fire around it's literally everything in all directions from the 360 Degrees that we could see so we just stuffed he said there's no CFA with stuff we're completely surrounded I said can you get out he said we can't get out we can't do anything I could hang on you know this is the story of Australia's most devastating Bushfire a day of disaster as it unfolded to those who were there getting here the eyewitnesses caught in the path of the Firestorm that would rewrite history and change all the rules I'd never seen anything like this and I I freely admit I was terrified 45 kilometers Northeast of Melbourne in the country Township of King Lake and Jen Clark are packing for their long-awaited holiday they leave on Monday oh we're looking forward I marked down 100 days before we go I'm gonna cross them off my calendar 99 to go 98 to go that's how anxious I am to go my name's Faith and this is my house I'm going to show you around today and my granddaughter Nev she's a great help she's she's buzzing around us and running running wild this is my this is my GT say hi GT she was unpacking put me in the fridge and working out what was going on the holiday with us and what was being left for Danny because Danny had just started holidays and he was he was in the Hat he was home he was going to be home the whole six weeks that we were going away part of the holiday plan is for Mick and Jen's son Danny to stay and look after the home and their wilting plants you're asking to make sure he Waters him and he says yeah I'll do that you know I'll feed the Chuck or something you know so uh yeah that's another thing yesterday to talk so across the road the king Lake CFA Captain arrives on shift he is one of seven thousand country Fire Authority volunteers and staff who are like soldiers waiting for a war that may never happen rightfully expected to sit inside the fire station in a nice air-conditioned comfort and nothing happened for the whole day that's what I expected I I suppose you've got to look at the history too I mean how many times has a fire come through our area I mean 26 fires were pretty bad I think the 39 fires I think there's something happened in the 60s that came up from the South but there was captains sitting in probably stations all over Victoria expecting the same thing mid-morning in Melbourne and Senior firefighters are gathering they're studying the fire danger index combining temperature wind speed humidity and fuel data it measures the risk of a Bushfire on a scale of naught to 100. today the index is peaking close to 200. in my mind I'm worried I'm concerned I'm thinking to myself this is a day that you know it's not going to be an ordinary day it's going to be an absolutely horrible day yet I know I've faced days like this before and through Providence nothing actually happens if a fire does start there's a well-established chain of command reports of fires from the front line are published on the Authority website armed with this information ABC radio the designated emergency broadcaster transmits the warnings ABC Melbourne and ABC Victoria your Emergency Services Network Bushfire information foreign Drive North of Melbourne 60 kilometer an hour winds tear down power lines at Kilmore East a fire ignites the Kilmore East fire you probably had less than 10 minutes probably somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes from the time he'd made it to the time it started now it seems as though it's probably been about 15 or 20 minutes before actually the Fire Authority is actually were aware of that fire and then you have to actually get to the fire then you have to start working on it so it was well beyond a principal stage by the time firefighting authorities were actually there the fire is out of control but nothing Australia hasn't seen before as it drives towards the Hume freeway concern is tempered the 100 meter wide barrier should stop a regulation Bushfire dead in its tracks Jesus Christ but this fire isn't normal within the hour fire Crews on the Hume can only watches the four-lane freeway offers no resistance gale force winds Earl burning bark and Embers across to the other side where new fires Start the Fire hardly hiccups when it saw the freeway it basically moved across the freeway as if it wasn't there in reality eyewitnesses are worried that the fire is already outrunning the authorities Kevin from Kilmore Easter just phone hi Kevin which fire are you doing yeah Junction I believe are going to be and I'll be themed uh I'd have gone forward but there's no announcement saying that they've got to um put their five precautions in place but it's the wind on on top of my hill on the farm and the wind flying at 80 to 100 kilometers an hour and it's going to build up and the fire trucks are not making any difference at all so um I don't know why wandong and hiki Junction haven't been alerted um because they're so close within minutes of this call warnings are issued but it seems the system is already being stretched as the day unfolds it will all but collapse in wandong Steve Varga and his brother-in-law Ed are in the direct path of the fire they're not relying on warnings instead Steve has faith in his purpose-built fire resistant home it's embedded into the ground with double brick walls and a steel roof there was shutters over the front windows so that when you operated the shutters it completely closed the front of the house off it looked more like a factory than a house that was about it it was completely closed up box Steve stands ready to stay and defend this is the textbook way to survive a normal Bushfire you either leave early or fight and then shelter as the fire passes through a Bushfire as I've always understood it will have a front that comes through for 10 to 20 minutes you know we could go inside wait for the front to pass and come out and put out any Embers or anything that might have ignited or you know deal with the problems with the smoke Rising Steve puts his plan into action the time came we decided to start the pump and I was hosing down the roof and it started yelling and it was time to get inside I could hear this noise it was a bit like a jumbo jet I think and I was still holding the hose up there and Ed started screaming absolutely screaming to get inside now and so I just dropped the hose and in the midst of all that there's this noise like the jumbo jet was about to land on us then all of a sudden there's this huge boom as the fireball hit and the entire carport was just torn off its posts and Blown Away I just couldn't believe it it was phenomenal and at that point the whole world everywhere around us just went red it was like a tornado more so than a fire and the house actually shook it's buried into the ground and it shook and the eyebrows sort of go up and I go Jesus you know it said it all we just didn't know what was going to happen next the fire has passed through with such ferocity that everything outside is relentlessly burning there wasn't a 20-minute front there wasn't a front at all there was this explosion which we could call the front and then there was this intense burning foot like two and a half hours so when we got out of that house it was Ground Zero outside everything was gone staves fire resistant home is a smoldering wreck hours after he took this picture it collapsed completely the Vagas have lost everything they own their neighbors lost much more Stephen lackas stayed to defend the family home his wife Sandra and Son Bailey left with minutes to spare Stephen perished Black Saturday has claimed its first life wandong Burns and the fire moves onward and upward into the mount disappointment State Forest as it rises so too does the wind sweeping the Flames to the southeast nestled on the other side of the range directly in the fire's path his tiny strathuen Mary and Peter Evola can't see what's coming Pete you know I had the pump on he was keeping things moist and I'd made some port wine jelly with blackberries and strawberries and things in it as it was hot and I said you know would you like that and he said oh yeah I'll have that with some ice cream and that'll do me and and I think the cricket may have been on on that Saturday so we just sat for a little while and watched the cricket and then he said I'll I'll go back out and move the hose and still we you know we were calm and enjoying it the evolas feel the heat but not the danger and there is a failure of the system CFA staff prepare a draft message predicting that the fire could hit various towns including Strath Ewan but the warning is not sent to the control room to be uploaded onto the CFA website Mary and Peter have no idea what's heading their way I said to Peter that I'll just get on on the internet and have a look and see what's going on so I got onto the CFA site but all the fires that were going on were sort of a long way away and and the time element you know there was nothing at all about anything that was was near us it's 46.4 degrees in Melbourne the city's highest temperatures since records began Victoria is the hottest place on Earth I'm in a backyard in Melbourne it's the hottest day ever unofficially the temperatures even higher as you can see our little thermometer which is just sitting on the rubbish bin in the shade has flown itself out it's a reading its maximum of 51 degrees and I think I'm gonna go back inside before I stay of heat stress myself Victoria is becoming a furnace a second major fire is blasting through the Black Range State Forest it's less than 50 kilometers from where the Kilmore East fire sparked but this time Fallen power lines are not to blame sickeningly it seems this fire has been deliberately lit it's racing towards the murandindi river and a popular picnic retreat within minutes State emergency crews are on their way you see the plum already within 10 minutes it was big and black and you see it was building and um a day like that with a strong wind the smoke was laid over and not a good sign yeah and I knew straight away first attack wasn't gave me an option uh even if you had 100 tankers there wouldn't have mattered when you're already even before I got there Jenna Pritchard her partner Josh and their two young children are cooling off down on the river when they're caught completely unawares foreign other day Trippers they make a run for I could just see this wall of flames just beside us there wasn't bush anymore there was just Flames that's it and yeah I just kept on driving as fast as I could until we ran into the DSA guys at which point Josh told me to slow down because we'd pass the fire and it was all burnt so we thought we'd be able to get out I'll look in the windows of these cars and there's kids there's a lady holding a baby and there was this tree where did these people come from so I looked back and there's horizontal Flames across the road and there's no way known we could get those people back the way we came it was then that I decided to take a stand in the river and and use the river as a refuge fires surrounding on all sides Thick Smoke descending Jenna two-year-old Kayla and Matilda just seven months are bundled into a DSE truck I remember holding Matilda in my arms and I was just looking down at it while she's just laying there and I'm trying to give her the bottle and I just thought she's just gotta she's just got to keep breathing kitties they're a petrified every time I opened the door up though they were screaming the adults I think they were worried too I could see it in their eyes no ambulance nothing could get him to help us if they suddenly stop breathing from all the smoke Embers are flying across probably as quick as a wind probably 60 80 kilometers an hour you is hope that one of those big trees isn't going to come and clobber the whole obvious of standing in the river I'm going to be here with the kids and they are going to die and that's basically yeah that's what I thought it's almost two hours before the fire finally dies down Jenna and her children make their escape I just remember just gasping for air it's just like there was a lot of oxygen in the air it was that it was that hot and that stuffy and you just spray them in Smoke you could barely even breathe the toughest moment for me would unidently be when I opened the door of one of the vehicles up where the kids were in and I took the little girl out and she just hung on to me so tight and I just kept saying to you're going to be okay you're gonna be okay and I was trying to hold the cover from the smoke and it was only about 10 15 Steps and we're in the vehicle and she was safe anyway so there's the hardest moment in the best moment probably thank you Marin dindi is the uh 15 20 K's away that's where the the seat of the far is a key in amateur cameraman films the fire that almost claimed Jenna and her family the wind is blowing um okay across in front of me from my right to my left in which direction the smoke is the lights hell I hope the uh the Fire doesn't change direction just a few yards away his heavily pregnant daughter Emma son-in-law Jonathan and three-year-old grandson Otto are at home in Buxton with the fire heading away from them things are fairly calm hello hello everybody there's young Otto Emma who is expected to produce it any day ah dear oh dear there was a woman actually sunbathing down at the river one of our neighbors from the other side of the river was lounging you know in a banana lounge chair I went and said um there's a fire and she said happy in the country 30 years that's all right know what to do on Fires I'll just jump in the river I'll just jump in the river okay that's a plan I suppose and then I kind of went you might want to turn around because look over there and then all of a sudden in the 10 minutes we've been down at the river that little plume had gone into that was this wide and now it was black and then you could look up and it was like the smoke wasn't going over us of course it was going directly across um but it was all of a sudden it was Mount Vesuvius it was just incredible by mid-afternoon the catastrophe has begun 10 uncontrollable fires are now burning nine major roads and highways are blocked and closed beyond the Kilmore and marindindy fires the West is a blaze of portion and coal rain and to the southeast in bunyip containment lines are breached not since the worst bushfires in Victoria's history in 1939 as Melbourne been so surrounded by fire and it's getting even worse in the Southeast yet another fire is well underway at Churchill second of the day to be deliberately lit the worst case scenario is unfolding the board literally lights up and so you get fire after fire after fire breaking out all in and around generally speaking 150 kilometers out of Melbourne so you've got resources already heavily committed to Kilmore to Bunya just being committed to murandindi and we literally had at that point in time regions running out of fire trucks every single fire truck they had in their region in our strongest capability got depleted everything the troops on the ground are being stretched to Breaking Point this tank has been brought in as backup to fight the first fire of the day but all the crew can do is save themselves stay in survival mode that's another statement Jesus just keep an eye on that nothing in the truck the battle's already being lost and the fire Marches On a wall of flame it charges across Mount disappointment State Forest burning bark and even whole branches are picked up by Hurricane strength wind and carried 10 20 even 35 kilometers ahead of the main front never before have such spotting distances been recorded the monster fire reaches the ridge above the Tiny Township of Strath Ewan and explodes stratheon was in a valley downwind of this major Ridge at Sugarloaf Ridge so the Embers that were being launched from that Sugarloaf Ridge into the the Valley area below were basically acting like a a cluster bomb you really don't have anywhere much to go because if you're like 10 kilometers in almost any direction is being lit up with fires we had hundreds of fires starting and they were all starting to interact so it's basically what we describe as being a firestorm and I turn around at the mountains and the scene that confronted me was indescribable because it was it was spotting through the mountains and a spotted go to the size of a tennis court than the size of a football oval and then the Tim room between would explode the bush would explode and you'd have this monster and you'd look five six kilometers to the east into strathulin and it was burning there and no matter where I looked there'd be a fire and and um yeah it was like something I've never ever seen before even though I've got a lot of experience I'd never seen anything like this and I I freely admit I was terrified strathio and still hasn't been warned it seems the town is completely off the radar Mary and Peter Avala have minutes to defend their hung it was getting hotter noisier windier the sky was red and swirling all around the our property there were fires under the pine trees Peter was saying to me he he was getting hot his legs were burning and we'd better go get in the car get in the car and go I'll follow you car I waited for Peter and by the time I sort of looked around the road was was on fire he was then behind me and there was no going right anymore you just couldn't see what was happening it was just burning and burning I'd hoped that he would follow me and when he didn't I didn't know what to think you hope and hope that you know he's safe or he would have got somewhere but I knew there wasn't anywhere to go only he'd either stay with the car or he you know run for his life it'll be three long hours before Mary hears what's happened to Peter foreign at the same time a friend of 40 years the local CFA Captain is trying to get into town I've got about 100 meters in down this road um I thought I'm going to kill everyone self-included because the Flames were all over the top of us and I thought I'm going to kill everyone because I know the road intimately I live on the Flaming road so I knew the road I knew what it was the bush got heavier and heavier as we got into strathfield I thought I'm going to kill everyone you know you're a fool man so I stopped everyone we backed out behind us David mcgay battles to reach Strath Ewan refugees stream the other way taking to the road is supposed to be the most dangerous thing to do but for some it's the only choice mariavala's neighbors stopped to rescue others in here come in mud look at this behind us bloody scary man I'm just wondering which way to go get the top of the hill with everyone on board they head for the presumed safety of King Lake Township as they do so CFA staff prepare an urgent threat message for various towns including King Lake but the message inexplicably goes missing and never appears on their website it's another half an hour before the warning is broadcast radio is relying on overwhelmed CFA officials for information the communities of Columbine Mount disappointment King Lake heathca Junction which is actually next to wandong Upper plenty human Vale Reedy Creek and Strath Creek may be directly impacted on fire in the coming time frame half of the places singled out for warnings are already on fire King Lake still Waits the clerks have put their faith in the CFA website it's a case of no news is good news Jen and Danny were on the internet checking out all the fires what's going on because we knew the one that was in Kilmore and we we said well it's not going to affect us so we're fine we're all right it's only something starts pretty local we bit worried about you know 25 kilometers from the Clarks fire is threatening whittlesea Mick's daughter Beck is in the town I was really nervous but I wasn't thinking about me I was more concerned about my family so to me it wasn't coming to me it wasn't going to get me I'm in the middle of a town it's not going to burn down town you know so that's how I looked at it two of Beck's teenage sons are at home 13 year old Aiden and 15 year old Mackenzie with the possibility of the fire coming their way dad Ross puts a well rehearsed plan into action talking with my wife in Whittlesey who was under threat it was still agreed upon to stick to the fire plane and to move our prized possessions further away so I grabbed Mackenzie and I grabbed Aiden and uh McKenzie helped me move the big huge photo box with all their possessions without a problem nowhere is dead he was grass and off we traveled to Lynn and Pop's house Mick and Jen aren't just further away from the fire in whittlesea they also live in a brick home which has been designated as a safe house by the local Fire Guard group that's when Ross my son-in-law came up with the other kids the two grandchildren Mac and Aiden and the Dog Jazz and a big box of photos and he put them out in the patio sort of thing and only said it'd be minutes after that that Mac came in and said oh well I'm here can I have a cold bath pop and I said yeah go for it and then when he finished he said well let it out and I said no leave the water in the bath because it's that's always handy to have by late afternoon the sun is still high but Victoria is black with smoke and a part of the state is about to become an unlikely victim of the day's events yet another fire has been deliberately lit this time just five kilometers from the city of Bendigo and its 100 000 residents Tim Pasco is completely unaware I'm totting up the house just doing all that stuff that gets neglected over the week um with the yeah the new air conditioner going um it's working like an absolute treat it was gorgeous I just got it put in the week before the house would never been so comfortable in summer the fire is quickly spreading but living so close to a city Tim is one of a majority to see no need for a plan and mobile phones starts ringing I go outside to take the call and it's mum from she's up at my auntie's place in yarrawonga and they're having trouble with their TV so she's wanting some advice um while I'm talking to her um well as soon as I walk outside you know I'm talking and I'm looking up at the sky and it's like what the just this intense gray sky and just the slightest smell of smoke but it was just like what what is this first I'm thinking it's a bomb which was seemed really illogical but then the next thought was no it's a fire it's definitely a fire within the hour there are spot fires in bendigo's outskirts so people living in the maiden Gully and long Gully area are being asked to please Implement their fire plans so it's literally in the CBD Jonathan not quite the CBD but it is certainly approaching it built up parts of Bendigo Goodness Me standing between Tim Pascoe and a looming wall of flames is a garden hose we've gone running out the back just in time to see this monster Fireball just hurtling right at us all we had time to do was drop the hoses and just scream run and we ran for our lives basically up the side yard and up onto Union Street turned around and like this first waves hit the back of the house and you could almost it almost shook the house like it was like it was a solid object hitting the house you know um and then there was another wave whack it's hit it again and she's just gone up like uh like like that Tim's house is one of 58 destroyed in Bendigo it was tragic but at the end of the day we walked out of there a lot of people couldn't do that Tim's neighbor 48 year old Mick Kane died in his driveway his wife Carol and sister Jill helpless as he tried to escape the fire that moved so rapidly towards strathjun has more towns in its sights in King Lake West yet another family are in range I had a fire pump which was always kept in the shed that connects onto a ring main that I had under the ground just a two inch ring main with three 36 meter hose reels around the house Jason Lin has everything he needs to protect the family home since records began only one person has died defending a defendable house the plan is for his wife Ruth and their two young children to stay with him and shelter but at the last minute Ruth's not convinced that sticking to the rules is a good idea on thinking what they tell you if you're going to leave leave early or Sheltering your house because you'll be safe so she said to me well if there's a fireplace I'm going and I said no you better not um I said I can smell it if I can smell it like that it must be close you better not go she said please let me go please let me go and I said I said well if you want to go go now according to CFA advice Ruth has made the worst possible decision to take to the road when a fire is approaching she put my daughter Julia was asleep in her cot in a nappy just in a nappy that's it she grabbed her and my son and I just think and she said I'm going and she took off down the road foreign a few hundred yards away Ross Buchanan has returned from dropping off his teenage Sons at their grandparents when I came outside the sun had disappeared and when I looked across the paddocks the Flames were coming and there it was there was the fire at my place there was disbelief and it denied me so I did my best and spraying water all around doing what I can some people from the DSE right race up the road because I'll leave you in a one-way street so there's only one way out and they come racing up the road and they said Ross the whole street down the road is gone just get out mate he says I can't force you he says just go and uh I realize you know it's we're in trouble here it was just Dead Calm not even a breath of wind and I thought this is good you know what's what's going on here like it's just so still because it was just such a windy day such a hot wind and then that wind stopped and I thought this this won't be too bad maybe the fire is not coming now and then um I could hear it you I can actually hear it I could still smell that real strong eucalyptus burning smell but I could hear the noise of it before you could see it it just was crashing and smashing like a storm and then then the wind picked up again and that's with the fire come through with it standing there out front with the hose running flat out hosing the house and I could just see it was just like a tidal wave of fire and I sort of felt weak at the knee sort of thing I always thought that was just like a saying but yeah I felt weak and I was thinking when's the bit you meant to go inside and shelter I thought well I'm not going inside with this and then the fire pump just stopped and my heart just sunk I just thought well I'll go down and see what's wrong with the pump it was dark and hard to see and but as I got down towards I could see the fire pump on fire so I'll just turn around and walk back to the house yeah meanwhile Ross has overcome and tries to escape in his car I would get through the paddock side areas and it was just smoky and I would get to the bush side parts and the Flames were surrounded both sides I can't say whether I'm panicking you know maybe it is my heart's racing I'm doing lots of swearing I'm not really thinking about anybody or anything you know when when I got out I thought I did say to myself that was stupid Jason's fight for his life is just beginning I could start to see parts of the house burning and as I'm moving away I could hear all the windows smashing in the house I knew that that was gone you could see from one end to the other it was like when they built a house it just look like the frame and I could see everything perfectly it was just Brilliant Orange just bright and I could see how bad my wife's gym equipment and my daughter's caught I could see everything right through from one end of the other and it was just all just burning and the whole lot was on fire and the second floor was starting to lower down like an elevator or something it just started lowering down and I can see through the skylights of the shed into the shed which is bright orange so I thought the shed's gone there's nothing left just me and then it blew up and it sort of was just like being in King heat like it just just like nearly knocked me out took off to get to like where the dam is I couldn't see anything but then I ran into a fence I sort of you know as you see just just sort of I don't know I just sort of sat there for a while just I thought I don't know what I'm gonna do because I'm stuck in the fence and if I was stuck in the fence today I reckon I could just take one step backwards and step around but I couldn't think to do that I thought I'm stuck it's only a couple wise but I'm stuck just 11 kilometers up the road the clerks have no idea that King Lake West is burning so I'm happy just hosing everything down and mucking around and uh until the power goes and that's when you that's when everything stops farron stops no power you're gone you know you you got nothing but still no warnings so the TV doesn't work the computer doesn't work so I've got a little little radio thing and had that gone but we had ABC on listening to the reports still nothing dangerous you know 23 year old Melanie Chambers and her younger sister Penny live around the corner they know that the Clark's house is one of the safest in King Lake and the girls rang me and said can we come up to our house because it's doomed a safe house it's brick and they only lived in the Weber board check they rented so I said sure come up it's just after 5 PM at the bottom of the mountain directly below the Clarks of fires and Gulfs with the ground cleared around his house Jim beruta feels safe enough to arm himself with nothing more than a video camera how safe can you be you know I mean you think if anyone's got a chance it's someone like me you know I haven't got the trees up to the house and things like that so I thought I'd be fine but then when the fire came it was nothing like I'd expected it to be hear the noise sound like trains or jets coming towards you in the distance they keep getting louder and louder it's like all the trees were exploding from Heat people say it's the leaves you know the heat of the oils and the leaves and the eucalyptus they just go off and it's like gas going off too it's just burning busy gases from the eucalyptus trees are escaping so quickly that they race upwards mixed with the air and explode fire is feeding itself the Flames four times the height of the 20 meter trees once it starts climbing up the hill it just starts accelerating even faster and faster it just builds up this momentum and it's just eating everything in the way it was just like you're in the middle of a hurricane it was a hurricane but it was on fire it's all this debris going everywhere anything that was not bolted down or something was in the air flying around it was going to hit you a tornado has now developed ripping through tens of acres in seconds at well beyond 1000 degrees it makes an oven of Earth and Air Firestorm can now Kill from 200 meters she stood behind the brick pillar out there and there's no way if you put your hand out like that would have been burnt just it was like a putting your hand in front of a furnace now I realized that there was a problem with the air that I was breathing I wasn't breathing properly fire is less than 300 meters away gyms in danger not of being burnt to death but of suffocating but he's got a backup plan and I thought I've got to get out of here and I've got to get to the bunker I had to step out into the storm with my back to it it was all hitting me on the back and I walked past the side of the house into the bunker and I shut the door whatever was going to happen was going to happen and I couldn't stop it fire sweeps over Jim and he survives less than five kilometers away at the top of the mountain the king Lake CFA Captain is trying to stop confused residents fleeing towards the flames people were stopping and saying what can we do and I just said to him well you can't go down that road because I've just come up from there and it's just blocked by fire I'm not real sure on King Lake West I heard that the the fire had come through a fair way there um and I don't know what the the um the road to uh Hills was like because the fire you know you could see the plume of smoke from where we were heading across that way towards the Melba so you know to give anyone advice on actually which way to go just didn't seem right some you know to me to say oh look you can go that way it's safe and I mean the only thing I could say was look I think the all I can offer you is the main street of town because it is where I'm going to be The Blaze that started an hour and a half ago near the murandindi river has been pushed by the hot winds across the black ranges sitting a few kilometers to the north out of the fire's path is the picturesque town of Marysville I just looked directly up above and he was what would normally have appeared to be cumulus clouds except that it was pretty obvious it was Smoke directly above me like 12 O'Clock High and covering half the town I mean that was pretty dramatic I really had no idea but I thought that has got to be very very close amateur Cameron Daryl Hull works at the Crossways Inn his boss Greg and his wife Pam have been busy there all day it's only now that they noticed the smoke fireplan hadn't come into my mind at that stage but at five o'clock I did ring my daughter and spoke to her husband and said have you heard anything on the news or can you have a look can you check websites and they quickly did that while I was on the phone some of it uh there was there were no updates at that point about five o'clock and I just said we'll try to keep in touch this feels to me very grim the sensation was is that I don't think we're doing a night's work tonight something's very very close you know so we had to keep our eyes on it at which point I started to walk towards the oval just to see what was there and the first shots I took of the oval over it was empty uh which I thought was unusual um the rule in town was if ever there was trouble of any kind in town that you'd head to the oval and after I'd been filming for a while I heard the siren go off twice and I'm thinking right danger is upon us and then it cut out however the siren is not to alert locals but CFA members and because they're already out fighting fires it's Switched Off when the siren cut out I automatically thought false alarm okay I don't have to worry to the degree that I would have if the siren had kept going you you would know we've got trouble they're sprinkling the house and Jonathan's Up on the Roof he's filled the downpipes with uh Rags just 10 kilometers north of Marysville the densems in Buxton have been preparing their home for well over an hour as City dwellers for much of their lives they've never confronted a Bushfire before I'm interested in how much of our way would set up the fire plan and stuff how much it was predicated on not wanting to look bad that we're not Idiot blinds from the city that we're just as tough and firehearty as the locals Jonathan leaves the hosing and his pregnant wife to take a look at the smoke from the nearby Ridge just as I'm looking at it dully trying to make up my mind the flame came up we could see the fire at the top of the far Ridge which is probably about two kilometers away maybe a bit less the big ridge above Buxton it could actually see the flame and all of a sudden instantaneous decision at the moment I saw that I went what am I doing let that that's enough let's just leave while it's safe why don't we just leave now King Lake West the fire has passed through but the area will burn for many hours yet this house is saved but just down the road Jason Lin lays in the middle of his Paddock barely conscious everything around him destroyed and then his mobile Rings his boss is on the line he said to me I can remember him saying to me though get in the dam yeah get in the dam so I kept going I must have I don't know if I just hung up on him or what I'll just oh yeah I'll try and find it I'll give it another go because it's just getting too hot laying here and I'm just getting too weak so I just crawled along and I felt the damn would a bit and I just crawled down felt where the water was turned around and just crawled in backwards yeah just lay there I didn't know what was gonna happen to me I didn't think anyone would come up I didn't know how long I could hang on you know if I die like this it's just worse I think I suppose to I was actually thinking like my kids what will it be like for him growing up Jason's children Joshua and Julia and their mother Ruth fled just before the fire arrived their whereabouts is unknown but it seems Jason at least has been found I could hear people's voices but I couldn't shout out and say oh I'm down here or anything I'm just laying there and then I heard someone say he's down in here I could hardly talk and he said can you squeeze me hand and I could squeeze his hand and he said to me he goes oh well we've been made it this far you'll be right now mate and then straight away almost instantly your mourn shifts to my wife with and my tickets Joshua and Julia what happened to them Jason's next door neighbors have already lost their fight to survive the former channel 9 news reader Brian Naylor and his wife moiri were fully prepared to stay and defend 14 more perish in King Lake West alone it's just after 5 30. an enormous smoke plume hangs over pretty Mary's film the town receives its first official radio warning so we've got an exist ing threat message out for the community of narberthong which came under Amber attack this afternoon with now extending that threat message to include the communities of Marysville and Buxton which we also expect to come under uh direct attack from this fire less than a kilometer from the oval spot fires have already broken out on Kings Road the CFA Captain is at the scene we end up with both commercial tanker and the Miracle Pumper so virtually we had our entire crew um up there yeah um and we're all good good friends and mates my son Callan was was on on the pumper crew so of course I was um I was quite concerned for kellen's wealthy Pam at the Crossways Inn knows it's time for her and her husband Greg to make a decision I went out the back and said to Greg what should I do because the wind suddenly became so very strong I said should I go should I stay can I help you he said at this moment every person must make their own decision and he went on with his work and I said I have to go we didn't even really have time to say anything else or goodbyes or good lucks or anything I left him with the hose yeah 6 15. and CFA strike teams from other towns are on their way to help I was aware of cars fleeing in the other direction intermittently at high speeds and of a horrible purple brown black boiling cumulus column of Hell Above Marysville and I remember saying to Jamie in the front seat Jamie oh this is something beyond anything I could have even imagined Daryl Hall has already taken Refuge of the oval smoke was very evidently over the back of Mount Kitchener it was apparent that there was trouble looming I'm in serious trouble and then at around about that time the police came screaming down I saw the police car come into the oval they did a circle and they were just telling people to head for Alexandra to get out really Pam was very concerned that I should get in the car with her but I I couldn't do that um I didn't like the thought of a convoy of cars and with that thought that the fire was possibly already ahead of us the only Vision I could think of was burnt out wrecks beside the highway that where people had died in cars and I thought that's not going to be my end I'm not going to do it that way I was going to the lake and I was going to make sure that happened others in Marysville are going nowhere Greg Cherry is ready to defend the Crossways in his wife Pam lives in the police Convoy I glanced quickly at the Crossways I just hoped he'd got in another car and gone already I they didn't feel as though there was time to stop and I knew he wouldn't come if he was still here he wouldn't leave he'd already said he'd stay yeah stay with the place try and save it Glenn Fisk has left the spot fires on Kings Road and is on the way to the CFA shed but first there's his wife Liz and youngest son to see well I got up to up the driveway Dalton met me at the at the door um and said that Mum was on the on the phone I said I'll leave leave mum on the on the phone you're looking pretty right he was dressed in his um in overalls and he had goggles and he had gloves on he had had he had firefighters boots on he was um he'd done all of his his preparation oh yeah I said to him to look after his mum and and to to make some good decisions um and I left him there then and and Priscilla back to the back to the fire station by early 90 fires are raging right across the state another major Blaze will soon start at beechworth towns have already been obliterated at least 50 lives already lost but everything is about to get worse much worse gale force Northerly winds have pushed all today's Major fires to the southeast but the wind is starting to shift Direction the southerly change begins to push the fires Northeast the effect will be devastating that's the fear of everyone that's everybody's fear is that if you haven't got the Eastern flank of the Fire Control it's going to turn push and that's what it did that's what it does and that's what it did then what happens on the Wind change is that 50 kilometer flank of the fire then suddenly becomes the head of the fire so instead of having about a five or six kilometer wide fire we've now got a 50 kilometer wide fire after the wind change and this is exactly what's happening to the fire that started to kill more East the 50 kilometer flank stretching to strathuen and Saint Andrews is now the huge new front of the fire many more towns are in range at the top of the Mountain King lake is one of the first in line no Panic no no fear no um none of those emotions just put the plan into action and um the fire will go over the top of your house and then when it's gone over the top of your house you come out with your mop and bucket and you put out the Embers we knew the plan we had been told at 100 times we knew it off by heart the Clark's house is full Mick and Jen wait with son Danny and their grandchildren fifteen-year-old Mackenzie 13 year old Aiden and nine-year-old Neve neighbors Melanie and Penny the chambers sisters also shelter I was still in shorts in the shirt and Fong sort of thing and Danny my son come out and told me to go and put your fire stuff on your Woolen jumper and you your tracksuit and I said yeah right oh and he said you know I'll I'll just spray out here with a with a firefighter he was going so I was lucky he came in and told me to do that so that was one thing he you know he's still arguing me and saying ah you're silly you're doing the wrong you're doing this wrong because he always said that to me anyway you know I was always doing something wrong so anyway he'd maybe go and change which was good I started to get the kids told the kids to get into thicker clothes and help Neve get into hers two young lasses down the street had come up by this time and they came in with their animals and I said to them and to all the children we need to wet some towels and put them in front of the doors 5 58 King lake has been warned once on the radio there's an urgent threat message has just flashed up for the first time on the CFA website but with the fire racing towards the Main Street warnings are now irrelevant there was a lot of smoke a lot of Embers and wind there was people crowding into the fire station people panicking you know people cry kids or people crying there was yeah it was crazy it was a wall of flame that came up that mountain it came up so fast that um I've never seen the likes of town is in got those on the Main Street Scramble for cover anywhere they can this Cafe becomes an emergency refuge for the stranded while just yards away Clarks cling to their plan when the Embers started coming it was like a hail storm of Embers coming across the top of the roof and landing on top of me which is just coming down is like hail but it was Embers so I started then he yelled out he said the front's on fire and I directed the hose over the roof into the front and that didn't seem to be doing nothing and that's when they said you better get in the house so I came racing I just dropped the hose and raced into the house to help them in there and by this time gender blocked all the doorways up with wet towels and the girls were lying down the chamber girls and uh Mack and Danny and my dog pearl all in the hallway and Aiden and we were stepping over the top of them to carry the buckets to the lounge room I need to get a hold of mum and dad I need to let them know that Ross has got fire and that it could be coming towards them and so I rang and I rang and eventually um Danny answered my my brother Danny answered the phone and said back we're staffed and I go what's wrong and he goes we're surrounded by fire I said you're kidding he goes no we're surrounded by fire I could hear the smoke alarms and I could hear the dogs and the kids all crying and screaming in the background and uh he said we just he said we just stuffed he said there's no CFA where stuff we're completely surrounded I said can you get out he said we can't get out we can't do anything he said we're stuffed and I said okay mate I said I'll let you go just do your best and that was it I wished I wished I made him give me the phone to one of the kids said I could have at least talk to them I walked into the lounge room to make sure that that everything was sort of all right and I've got had floor-to-ceiling Windows four of them in the lounge room and they just all blew in simultaneously and the fire was in the lounge room they were breaking and popping and then the curtains caught on fire which we hadn't taken down it's another thing we had no time to do which we knew we had to do so once the curtains two of them for it the Smoke Filled the house up and you just couldn't brew and see and we Aiden and we're carrying buckets of water and we're throwing them on the on the Windows trying to douse the fire and then we we had to get out for our own we couldn't get the kids out we yelled at them and they couldn't hear us so we open the front door and the forest all burning but I went out and had a look I said come on we've got to get out this way you know grabbed Aiden and Jenna said come on quick it out and we all the other kids go out the back door go out the back door he'd be right because they're all down the hallway where the back door was and we Aiden Jenny we got in the front lawn and they didn't come out and we called and called their names and Aiden was hanging on to the hanging on to me still and then I thought I might be able to get round the side and get in through the laundry door and I tried to run around that side and and you couldn't get through the fire was just burning the house down and she was still screaming and screaming and screaming the kids the kids and I'm saying nothing we can do sweet nothing we could do and she said oh and she she started to feel the pain and with all the Burns in and they start to affect it and with all the smoke she's taken in she couldn't breathe and then I knew that I had to ring Becky to let her know because I couldn't have that um I couldn't not let her know the children were dead and I don't know I just I didn't just dialed the number and don't ask me why but we got through and I told her and she said Becca they're all gone and they go what do you what do you mean they're gone gone where she goes no BEC they're all gone they're dead the house is burnt down I couldn't get them out they're gone and she screamed and screamed and screamed and then the phone just went dead Danny Clark his 15 year old nephew Mackenzie neighbors Melanie and Penny Chambers a little nine-year-old Neve all lost their lives trying to protect one another in the same home foreign change has hit gippsland in the southeast the fire that started at lunchtime in Churchill is now being pushed in a completely new Direction it reaches up into the streslecki ranges the Steep inclines pushing the fire quicker and quicker temperatures scorched Beyond 1000 degrees hotter than a kiln by seven o'clock the fire reaches Coligny where a veteran of Victoria's worst ever bushfires in 1939 takes to the trenches once again it's just like somebody getting a great big show full of riddles up I run out of ashes and dropping on you all of a sudden you know it was a pitch black with smoke and nothing and heat and we knew he was there but it it generally confide it but at this particular honey it just seems that you have the chance Charlie and his neighbors received their first radio warning more than an hour after Coligny begins to burn we are bringing you information as soon as it comes to hand and as we speak I'm handed a printout here with an urgent threat message The Glenn Donald Road far is currently burning in and around traralgon South and caligny and caligny north and south residents may be directly impacted by this fire I reckon the firewood would dry in the Sprout before it hit the ground and I was still very confidence I got those plenty of water plenty power and I was busy only you know all of a sudden the water cut out I didn't know why now we've done them have to get away from the house if I could I couldn't stand up and I got me beat into the ground while I wasn't and kicked myself along and oh my elbow you see stuff like that watching watching the RuPaul and an adult stage well to put him on that was Bogut seven o'clock in Strath Ewan it's more than three hours since the cluster bomb of fires enveloped the town Mary avola's still not heard any news about her husband Peter he was behind me in another car and you know he'd gone off off the road a bit further up and I'd sort of waited for him and expected to have him follow me but you know at that stagey he hadn't so he was up there somewhere The Inferno is burned so ferociously it's only now that CFA Crews can force their way in well I came over the hill and the first sight I saw was a young chap that was driving me his parents house fully enveloped just a blazing Inferno house was fully enveloped and there was not one thing in strathium that wasn't burned what are you gonna do what are you gonna do when you're faced with something like that I'd never joined the CFA to confront these not not not not the magnitude and the and the catastrophe of that was but David grimly makes his way further in and discovers the true loss we got up to the oval and I can still uh I can still see it now the in line out there David had known Peter avola for almost 40 years Peter never did make it through the fire as he tried to escape in his car he waved his wife Mary on hoping that she at least would survive and apparently Peter must have got out of the car and he he ran from where the car was through a field and across the oval and he was only perhaps 400 meters from where I got to safety and he wasn't burnt he just suffocated he was still a whole person and he was only that far from me foreign he had his white shirt and his black vest on and his black pants and his pointy shoes and he and he had um slick back hair with with the kiss girl on his forehead and it was the most handsome thing I'd ever seen and he he's always been that gentle person that we all love so much Peter is not alone Hayden McMahon was due to start a graphic design course the following week this is the last photograph taken of him Robert O'Sullivan should have been celebrating his 48th birthday he was fully prepared to stay and defend foreign lose their lives in a Township of just 250. Red Alert we can actually see that far from here what do you want out of here it's a bit critical we're about to take off but apparently the the fire is heading this way in Buxton the wind changes upon them after packing for the past hour the dentsums finally realized fighting fires isn't for them clearly we actually had an option got Otto who got a three-year-old and M is pregnant and and I I couldn't believe that had taken that long to come up with that decision looks a bit ominous smoke billowing around um the prediction is the far is headed for straight for Buxton and us we paused and I said goodbye to the property really looking at the flames and then we just then we drove 10 kilometers away but just minutes by fire is Marysville for 70 years it's felt safe nestled in a valley but this very fact is about to be the town's undoing as the wind change hits the postcard perfect setting becomes a fire trap because Mary isville's basically surrounded by mountains around there the the Embers aren't going to continue to blow up the the hillsides they basically find this uh calm area to basically fall out so Marysville itself then becomes a bowl that's capturing all the Embers that are being produced from the the fire on the Range Marysville is attacked from above thousands of reigning Embers explode onto the town fire crews are helpless forced to seek cover at the oval the truck was just been blasted continuously by debris the air was just full of staff branches and rocks and burning embers and it was just absolutely like soup and I think the speed and intensity with which the fire just enveloped and just completely surrounded and covered Marysville it was just just staggering just staggering just went from being everything was on fire just in an instant everywhere as far as we could see Town burning Daryl Hull Guided by a hand of fate swims to the middle of the town's Lake the Ember storm was so significant like a meteor shower really that I knew I was going to need some protection and the strangest thing was that I just reached out my arm and there was a branch a perfect umbrella green and wet almost with a handle attached just waiting for me to pick it up and I suppose I had that uncanny sense that um something was looking after me the Marysville Inferno is already chasing the densons but they have no idea about this or any other fire we have been listening to ABC radio all the way in the car so we were trying to keep on top of where the fires were because the potential was that we could have been driving into a fire that we didn't know about and we were going what's going on because we knew how close the fire was to Baxter so they weren't even then giving baxton warnings let alone saying Buxton was under any kind of of attack which we know that it was by 7 30 8 o'clock so that was Emma made a really good point that we knew some stuff about the fires that's not being said on radio so what else is not being said on radio having survived in the lake Daryl has made it to the oval I just started filming as carefully as I could you know the horror that was going on around us I suppose I was just amazed to find myself there that I'd got through it I had no idea if anybody who'd tried to escape Town had escaped town and I had no idea of what lives might have been lost in any of the buildings I saw it's very hard to stand on the oval and realize the entire town was going up it was just impossible to think about everything was on fire around us literally everything in all directions in the 360 Degrees that we could see every building was on fire every bit of vegetation was on fire there was all the gas cylinders in the town were being exploding and huge fireballs and there was shrapnel flying around and trees were burning through and falling down and it was a incredibly dangerous and hostile environment and the horrendous and the frustrating part of being trapped there was that our Pages were going off incessantly with with fire calls with place for help for people that were trapped in houses and trapped in cars on roads and it was just an endless procession the page of messages pleading begging us to help and we could do nothing we couldn't even move off the oval patients are slowly trickling into hospitals the northern is the nearest emergency department to the worst hit areas one of the first patients to arrive is a 35 year old man from King Lake West his eyes are melded shut he's motionless but somehow alive after Sheltering in a dam as his home burned I can remember Dr Helen coming in and saying introducing yourself and asking me questions how I felt in that and and saying that you know I'm in the hospital now sort of thing and they'll be all right he had significant difficulty opening his eyes and I would need to raise his eyelids I would try to get him to engage with doing that he just couldn't so there really wasn't much communication at all what he certainly did say was where is my wife where are my children Jason's wife Ruth and their two children fled minutes before the fire arrived Hospital staff will try to discover if they're still alive in the meantime they do manage to call Jason's mother Ruth and the kids are you know said I'm sure they'll be right Jason's Hometown is obliterated and in King Lake the injured are being brought to the CFA shed among them Jen Clark who has suffered 30 Burns and can barely breathe her husband Mick Comforts her but there is no comfort they've lost a son and two grandchildren no one seemed to know what was going on every everyone was telling everybody that they're trying to get help in the ambulances are coming and we knew they weren't coming because they couldn't get anywhere they couldn't get up any of the roads the reaches and the helicopter couldn't land because there's full of smoke and fire there's nowhere for the land so we knew that was out there's no anything there's no medication there's no nothing and someone I don't quite know who broke into the doctor's office and started in steel but got the oxygen and brought it over at this stage I'm feeling terrible I didn't I think I was going to lose Jen I didn't that would that would be the end that's what I thought I forgot a loser I didn't care I felt it was probably probably right you know in a sort of a way that um that you know I'd been not been the one on on duty you know I'd not got him out that's it in a nutshell and all of a sudden these police arrived from sort of nowhere three kilos of them and like God said they were yeah really good the police will Convoy the clerks to Whittlesey 25 kilometers away a medical Relief Center is being set up in the town their daughter Beck is already there when her husband arrives someone tells me someone came and said Beck I think Ross is here so I came out looking for him and it was just you know hug and hold each other and cry our eyes out together so and he you know asks me all the same questions you know are you sure you know is this for real is it whatever you know and I just said yeah I said I spoke to mum you know so yeah that was about it what do you do what do you do so you know we just held at each other and cried tried to get your head around it Jen and Mick drive through scorched Earth and a Devastation that is beyond the physical I was just looking around the basement I couldn't believe both sides of roads are on fire trees are on fire cars or on the side of the road or in the ditch or burning and all of a sudden you drive and there's nothing there's no one on fire it's missed a little bit and you go a bit further but it's missed another little bit and all of a sudden both sides of the Road Again are burning and joining together and the fire was still burning out of control someone mentions that another police car is coming and so we waited and it pulls up and they pull out this woman and they put her on a a gurney and the people that are aware said that's not mum and I looked and I said here it is I thought I had failed my daughter and that how could I go on when I'm in charge or her children how can I ever go and face her again and so yeah she was covered in blisters on her arms and her legs were just burnt and blistered and she was quite messy and um looked like she was in a lot of pain then Becky came in and she said came over to me and bought she said came down she said don't you [ __ ] die on me don't you dare [ __ ] die on me I need you I cannot get through this without you don't Drew Dare die so I thought no I better bloody knot Jen Clark only just survived trying to save her loved ones others in King Lake died doing the same thing Rob Davey and his wife Natasha lost their lives alongside their two children Georgia III and Alexis eight months at their home on Bald Spur Road 15 perished on this one single Street but the fire that destroys King lake has just one more cruel card to play it heads North into the townships of Hazeldean and Flowerdale those living on the ridges are hardest hit their homes undefendable but the Flowerdale Pub still has a chance out in the open and protected by a main road it's an unofficial Refuge the landlord and a handful of locals have decided to stay and fight when it got dark and you could really see the fire coming through you know in the ranges and everything and you know that was both a spectacular site I've got to admit quite mesmerizing but I also wanted it to come because I was sick of waiting for the bastard because it was just sick of waiting and doing being able to do nothing at all we're all beginning to get very very scared we're all getting very very conscious of what's about to take place and we could see it coming from the King like area towards us as well so by this stage it's almost 360 Degrees around us we had fire bearing down on us straight down the highway coming through the kind of paddocks coming up the creek we had fires behind the pub we had fires just a north of the pub a little spot fight it's just wherever you looked and it was a matter of just going over there or yelling at someone else to get out there if they could they've attacked the Marie Paddock closest to our Motel units we had a just a fence line that was about a meter from the units and um I remember we made the conclusion it wasn't going to get past there we weren't going to let it get past that point and we just hit that Paddock and we made sure it didn't get any further you know we really didn't have much to fight an actual fire with you know it was bucket and mops it was chaos it was absolute chaos for hours absolute hours but Steve and his mates are in luck a drop in the Wind and a gust of local initiative favors the Defenders after fighting for six hours and more the 90 year old Timber Pub is saved you know we weren't CFA people we weren't under any uh you know centralized management and it just seemed to me that people seem to know with a kind of instinctual thing how to work together and kind of what to do in the surrounding Hills there is only sorrow the fire that started over 12 hours ago at Kilmore East has claimed nine more lives in the precincts of Flowerdale and nearby Hazeldean well to the southeast in caligny they're still fighting 97 year old Charlie Richardson has watched his home go up in flames badly burnt and alone for three hours he suddenly sees hope anyway I I heard a vehicle go past so I started started using the edge a bit more and a few minutes another one going past and so I'm not in the right place so managed to get up to the gate in the corner with me to watch and two three one possible flash he told them but they kept going so I struggled on the money to get to the mailboxes on the main road and became another one down and Flash the light on it in he stopped I think I was the first vehicle that had a spare seat so he jumped in my car and we came down there we drove him back down the hill it took us a while to get down we had to move some more trees off the road on the way back down but um he was just happy to have a drink of water and as I found out later he'd uh his gum boots had stuck to his feet and he was very badly burnt but he did not complain like Look At Me Now I I was having nothing on the watch slapped in the torch doesn't make sense does it you've got everything well made and two or three minutes I ranked this last time a bit it's all gone 11 of Charlie's neighbors perish in the pitiless lottery of the fire Alfred friendo and his son Scott fled their home only to be killed on the road as the fire missed their house 10 o'clock in Melbourne information from the disaster zone is so sketchy that news of the day's first deaths is only now coming through police have confirmed that 14 people have been killed in today's bushfires across Victoria six of being killed at King Lake four at wandong three at strathuen and one at Columbus you get in the car to go home and you feel like you feel absolutely terrible and you get home which I did and you know I walked in the door and I said to my wife what was going on and she said that's terrible you know she said I've just heard on the radio and I said it's going to be a lot worse and she said like what and I said a real lot worse and she's I distinctly remember she tried to put numbers into my mouth and I couldn't say it because I didn't know but I knew it was going to be worse for those in Marysville it doesn't look like it can get much worse the fire has moved so quickly and Communications are so stretched that the tragedy here is not known to the outside world there's been an update from the DSC on the Marysville Township the DSE understands that everyone's safe in Marysville and they're assembled at Gallipoli Park so just repeating that the DSC understands that everyone is safe in Marysville and they're all assembled at Gallipoli Park I remember ringing my wife up at Marysville when we're on the oval and she was at work at the northern hospital and she's a wonderful CFA wife and she knows has the score and she knew that she could see the fires and all the ranges and of course the hospital has been impacted by fires and she never has a mobile phone on ever and the phone rang a quarter of a ring and she answered and I said I'm okay and she said where are you and I go I'm in Marysville and she said oh that's fine and I said no body knew nobody knew about Marysville at that point and I said to her the whole town has gone Mandy and she said it can't be and I said the whole town is gone and it was for those who managed to escape Refuge has been found but confusion Reigns Pam from the Crossways Inn is safely in Alexandra 40 kilometers away but she's frantic for news of her husband Greg who stayed behind I would hear from one source that he was okay and then I met other people coming in saying we haven't seen him in the Crossways is gone so I was getting different reports really all night people thought that everything had burned so I'd actually text sent phone text to my my brother's saying I believe the Crossways is gone I haven't heard from Greg Pam isn't the only one desperate to know of loved ones the CFA Captain returns home with a local policeman to discover if his wife and youngest son have survived we went around um up the driveway the driveway is fairly steep we get up to the the top of the driveway and um it's very hot the house is is still it's still burning ferociously it um yeah and it was very very hot and there was obviously no signs of of Liz and Dalton there it was sort of a big chunk of time between the last time that I've been there you know I wasn't sure I really wasn't sure what it what had happened that I was hoping that they'd when there was no obvious signs of them I was hoping that they got away that that they weren't there was the I thought I was hoping and yeah one of the most popular tourist towns in Victoria is all but raised to the ground so most of the Main Street School oh my God this this is just impossible it's simply got to be impossible I don't believe I'm looking at this and that's all that's left of that beautiful Church there are too many Grim sites but amidst the destruction and the devastation Daryl Hull is about to make a remarkable discovery I filmed up the street and realized that the Crossways was still intact it was unbelievable that it was still intact well Greg has saved the Crossways Pam's husband Greg has spent half the night throwing water on the Crossways the other half Sheltering for his life the densams have been fleeing the fire that destroyed Marysville for the past six hours there was no room at the Inn at Alexandra but after 150 kilometer zigzag Journey the expectant couple finds somewhere for the night finally got into bed almost exactly two o'clock I remember thinking God it took so long we're going to get any sleep before Otto's out yes two seconds after the Lights Went Out Emma goes Johnny I'm like oh now I have to get up find her a biscuit get her another cup of tea what do you need now and she just goes my Waters have broken oh well the densams make their way to One hospital at the northern emergency department one of the patients Jason Lin has every reason to fear the worst a priest was searched for his wife and children returns walking toward me with a big smile smart face found them and I needed Clarity and he said oh the communications the phone calls were found them Jason's wife and two young children are safe and they're in nagambi and it was certainly a response of that's fantastic for this young man Jason's wife Ruth broke all the rules when she took to the road with her two children Julia and Joshua as the fire bore down fire was from the ground to the sky and as far as he could see sideways and once I saw what was coming I was sure Jason would die but I had to keep going to save my own life and save the life of my kids I wanted to open my eyes when they started to tell me that when I knew that they were telling me something about my wife and kids and they said they're safe the relief that he was alive and then I still had a husband my kids still had a father there's all that time I thought he was dead and he thought I was dead Sunday February the 8th 2009. Marysville I could see blue smoke drifting around the garden and I could hear this helicopter and I I realized that that night was over and I seriously did not want to wake up because I knew the sort of Devastation that one was going to be looking at oh well I didn't want to know what I was going to be looking at thank you at first light I decided that um I need to go back to home have a look Chris and I one of our very good mates we went back to pass and we families in Dalton every member of the Mary's field CFA crew lost their home their Captain lost much more as Glenn tried to defend the town and its people his wife Liz and 15 year old son Dalton perished trying to save the family home 34 lost their lives in Marysville no town in Victoria would see so Much Death on the nation's Darkest Day foreign the devastating scene is repeated across fire ravaged Victoria more than seven thousand left homeless the equivalent of a quarter of a million football ovals burnt out the next morning I just remember that the grayness of of the road it was just like Ash and it was Baron and gray and you want to look at what's happened but everything looks it looks like a bomb went off and there's nothing there and then all of a sudden green and normality in just a few hundred meters not even a kilometer from where it had all been it was fine just like nothing had happened but there is New Life amongst the ruins Casper densem waited for the fires to pass before arriving on the stroke of midday it was just fantastic and yet to by having that feeling of wow this is just brilliant you just couldn't lose that feeling of at the pit of your stomach that um and all was not right with the world even though it felt so good where where we were the densem's joy is tinged with sadness Jonathan a teacher learns that one of his students Matthew lisfield died alongside his mother and brother they are amongst 173 people who lost their lives on the day that will be forever known as Black Saturday foreign for those who survived Australia's worst Bushfire disaster Life Goes On foreign foreign who's to blame and not not whom they're going to do this and they're going to do that I don't care what they can do and the day like that nature will take over thank you foreign

Channel: whophd

Views: 2,234,244

Keywords: Inside, the, Firestorm

Id: O9Uz8ltWOGU

Length: 109min 53sec (6593 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 08 2019