The bushfire that changed Canberra forever | ABC News

[Music] wander the streets of Western Creek today and the summer of 2003 almost feels like a bad dream [Music] [Music] s numerous houses alive here get me some water please it's almost Unthinkable now streets in the national capital Ablaze day turn tonight the Panic of a last minute evacuation Terror for those who stayed to fight the flames when we were driving out it was like Armageddon you know there was there was police cars and ambulances sort of turned over in the street there was fire everywhere it was just totally crazy fire was like a fluid it was almost like a wave of water it wasn't like what you think fire being like it was unlike anything you've seen at least in my life before since I just looked around and I wasn't even stressed I just looked around and I thought oh they oh it's 20 years this week since canberra's worst natural disaster the fires that roared into the suburbs Taking Lives and hundreds of homes for those who lived here it's a bit like a shared nightmare the houses may have been rebuilt and some of the forests have regrown but canberra's Darkest Day left a deep emotional scar winds tending moderate to Fresh West to northwesterly tomorrow temperatures from 17 tonight to 38 tomorrow in January 2003 the Act was in the grip of one of its worst recorded droughts the undergrowth crackled like corn flakes underfoot and when dry lightning storms struck the brindabella ranges a slow-motion disaster began for 10 days four fires snaked their way through inaccessible valleys and slopes of namaji National Park but then on the 18th of January 2003 catastrophic fire conditions pushed the blaze into a single Unstoppable force of nature the rural firefighters Parks Rangers and aerial water bombers that had been battling the fires for days had no choice but to pull back to safety and wait for the fire to reach the city itself Craig this is the corner of you can bean and warragamba Avenue Duffy which is where the 2003 Bushfire initially made contacting impacted on the southern suburbs of Canberra Sean McIntyre was a City firefighter called in to provide last line defense to the suburbs what his crew found that afternoon was overwhelming what happened here 20 years ago was incomprehensible impossible for people to imagine what it was like the Heat the noise and the lack of oxygen in the air the darkness the Panic all of those things on a Serene day like today don't seem real they seem like stuff of the movie it was the sort of Blaze that claimed fire trucks and forced firefighters to improvise A desperate defense of homes the smoke hadn't even cleared when Sean gave the ABC the fire brigade's first interview about the ferocity of that Firestorm and how lucky he was to survive survival was uh was our Instinct and we had to retreat to safer point a couple of streets back it was the helplessness of having to let houses burn while moving on to those that could be saved two decades on there's acceptance of sorts of an impossible job well done at the end of the day trying to feel like gratitude and appreciation for for coming out the other side of it and um and what we did achieve not what we lost more than 500 homes were destroyed that afternoon mostly in the southwestern suburbs of Duffy holder Chapman and rivet four residents died overcome by smoke and Flames there were hundreds of serious injuries too Burns broken bones heart attacks and hospitals overwhelmed with patients struggling to breathe it was a lot cooler when I had a telescope in it but it wasn't just an urban disaster the world famous Mount stromlow Observatory surrounded by Pine forests was a sitting Target the part of this building I really miss is the library because that you know it was a library that went back over 120 years and it was just had everything in it and it's all gone and irreplaceable Heritage telescopes were reduced to Molten Glass by the unimaginable Heat the the feeling that yes yeah I haven't obviously thought about it that much for a long time um yeah this is a place of History and the impact on the bush capital's backyard was at first incomprehensible the leafy Cotter Reserve scene of family picnics for Generations now blackened ugly Tib and Bill and nature reserve all but destroyed leaving a Seoul koala singed but somehow still alive it was a Paradise Lost for four or five years there it was it was ideally you know you'd wake up in the morning and kangaroos in the backyard and winter the snow and the typical range it was absolutely ideal like it really was park ranger Brett McNamara lived in the heart of the Tidman biller Wilderness but even this seasoned firefighter was unable to save his family home you look at this stuff you sort of think this is all we've got left there's nothing else that we've got left and when you've lost everything even the smallest Memento becomes a family treasure I I made that sign hi um I'm surprised that dad's kept it for so long this was me trying to be like all right well let's try and raise a little bit of money you know for the families that had it worse than you know we had at the time um so yeah collected some rocks um put them up for sale I think we made about 20 bucks from it and I remember donating that money down to the uh the Bushfire recovery Center's reliance it was about the giving afterwards you know the the event itself the day itself was horrific but the way the Canberra Community opened up their hearts afterwards was was was truly extraordinary it really was and to my mind that says a lot about Canberra it really does the fires probably other than the Canberra Raiders winning their first Premiership was the first sign that Canberra really had a bit of a heart and a soul and we could bleed and we could burn just like any other place about now we just do tops and pants it was an international outpouring of help armies of volunteers mobilized to feed and clothe those who'd lost everything to the flames but it wasn't long before the public merge shifted and residents began demanding answers of their leaders what I'm saying is don't cheer me if you want to blame somebody blame me cheer those people in this community who put their lives on the line in hindsight why didn't you actually attack the fire harder and sooner than you did well they didn't because they didn't because the fire was beyond their expectation they handled it as Professionals in the way that they would normally have handled a fire former Chief Minister John Stanhope was at first reluctant to speak to the ABC about those difficult days back in 2003 when Community frustration boiled over into anger aimed squarely at the senior firefighters who failed to sound the alarm in your defense of those public servants you famously said if you want to blame someone blame me do you regret making that statement not not for a minute so um but when people did try to blame you you didn't want to accept that well no I had no reason to accept anybody for anything as far as I'm concerned I maintained that no I was basically saying I guess it was a I don't know I've drawed on it why I said it I said it because I was angry I said it because people that I respected uh and that worked for me were being attacked and as the as the leader as the person in charge I thought well look if you want to blame somebody for This Disaster I'm the chief minister blame me uh so it I was defending my officers which I think leaders should do which most don't What followed was a damning internal review that found the fires might have been stopped if they'd been attacked more aggressively in the critical First hours and then a coronal inquest which recommended better Bushland burn-offs to reduce the fuel load and the risk of Fire but at their hearts both inquiries were scathing of the lack of official warnings about the real threat to the suburbs and that's what still stings today in retrospect you can say well you failed your best wasn't good enough and within hindsight of course wouldn't say that about so many aspects of our lives and I can understand those that lost loved ones those that lost their homes think well your best wasn't good enough but it's all we had to give and we gave it if you live in Western Creek woden belconnen or tuggeranong you should be on high alert and the situation is not confined now just at an imaginational park it is well and truly in our neighborhoods it was absolutely Pitch Black by 4 30 in the afternoon and then I went on air at five o'clock and I stayed on air for 12 hours bringing updates on the hour and the half hour in a very rapidly evolving situation foreign house at this stage there's definitely a burnt out car nobody expected what happened that was quite confronting for a lot of people that just the suddenness of it all you know the way that it came into town in a time before smartphones and live streaming media Outlets struggled to pass the warnings on as quickly as they were needed amongst the chaos the advice from authorities was often out of date sometimes contradictory leaving residents torn about how to respond you've been in the industry a long time have you ever seen a news day like that never ever and I think it's the day that Canberra lost its innocence but it was just the scale of the tragedy we've never had anything like that in Canberra from a Canberra story point of view we've never had anything like that up until that day and thankfully we've never had anything like that since show me where it is [Music] up we always took the view that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger whereas other people were totally broken by it the fires broke relationships some people couldn't face going back and had to flee Canberra entirely we should never forget the day we should never forget the suffering and the pain and the compassion and the generosity but we should never forget the lessons learned and the fact that we uh we can't let our community be let down like we were that day again residents in several suburbs are battling to protect their houses tonight as bushfires swirled through the national capital and surrounding parts of New South Wales for many of us the 18th of January 2003 feels like a lifetime ago but at the same time we can still remember every detail of how that day unfolded some of the raw emotional edges have been smoothed off over the years but it did fundamentally changes and for those who stared down the Flames there will always be unanswerable questions but perhaps also a challenge to Rise From the Ashes stronger than before life is too short to stuff around you know you do the stuff if you want to get out of the job that you don't like don't stay there like it's it's you can make change and don't wait till you're standing in a burning house to go oh my god I've only got one life and I can't mess this up the experts agree the bush Capital remains vulnerable to Major fires and it's likely to get much worse [Applause] another Canberra Fire season and a new generation of parks ranges is learning the tools of the trade [Music] increasingly their job means learning how to control fires when to light them and when to fight them because managing fuel loads in the remote reaches of namaji National Park can help keep the national capital safe it was a lesson learned the hard way in January 2003 when lightning storms ignited fires that roared into the Canberra suburbs it was The act's Darkest Day and one that shattered faith in our ability to protect ourselves it was pretty horrific we lost lives we lost homes and in a sense we probably lost a little bit of confidence in ourselves as an organization to be able to deliver what our community most needed we'll just lift on either side from the booms like that but future fires won't be fought the same way that's the direction it's going to fly in this high-tech drone could mean the difference between a small controllable Blaze and an Unstoppable mega fire you really need to be able to get a good thermal camera to have a look at the lightning locations as soon as possible after the lightning strikes so you really know whether there has been an ignition that is an issue the idea is to fly the Drone behind lightning storms using artificial intelligence to detect strikes and send real-time data back to ground controllers it's a job traditionally left to trained spotters in light aircraft but under dangerous conditions drones could do it much better we would be able to send in a drone with a good thermal camera in conditions that you wouldn't be prepared to send a crude vehicle like flying at night flying in less good weather flying in Smoke there have been situations in the past where crude helicopters weren't able to fly because the smoke was too thick it's part of a multi-million dollar project that's seen the Australian National University partner with commercial interests to bring firefighting into the 21st century and another key part of the puzzle is way up here traditionally the early detection of fire has relied on Towers like this one at Cohen Forest there are four of them dotted around the ACT but they're only useful if there's a spot up on duty ready to call in the coordinates of any smoke they see on days of elevated fights and where there's a heightened risk to the ACT community and surrounding areas we have people that come up here in crew the tower they up here from typically from around that 10 11 o'clock in the morning all the way through to in the worst case scenario on a total Five band day to last Light it does get hot and it's quite mentally draining having that constant scanning of the the environment looking for those signs of smoke so to help the humans out the towers have high resolution cameras here's that fire we saw earlier the hazard burn conducted by act Parks picked up on camera from Cohen Forest Tower and beamed back to Esa headquarters while you using the cameras it means that we can have a better visual over the act on a 24 7 basis we're at the moment we only put people up in the towers during those elevated fire danger days Dr Mata yebra studied the dangers of wildfires in her Homeland Spain before recognizing the enormous academic potential here in Australia I realized that I thought to research here in terms of boot fires now as director of the anu's Bushfire Research Center of Excellence she's helping develop new smarter ways of detecting and fighting fire using a network of cameras ground sensors satellites to monitor fuel loads those early detection drones and computer modeling to not only show exactly where a fire is but what type of vegetation it's burning we believe that there is no single technology that can get five factors early to the fire so it's a combination of many that we will give that early detection capability and with a changing climate the stakes have never been higher the interval between major fires is shrinking and fires are burning hotter and more unpredictably than firefighters have seen before you've been in the job for a fair while now do you feel like the rules are changing um I know that the word unprecedented is thrown around um but the the 1920 uh so 2019-2020 season um throughout a lot of the rule books um the fire Behavior we're getting at two three in the morning was usually what would get it two three in the afternoon in the peak of the day so a lot of our opportunities to do that strategic back Burning uh were lost and the fire Behavior was just incredible and and dangerous to put Crews into so Tony tell us a little bit about this Forest type this is red stringy bark Forest quite rare in the ACT High ecological values Tony Bartlett was head of act forests during the catastrophic 2003 Canberra fires which took out most of the territories commercial Pine plantations he worries that that was merely a warm-up the fire that caused so much trouble and destruction here in Canberra in 2003 the fires in 2050 are probably going to be even worse than that so we need to design for the few future and give the suburbs on the western side of our Western and Northern sides of our city the best chance of surviving the onslaught of severe bushfires but he says our love of the Bush could threaten new suburbs so we hear a lot about Pines and their flammability their proximity to suburbs how does it compare I think red Spring Forest is much more of a problem than Pine Forest and with increasing pressure on the ACT Suburban land reserves the government's allowing more and more development along the western Fringe of Canberra the same area badly burnt back in 2003. I don't have any problem with people living in these new suburbs but I think the key thing is that they do need to understand that they are buying into areas where there is a Bushfire risk traditionally our worst fire weather comes from the Western Northwest in Canberra would you live in those suburbs on the urban interface there I would be comfortable living in those suburbs as a well-informed resident understanding design and Innovation around how you can build a resilient home having your own fire protection zones around your home preparing your home every season understanding how to evacuate and where to evacuate to and most importantly understanding the meaning of alerts and warnings and if a fire does break out the esa commissioner says her organization's willingness to warn the public sooner has massively shifted since the fires of 20 years ago do you think in 2003 the lack of public information was the critical failing that still haunts cam Burns today when cam bearans talked to me and certainly the feedback we received during 1920 was that they did want situational awareness they were craving for information having read those recounts both from staff and the community that certainly influenced and shaped the approach that I took in 2019 2020 and that was to as I said publicly alert you not alarm you and I would rather apologize for too much information than for something critical to be missed a lack of public warning nearly cost Liz Tilley her life back in 2003 when her Duffy home burned to the ground she rebuilt on the edge of the Bush and loves it too but recognizes that there's a risk in her lifestyle that none of us can take lightly I think the major thing that I would say to people that are living in this Urban interface areas is just to be aware and to have a plan to think about and discuss with your family what you would do in the event of any sort of natural disaster I think what we would do is is just get out as soon as we could um we didn't really have that choice when the fires came in 2003 but this time I think we just leave and just take our valuables and the houses in short if it goes It goes if the recent black summer taught Australians anything it was that under the worst conditions fires are simply Unstoppable which means during fire emergencies residents will have to take more responsibility for their own safety come the time of Reckoning we may not be able to put a fire truck at the corner of every street we may not have an ambulance for every suburb and so it really is about how we can work together in Partnership to prepare ourselves to respond on our worst day will we lose homes in Canberra again do you think we could potentially lose homes I never say never [Music]

Channel: ABC News (Australia)

Views: 21,909

Keywords: Australia, abc, abc news, news, canberra, bushfire, anniversary, craig allen, dead, death, killed, climate change, natural disaster, act, australian capital territory, capital, fire, wildfire, technology, nature, solutions, journalism

Id: daCpgpLBsXo

Length: 23min 56sec (1436 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 18 2023