The little telephone tree
The little telephone tree
"... Their ideas weren't conducive with protecting our homes and protecting ourselves. There was a social interaction, which is fine, there is nothing wrong with that, but it is a very serious matter, is a bushfire, and when you have children, when you have your property, all your treasure inside your house, you want to know how you're going to look after it and be very, very serious about it ..."
It was good to see Chris Harvey on the news last night making a submission to the 2009 Royal Bushfire Commission. It's better he's there on the stand telling his story at the public hearings and getting the day, Black Saturday out of his system.
A native of Yorkshire, I can hear his accent again in the report. Something to do with the way he mangles the tenses. I hadn't heard what circumstances he and his family escaped. Now I can. The submissions are open so you can read what happened as he retold the story yesterday.
Chris lived just down the road from this shot on Bald Spur road. Chris is a pretty composed, no-nonsense sort of person. Chris has been to some pretty far out places like South America. Trained to control his emotions, organised and not one to panic. He's a mate of my dads. I hope this doesn't change him much. He's got a wicked sense of humour. Well he makes me laugh. Half the time you can't understand his accent, the rest of the time I make sure I take the p*ss out of the fact he's a Pom.
Chris lived at the top of Bald Spur road while Gary and Jacinta lived at the bottom.
///////////////////// 2009 Royal Bushfire Commission: Chris Harvey //////////////////////////
1 UPON RESUMING AT 2.00 PM:
2 MS NICHOLS: Commissioners, I call Dr Chris Harvey.
3 Dr Harvey's statement is found in volume 33 of the hearing
4 book at tab 9.
5 <CHRISTOPHER HARVEY, sworn and examined:
6 MS NICHOLS: Dr Harvey, did you prior to the 7 February fires
7 live in Bald Spur Road in Kinglake?---Yes.
8 Had you lived there for about 23 years with your family?---Yes.
9 Have you, with the assistance of the Commission's lawyers,
10 prepared a written statement in relation to your
11 experience of the 7 February fires?---I have the copy here
12 and here.
13 Is the statement true and correct?---Yes.
14 I tender the statement, Commissioners.
15 #EXHIBIT 67 - Statement of Christopher Harvey.
16 MS NICHOLS: Dr Harvey, before I ask you about your experience
17 on 7 February, I would like to ask you about your general
18 and historical planning for bushfires. You say that one
19 thing you did with your neighbours about 20 years ago is
20 that you established a telephone tree. What's involved in
21 a telephone tree?---This was at the behest of the CFA to
22 form some sort of a knowledge in how we could protect our
23 homes because we do live in a vulnerable position. Once
24 you live in the forest, you know that it is not a matter
25 of if there is a bushfire, it is when there is a bushfire,
26 and it is what sort of actions we could take in order to
27 protect our properties and protect ourselves. We formed a
28 small group called a fireguard group which consisted of
29 six people. There weren't so many people living in Bald
30 Spur Road.
31 Dr Harvey, before you go on, could I ask you to move closer to
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 the microphone so we can hear you. You were saying you
2 formed a small group?---With half a dozen people, young
3 people, young families as we were then. What happened was
4 we had a coordinator who coordinated with the CFA which at
5 the time everybody else was basically at work, and my wife
6 was at home looking after very young children, so she was
7 a point of contact for the CFA and if there was any
8 information which should be relayed to us or any paperwork
9 which came with regards to have you done this check, have
10 you cleaned up your leaves, have you done all this stuff,
11 the paperwork would come to us and on the pleasant
12 evenings we would walk and go and see our friends and give
13 them the pieces of paper and we would talk about what we
14 were going to do and how we would do things.
15 Twenty-five years ago, or 23 years ago, sorry, we didn't
16 have much money. A fire pump was a luxury, a generator
17 was a luxury, but we were still intent on keeping our
18 properties clean and clear of any fuel which could burn.
19 So was the person from the CFA a conduit of information, if you
20 like, which was then distributed by you to your
21 neighbours?---Yes.
22 You describe it as a telephone tree, but was it really more
23 like a network?---No, I was giving you an overall
24 impression of how it was. There was a little more to it
25 because obviously, were there a fire approaching us, the
26 point of contact, which would have been Francis, my wife,
27 would have been contacted initially by the CFA, and then
28 we would have had the little telephone tree; you ring
29 number 1, 2, 3, 4. You ring number 1, we are number 1, we
30 ring number 2, number 2 is not in, we ring number 3,
31 number 3 is in, they would then ring number 4, and we
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 would get on with whatever we were supposed to be doing to
2 try to save ourselves or leave, whichever, and that was
3 basically how simply these fire trees were working.
4 Was that something that was initiated by you or your neighbours
5 or was it something that was suggested to you by the
6 CFA?---It was definitely suggested by the CFA.
7 You also say that, "We went to CFA training sessions and
8 everything the CFA said to do to prepare for a fire, we
9 did"?---Yes, the training sessions were in our homes. We
10 would have someone come up to see us to say, "Have you
11 cleaned up? Have you done this? Is your grass cut? Are
12 you in a reasonable state to fight a bushfire?" None of us
13 were, I don't believe.
14 We will come to 7 February in a moment, but were those kinds of
15 preparations something that you and your neighbours did
16 year-in and year-out?---Yes, throughout the year. It is
17 not a matter of having a one day clean-up with the amount
18 of fuel and leaves that fall down around us. It is a
19 constant job to keep it clear.
20 You indicate in your statement that at some point the group
21 became too big and the telephone tree became too
22 complicated. How did that happen?---My wife stopped being
23 at home. She came down to my office to do work; she is an
24 accountant. She came down to work to help with
25 the accounts and such like and of course she wasn't there
26 for the constant point of contact, as we would have liked.
27 The fire tree had grown at that point as well. Everybody
28 wanted to be in it, all the newcomers into Bald Spur Road.
29 I just - they were starting having ideas which weren't
30 conducive. This is only - this is my opinion. Their
31 ideas weren't conducive with protecting our homes and
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 protecting ourselves. There was a social interaction,
2 which is fine, there is nothing wrong with that, but it is
3 a very serious matter, is a bushfire, and when you have
4 children, when you have your property, all your treasure
5 inside your house, you want to know how you're going to
6 look after it and be very, very serious about it rather
7 than just going out and buying a fire pump and a generator
8 when the electricity goes off and making sure you have
9 some water. You need to know how to use these things.
10 There is more to just owning equipment; you need to know
11 how to use it correctly and how to judge things. My
12 company at that time, it was a very small company, now it
13 is an international company, it is a multi-national
14 company, and we regularly have firefighting people,
15 fully-trained people to come in and show us how to fight
16 fires inside my chemical plants and such like that.
17 I make sure everybody goes through that training and
18 I realise that it's not easy.
19 And is that experience something you have taken and transferred
20 into your domestic situation?---Absolutely, yes.
21 Absolutely. You know, most people own a fire extinguisher
22 in the house and they wouldn't know how to use it if they
23 were required to use it. They may not even have the right
24 type.
25 Can I take you to just before 7 February. You indicate in your
26 statement that your property was equipped to withstand
27 fire. One of the things you talk about is the fact that
28 you had a separate water system for fighting fires, a fire
29 pump and sprinklers on the roof. Can you describe how
30 that system was set up as at 7 February?---The galvanised
31 steel tank is at a higher elevation at the top of the
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 block which used to fill from our carport. That was fed
2 by a copper pipe underground through a five horsepower
3 Honda pump, which was a petrol driven pump which was in a
4 cooler part - with my stupid ideas of how to try and
5 prepare things, I tried to make it in a cooler place,
6 hidden away where I could start it very quickly because
7 I would start the pump every two or three days just to
8 make sure it was operable, and then the water was pumped
9 from there up copper pipes, onto a sprinkler system where
10 we had four sprinklers down either side of the roof. Our
11 roof is only 20 metres long. It was only 20 metres long,
12 I should say, so there was a sprinkler basically every
13 four metres on there with a throwing arc of seven or eight
14 metres, even only on half power on the fire pumps. So we
15 could put a lot of water down very quickly, but on
16 7 February we never used it.
17 You say that your family had a fire drill. What did you do to
18 practise that?---Outside, strip all the fittings off the
19 hoses inside. We used to - everybody knew how to start
20 the fire pump; everybody knew how to start the generator
21 because the first thing that goes in a fire is the
22 electricity, the household power; where the extension
23 leads were to plug it into the actual water pressure pump,
24 because we are not on mains water, we live on rainwater
25 tanks. So that was basically it, and where our masks
26 were, where our gloves were, where our face shields were
27 and everything. That was the things that I wanted people
28 to know.
29 You say you had also cleared around the property and there were
30 no leaves?---Our property, along with my neighbours and
31 our deceased neighbours, our properties were prepared.
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 The bush wasn't.
2 Prior to 7 February you had been through the Yea fires in 2006
3 which went through Kinglake?---It was heading directly
4 towards us. We had some experiences with ember attacks
5 with smoke and various other things, and I have a strange
6 feeling in my heart - again this is only my opinion - that
7 we were led into some sort of belief that that was as bad
8 as a bushfire is going to get and I think there was a
9 false sense of security amongst the group in Bald Spur
10 Road.
11 You say in your statement that you knew that 7 February was
12 going to be a bad day because of warnings you read in the
13 media. What was your impression about what kind of a day
14 it would be and what the implications were for
15 you?---Never having experienced a 47 degree day before, it
16 was quite different. I have discussed this thing with
17 lots of people. The 7th February, it was a culmination of
18 days prior to that. It was eight weeks without any rain.
19 Listening to the same warnings from the CFA about "Today
20 is a day of extreme fire danger" - I can nearly do it
21 verbatim for you - "Today is a day of extreme fire danger.
22 Do not use chainsaws, mowers, slashers, welders or
23 grinders outdoors unless it is extremely necessary" and
24 I can't see any necessity to use a grinder on a 47 degree
25 day. Now, we have listened to this warning every since
26 the day we came to Australia. My first day in Australia
27 over 25 years ago was going up to Wangaratta when Bright,
28 Wangaratta, everywhere was on fire. I had never seen so
29 many fire engines in my life, and this was coming from
30 freezing cold England to a place that was on fire and it
31 was quite a strange experience, I can assure you, to have
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 smoke everywhere, and I just didn't know what to do. So
2 we have lived with fire since day one being in Australia.
3 Listening to the - it was almost immune, you were almost
4 immune to the warnings because it is the same - you get
5 football commentators, when they are talking about a
6 football match, they are using incredibly colourful and
7 creative language to describe a guy who jumps up in the
8 air and grabs a ball. He becomes a hero, he becomes a
9 world class player at everything. Okay, it's exciting,
10 but people have become immune to this type of colourful
11 language and when something is extreme, it doesn't get any
12 worse than extreme on any other day, whether it is a 27
13 degree day or whether it is a 30 degree day and we have a
14 north wind blowing. The factors that go into making an
15 extreme fire danger day are not described to the people
16 who really need that warning. We needed more. My dead
17 neighbours, my deceased neighbours, my friends, we needed
18 more information. An extreme fire danger day to us is a
19 day to be vigilant. That is as far as I would describe
20 that.
21 Dr Harvey, you would say that on 7 February, when that day
22 came, you were indeed being vigilant?---I had been
23 vigilant for quite some time prior to that. Anything
24 would have set that bush on fire, anything. Even a spark
25 off a car going over a piece of flint on the road, it
26 would have gone. It was crispy under foot. That's the
27 only way to describe it. Everything was crunchy.
28 Can I take you to the 7th. You say you started the day
29 obviously at home and your wife and you were listening to
30 774?---Yes, that's correct.
31 Can I ask you to have a look at the map which we will project.
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 You will see it in front of you on the screen?---Yes.
2 Can you indicate approximately where your property is marked
3 with that balloon-shaped character?---Yes, right on top of
4 the spur. Yes.
5 And where is Mount Disappointment in relation to your
6 property?---West.
7 And Kilmore East?---That would be to our west, north-west.
8 You say that during the day you didn't hear of any fires in
9 your area, but you did hear there was a fire in Kilmore
10 which you estimate to be about 35 to 38 kilometres away
11 from your property. Drawing on your past experience that
12 you had had at 7 February, what did you think about how
13 long that fire might take to reach you, if in fact it
14 reached you?---Well, I would have considered that we had a
15 day at least, two days. The fires in 2006 were moving
16 slowly and that's where your measure of confidence comes
17 from, in your previous experiences. This fire, it was
18 beyond comprehension the way in which this thing came
19 quickly. We have had fires up at our vineyard, we have a
20 vineyard in Eurobin, which is more of a pastime, and there
21 were some bad fires in Myrtleford and they went within
22 hundreds of metres of our property. In fact, there was a
23 spot fire on our property. The CFA fire units were
24 sitting at the end of the road. They couldn't go in
25 because of the rules and regulations, they could not go in
26 and put the fire out that had started from some spotting
27 earlier on, and the farmers took off and put the fire off.
28 It's as simple as that.
29 In relation to this fire, is it fair to say that nothing you
30 had heard or been advised of or warned about gave you any
31 impression about how quickly a fire might reach your
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 property?---No, absolutely not. No. I think it was
2 unprecedented, the speed of the winds, and the conditions
3 that prevailed on the 7th were - as I say, it's a
4 culmination of days, it's not just what happened on that
5 day. If you look at the Sunday, the day after, it was a
6 coolish day. It was a cool day. Monday was cool.
7 Can I take you to about 3 o'clock on the afternoon of the 7th.
8 You say you'd seen - there was a clear blue sky and there
9 was no evidence of any fire that you could see from your
10 house at that time?---That would be because our views is
11 looking towards the east. We looked straight over towards
12 Mount St Leonard, which is, you know, maybe 100-odd
13 degrees out and our house is in a hole. We dug it into
14 the mountainside as we were sort of advised to, to create
15 some sort of a fire break with it, so obviously we
16 couldn't see anything from the windows apart from a
17 hillside.
18 And at about 3 o'clock you left to go where?---We had to go to
19 the airport to pick up my daughter, which was, for me,
20 I was annoyed about it. It saved my life. A 47 degree
21 day, I cannot imagine what a bloke really wants to do;
22 would want to sit down, would want to get the remote
23 control out and watch the TV and that's it and do
24 absolutely nothing, not that it doesn't need to be
25 47 degrees for that to happen, but that is how it was on
26 that day. We had to go and pick up my daughter. The
27 reason we had to pick her up was she had had - her
28 boyfriend wouldn't pick her up and that was it. We just
29 got in the car. Absolutely no sign of the fire. No sign
30 of it whatsoever. The wind was absolutely howling. It
31 was like a baking oven going outside. Got in the car,
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 drove up to the top of our driveway which heads, I would
2 say, pointing west, and that was the first time we saw the
3 smoke, and we just - it was such a pall of smoke, it was
4 just extraordinary. As I say, I have seen a few fires,
5 but I have never seen anything like this in my life. It
6 was massive. I don't want to start with this colourful
7 language to try and describe how it was. It was massive.
8 And that was over Mount Disappointment?---That would have been
9 coming from that direction, yes.
10 And you kept going towards the airport because you had to pick
11 up your daughter?---We turned right from our driveway to
12 get to the main road and that was where we decided that we
13 needed to listen to the radio to find out anything else.
14 The fire was purportedly in Kilmore and we just carried on
15 driving. The weather conditions were absolutely
16 atrocious. I have never experienced weather like it.
17 I have lived all over the world and I have been in
18 conditions which would scare a lot of people, earthquakes,
19 various other things, and the one thing that does give me
20 moments of trepidation are high winds. It is something
21 you cannot control or get out of the way of.
22 You drove down the hill from Kinglake West towards Whittlesea
23 and by about 3.30 you could see the fire coming along
24 Mount Disappointment?---Yes.
25 At that stage you say you thought it was going to hit Humevale,
26 but if there was a wind change it would probably reach
27 Kinglake?---If I have put "if" there is a wind change,
28 I should have said "when", because, as I say again, it is
29 a matter of when. We know that when the wind swings
30 around from the north, even if it only went to slightly
31 south-west, it would have shot up the mountain anyway.
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 But it did come up with an incredible ferocity.
2 You kept going towards the airport listening to the radio as
3 you went, you say?---Yes.
4 What, if anything, did you hear about Kinglake?---Nothing. We
5 considered that we had enough time, with our past
6 experience and knowledge of talking to people about fires,
7 we felt we had enough time to get to the airport, pick our
8 daughter up, take her to Port Melbourne and drive back to
9 Kinglake to prepare to fight the fire.
10 So once you got to the airport and got out of the car, what was
11 your experience of the wind?---It was to the point where
12 my wife and I hung on to one of the poles outside of the
13 Hilton Hotel, the wind was blowing so hard. There are
14 some poles which hold up - steel poles about eight inches
15 round. Literally we had to hold on to them. People were
16 being blown off their feet, there was such a tremendous
17 gust of wind at that time, and my wife said to me, or
18 I said, "We're gone," and she said, "We went ages ago,"
19 I think were her words.
20 Meaning what had happened in Kinglake?---Kinglake's in trouble.
21 Dr Harvey, you say that you received a voicemail message from
22 your neighbour which you didn't get until the next day,
23 but you understand it was sent about 4.30?---It was
24 exactly 4.30. I will never forget it. I will never
25 forget it on my telephone when it told me the message was
26 received. However, due to communications breakdown,
27 whether it was weather conditions, I don't know, I don't
28 know what affects radio signals so much, but it didn't
29 come through until the next day on my telephone.
30 What was the message from your neighbour, Carol
31 Holcombe?---Carol said, "Chris, this is Carol Holcombe
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 speaking. It's half past four. We have been told there
2 is a fire at the bottom of Bald Spur Road and there is no
3 need to worry. We don't believe it is a problem." And
4 that was it, that was it. And Carol - she is a very
5 confident person, she is a high school teacher, she
6 teaches 18 year old kids, so she has a good strong voice
7 and her voice was faltering a lot more than mine was just
8 then. She was scared. I can assure you if I had answered
9 that telephone I would have told them to get out.
10 And Carol and her husband died in the fire?---(Witness nods.)
11 At their property next to their car?---In their driveway, yes,
12 heading that way.
13 Dr Harvey, you picked up your daughter from the airport and it
14 doesn't indicate this in your statement, but is it right
15 that you dropped your daughter off at the apartment in
16 Melbourne that you have?---In Port Melbourne, yes.
17 And then you sought to make your way back to Kinglake but you
18 were stopped at a roadblock in Whittlesea?---Yes.
19 Did you stay there for some time before eventually returning to
20 your apartment in Port Melbourne?---We stayed there until
21 half past 10, 11 o'clock at night. It was light, it was
22 very light. There was nothing open in Whittlesea
23 food-wise. From the position we were, I know the
24 topography of the mountain very well indeed, so we could
25 see where the fire was. We knew where it was, so we just
26 said, "Well, we're tired" and we went.
27 So you went, stayed in Melbourne briefly and then returned to
28 Kinglake very early the next morning?---That's correct,
29 yes. We were in the queue by half past 5-ish.
30 What did you find when you went back to your property?---Well,
31 the police wouldn't let us back. We have lived on the
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 mountain a long time. We know our way up the mountain.
2 And when you eventually got to Bald Spur Road?---It was gone.
3 The whole community was gone. Our friends, gone.
4 Dr Harvey, having put all of the preparations in place that you
5 did and having had the long history of fire preparation,
6 now having lived through the 7th of February, what would
7 you do again? If you were faced with that situation
8 again, would you stay behind or would you leave?---We
9 intend full well to build, rebuild our home, but we are
10 not making any preparations to fight or stay to fight any
11 fire ever again.
12 You made the comment earlier in evidence that "our properties
13 were prepared but the bush wasn't"?---Yes.
14 What did you mean by that?---The idea is if you reduce fuel,
15 there is no fire. If there is no fuel, there is no fire.
16 Bald Spur Road has never, or the mountain either side of
17 it, has never had a fuel reduction burn. The last fire
18 which went through Bald Spur Road was in 1962 and it was a
19 reasonably cool bushfire. There is 47 years of negligence
20 on that mountain. I would suggest, from the duty of care
21 which we as residents deserve to have, we prepared
22 ourselves. Murrindindi shire and the DSE did nothing to
23 help us. They have to have a bushfire plan. They have
24 plans. They have an officer inside their shire with plans
25 which are reviewed every three years by the CFA to say,
26 "Yes, your fire precaution plan is okay." These are Acts,
27 this is a 1959 CFA Act or something like that. The DSE
28 have never been up there to do any burning off, which it
29 would be the state forest which wasn't prepared. It was
30 metres deep in places with leaves and debris from 47 years
31 worth of - do we call it negligence? I would call it
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 negligence, but I don't know whether I'm being fair. It
2 may well be an inability to perceive the problem or it was
3 easier not to perceive the problem maybe. I don't know.
4 This is my opinion, and I think it is also other people's
5 opinions also.
6 Dr Harvey, you say that you feel that most of your neighbours
7 who were caught in the fire did not understand how
8 dangerous it was going to be and you talk about the view
9 that the forest fire danger index should be made more
10 publicly available. Can you explain why you think
11 that?---Because the CFA and the DSE are not private
12 companies, however much they may wish to appear to be.
13 They are in the public domain. Information which they
14 have has to be given to us. We aren't idiots, we are not
15 fools, we are not imbeciles. There were professors and
16 teachers and educated people who died on that mountain.
17 We can take in information and we can calculate whether it
18 is dangerous or not. If you have the forest fire danger
19 index given to people along with the extreme fire danger
20 warning, that would be sufficient for people to make an
21 assessment. However, for people to learn how to interpret
22 the forest fire danger index people must be educated and
23 an education program has to begin right now to show
24 people, "This is how we calculate", the CFA or the DSE,
25 "This is how we calculate to give the forest fire danger
26 index"; fuel loads, temperature, wind speed, all these
27 factors that go into making this number that tells you
28 whether you are in trouble or not. We ought to be given
29 information about - well, I don't think - in 1939 they
30 didn't have something like that, but for Ash Wednesday I'm
31 pretty certain there was a forest fire danger index. Now,
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 we could possibly - there are a lot of computers that can
2 do all sorts of things nowadays and given the conditions,
3 that some people still remember 1939, we may well be able
4 to put these items into a computer, get a computation out
5 at the end of the day and say, "Look, guys, today is a day
6 of extreme fire danger." At 30" - I don't know, when the
7 forest fire danger index reaches 30, just for figures'
8 sake - "this is where we call an extreme fire danger day.
9 Now, on Ash Wednesday that danger suddenly got up to 50
10 and we don't really like people being around when it gets
11 this bad because you know what happened then." Now,
12 February 7th it was apparently, I have been told, I don't
13 know, 157, something like that. I don't know, I really
14 don't know for a fact; people bandy all sorts of figures
15 around. But people should be able to make their own mind
16 up about, "This is where an extreme fire danger day is,
17 this is what happened when it got to 50, this is what
18 happens when it gets to 157 and our computers," because
19 everybody believes a computer, "these are the computations
20 we did for Black Friday," which are probably three of the
21 worst fires that we've had in this state, and they would
22 say, "Okay, on Black Friday it did this, on Ash Wednesday
23 it was this, February 7th was this." People need an
24 education program to go along with it so that they can be
25 prepared. We can do it in schools. It can be started
26 now, that sort of thing, to make people more and more
27 aware of what an extreme fire danger is. You know, you
28 can't be calling it a very extreme fire danger day, you
29 can't use that sort of language, it just doesn't mean a
30 thing. Numbers mean things to people.
31 You say, Dr Harvey, do you, that in hindsight, with that kind
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 of information or that kind of understanding, you would
2 not, even though you weren't in fact at your property on
3 the day, you would have made the decision to go rather
4 than to defend?---Absolutely.
5 Dr Harvey, I have no more questions for you, but there might be
6 some other questions.
7 CHAIRMAN: Dr Harvey, can I just clarify the position. On the
8 information that was provided by the police, it seems that
9 there were four deaths at number 15 Bald Spur Road?---Yes.
10 And four deaths at number 29 Bald Spur Road?---Yes.
11 And four deaths at 39 Bald Spur Road?---Yes.
12 And two deaths at number 50 Bald Spur Road?---Yes.
13 Presumably you don't know the position at the other end of Bald
14 Spur Road where - - -?---Down at the bottom?
15 Yes?---Yes.
16 At 370 there was a death?---Down at the bottom of Bald Spur
17 Road - - -
18 You don't know that?---I only found out the other day, yes.
19 I was absolutely heartbroken to find out about my very
20 close neighbours and friends who we built our houses with,
21 and I only went down Bald Spur Road a couple of weeks ago
22 to have a look down at the bottom and it looked like a
23 cemetery to me with the flowers which were there. It was
24 providence that I wasn't there, that my family are safe,
25 pure providence, and my direct neighbours, they had an
26 appointment with their son at the doctor's at 9 o'clock in
27 the morning. Otherwise we would have all been in this
28 together. It would have been a lot higher.
29 Thank you very much, indeed, Dr Harvey. We very much
30 appreciate you giving evidence?---Thank you for giving me
31 the opportunity.
///////////////////// 2009 Royal Bushfire Commission: Chris Harvey //////////////////////////
next >>>
The little telephone tree
The little telephone tree
"... Their ideas weren't conducive with protecting our homes and protecting ourselves. There was a social interaction, which is fine, there is nothing wrong with that, but it is a very serious matter, is a bushfire, and when you have children, when you have your property, all your treasure inside your house, you want to know how you're going to look after it and be very, very serious about it ..."
It was good to see Chris Harvey on the news last night making a submission to the 2009 Royal Bushfire Commission. It's better he's there on the stand telling his story at the public hearings and getting the day, Black Saturday out of his system.
A native of Yorkshire, I can hear his accent again in the report. Something to do with the way he mangles the tenses. I hadn't heard what circumstances he and his family escaped. Now I can. The submissions are open so you can read what happened as he retold the story yesterday.
Chris lived just down the road from this shot on Bald Spur road. Chris is a pretty composed, no-nonsense sort of person. Chris has been to some pretty far out places like South America. Trained to control his emotions, organised and not one to panic. He's a mate of my dads. I hope this doesn't change him much. He's got a wicked sense of humour. Well he makes me laugh. Half the time you can't understand his accent, the rest of the time I make sure I take the p*ss out of the fact he's a Pom.
Chris lived at the top of Bald Spur road while Gary and Jacinta lived at the bottom.
///////////////////// 2009 Royal Bushfire Commission: Chris Harvey //////////////////////////
1 UPON RESUMING AT 2.00 PM:
2 MS NICHOLS: Commissioners, I call Dr Chris Harvey.
3 Dr Harvey's statement is found in volume 33 of the hearing
4 book at tab 9.
5 <CHRISTOPHER HARVEY, sworn and examined:
6 MS NICHOLS: Dr Harvey, did you prior to the 7 February fires
7 live in Bald Spur Road in Kinglake?---Yes.
8 Had you lived there for about 23 years with your family?---Yes.
9 Have you, with the assistance of the Commission's lawyers,
10 prepared a written statement in relation to your
11 experience of the 7 February fires?---I have the copy here
12 and here.
13 Is the statement true and correct?---Yes.
14 I tender the statement, Commissioners.
15 #EXHIBIT 67 - Statement of Christopher Harvey.
16 MS NICHOLS: Dr Harvey, before I ask you about your experience
17 on 7 February, I would like to ask you about your general
18 and historical planning for bushfires. You say that one
19 thing you did with your neighbours about 20 years ago is
20 that you established a telephone tree. What's involved in
21 a telephone tree?---This was at the behest of the CFA to
22 form some sort of a knowledge in how we could protect our
23 homes because we do live in a vulnerable position. Once
24 you live in the forest, you know that it is not a matter
25 of if there is a bushfire, it is when there is a bushfire,
26 and it is what sort of actions we could take in order to
27 protect our properties and protect ourselves. We formed a
28 small group called a fireguard group which consisted of
29 six people. There weren't so many people living in Bald
30 Spur Road.
31 Dr Harvey, before you go on, could I ask you to move closer to
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 the microphone so we can hear you. You were saying you
2 formed a small group?---With half a dozen people, young
3 people, young families as we were then. What happened was
4 we had a coordinator who coordinated with the CFA which at
5 the time everybody else was basically at work, and my wife
6 was at home looking after very young children, so she was
7 a point of contact for the CFA and if there was any
8 information which should be relayed to us or any paperwork
9 which came with regards to have you done this check, have
10 you cleaned up your leaves, have you done all this stuff,
11 the paperwork would come to us and on the pleasant
12 evenings we would walk and go and see our friends and give
13 them the pieces of paper and we would talk about what we
14 were going to do and how we would do things.
15 Twenty-five years ago, or 23 years ago, sorry, we didn't
16 have much money. A fire pump was a luxury, a generator
17 was a luxury, but we were still intent on keeping our
18 properties clean and clear of any fuel which could burn.
19 So was the person from the CFA a conduit of information, if you
20 like, which was then distributed by you to your
21 neighbours?---Yes.
22 You describe it as a telephone tree, but was it really more
23 like a network?---No, I was giving you an overall
24 impression of how it was. There was a little more to it
25 because obviously, were there a fire approaching us, the
26 point of contact, which would have been Francis, my wife,
27 would have been contacted initially by the CFA, and then
28 we would have had the little telephone tree; you ring
29 number 1, 2, 3, 4. You ring number 1, we are number 1, we
30 ring number 2, number 2 is not in, we ring number 3,
31 number 3 is in, they would then ring number 4, and we
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 would get on with whatever we were supposed to be doing to
2 try to save ourselves or leave, whichever, and that was
3 basically how simply these fire trees were working.
4 Was that something that was initiated by you or your neighbours
5 or was it something that was suggested to you by the
6 CFA?---It was definitely suggested by the CFA.
7 You also say that, "We went to CFA training sessions and
8 everything the CFA said to do to prepare for a fire, we
9 did"?---Yes, the training sessions were in our homes. We
10 would have someone come up to see us to say, "Have you
11 cleaned up? Have you done this? Is your grass cut? Are
12 you in a reasonable state to fight a bushfire?" None of us
13 were, I don't believe.
14 We will come to 7 February in a moment, but were those kinds of
15 preparations something that you and your neighbours did
16 year-in and year-out?---Yes, throughout the year. It is
17 not a matter of having a one day clean-up with the amount
18 of fuel and leaves that fall down around us. It is a
19 constant job to keep it clear.
20 You indicate in your statement that at some point the group
21 became too big and the telephone tree became too
22 complicated. How did that happen?---My wife stopped being
23 at home. She came down to my office to do work; she is an
24 accountant. She came down to work to help with
25 the accounts and such like and of course she wasn't there
26 for the constant point of contact, as we would have liked.
27 The fire tree had grown at that point as well. Everybody
28 wanted to be in it, all the newcomers into Bald Spur Road.
29 I just - they were starting having ideas which weren't
30 conducive. This is only - this is my opinion. Their
31 ideas weren't conducive with protecting our homes and
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 protecting ourselves. There was a social interaction,
2 which is fine, there is nothing wrong with that, but it is
3 a very serious matter, is a bushfire, and when you have
4 children, when you have your property, all your treasure
5 inside your house, you want to know how you're going to
6 look after it and be very, very serious about it rather
7 than just going out and buying a fire pump and a generator
8 when the electricity goes off and making sure you have
9 some water. You need to know how to use these things.
10 There is more to just owning equipment; you need to know
11 how to use it correctly and how to judge things. My
12 company at that time, it was a very small company, now it
13 is an international company, it is a multi-national
14 company, and we regularly have firefighting people,
15 fully-trained people to come in and show us how to fight
16 fires inside my chemical plants and such like that.
17 I make sure everybody goes through that training and
18 I realise that it's not easy.
19 And is that experience something you have taken and transferred
20 into your domestic situation?---Absolutely, yes.
21 Absolutely. You know, most people own a fire extinguisher
22 in the house and they wouldn't know how to use it if they
23 were required to use it. They may not even have the right
24 type.
25 Can I take you to just before 7 February. You indicate in your
26 statement that your property was equipped to withstand
27 fire. One of the things you talk about is the fact that
28 you had a separate water system for fighting fires, a fire
29 pump and sprinklers on the roof. Can you describe how
30 that system was set up as at 7 February?---The galvanised
31 steel tank is at a higher elevation at the top of the
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 block which used to fill from our carport. That was fed
2 by a copper pipe underground through a five horsepower
3 Honda pump, which was a petrol driven pump which was in a
4 cooler part - with my stupid ideas of how to try and
5 prepare things, I tried to make it in a cooler place,
6 hidden away where I could start it very quickly because
7 I would start the pump every two or three days just to
8 make sure it was operable, and then the water was pumped
9 from there up copper pipes, onto a sprinkler system where
10 we had four sprinklers down either side of the roof. Our
11 roof is only 20 metres long. It was only 20 metres long,
12 I should say, so there was a sprinkler basically every
13 four metres on there with a throwing arc of seven or eight
14 metres, even only on half power on the fire pumps. So we
15 could put a lot of water down very quickly, but on
16 7 February we never used it.
17 You say that your family had a fire drill. What did you do to
18 practise that?---Outside, strip all the fittings off the
19 hoses inside. We used to - everybody knew how to start
20 the fire pump; everybody knew how to start the generator
21 because the first thing that goes in a fire is the
22 electricity, the household power; where the extension
23 leads were to plug it into the actual water pressure pump,
24 because we are not on mains water, we live on rainwater
25 tanks. So that was basically it, and where our masks
26 were, where our gloves were, where our face shields were
27 and everything. That was the things that I wanted people
28 to know.
29 You say you had also cleared around the property and there were
30 no leaves?---Our property, along with my neighbours and
31 our deceased neighbours, our properties were prepared.
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 The bush wasn't.
2 Prior to 7 February you had been through the Yea fires in 2006
3 which went through Kinglake?---It was heading directly
4 towards us. We had some experiences with ember attacks
5 with smoke and various other things, and I have a strange
6 feeling in my heart - again this is only my opinion - that
7 we were led into some sort of belief that that was as bad
8 as a bushfire is going to get and I think there was a
9 false sense of security amongst the group in Bald Spur
10 Road.
11 You say in your statement that you knew that 7 February was
12 going to be a bad day because of warnings you read in the
13 media. What was your impression about what kind of a day
14 it would be and what the implications were for
15 you?---Never having experienced a 47 degree day before, it
16 was quite different. I have discussed this thing with
17 lots of people. The 7th February, it was a culmination of
18 days prior to that. It was eight weeks without any rain.
19 Listening to the same warnings from the CFA about "Today
20 is a day of extreme fire danger" - I can nearly do it
21 verbatim for you - "Today is a day of extreme fire danger.
22 Do not use chainsaws, mowers, slashers, welders or
23 grinders outdoors unless it is extremely necessary" and
24 I can't see any necessity to use a grinder on a 47 degree
25 day. Now, we have listened to this warning every since
26 the day we came to Australia. My first day in Australia
27 over 25 years ago was going up to Wangaratta when Bright,
28 Wangaratta, everywhere was on fire. I had never seen so
29 many fire engines in my life, and this was coming from
30 freezing cold England to a place that was on fire and it
31 was quite a strange experience, I can assure you, to have
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 smoke everywhere, and I just didn't know what to do. So
2 we have lived with fire since day one being in Australia.
3 Listening to the - it was almost immune, you were almost
4 immune to the warnings because it is the same - you get
5 football commentators, when they are talking about a
6 football match, they are using incredibly colourful and
7 creative language to describe a guy who jumps up in the
8 air and grabs a ball. He becomes a hero, he becomes a
9 world class player at everything. Okay, it's exciting,
10 but people have become immune to this type of colourful
11 language and when something is extreme, it doesn't get any
12 worse than extreme on any other day, whether it is a 27
13 degree day or whether it is a 30 degree day and we have a
14 north wind blowing. The factors that go into making an
15 extreme fire danger day are not described to the people
16 who really need that warning. We needed more. My dead
17 neighbours, my deceased neighbours, my friends, we needed
18 more information. An extreme fire danger day to us is a
19 day to be vigilant. That is as far as I would describe
20 that.
21 Dr Harvey, you would say that on 7 February, when that day
22 came, you were indeed being vigilant?---I had been
23 vigilant for quite some time prior to that. Anything
24 would have set that bush on fire, anything. Even a spark
25 off a car going over a piece of flint on the road, it
26 would have gone. It was crispy under foot. That's the
27 only way to describe it. Everything was crunchy.
28 Can I take you to the 7th. You say you started the day
29 obviously at home and your wife and you were listening to
30 774?---Yes, that's correct.
31 Can I ask you to have a look at the map which we will project.
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 You will see it in front of you on the screen?---Yes.
2 Can you indicate approximately where your property is marked
3 with that balloon-shaped character?---Yes, right on top of
4 the spur. Yes.
5 And where is Mount Disappointment in relation to your
6 property?---West.
7 And Kilmore East?---That would be to our west, north-west.
8 You say that during the day you didn't hear of any fires in
9 your area, but you did hear there was a fire in Kilmore
10 which you estimate to be about 35 to 38 kilometres away
11 from your property. Drawing on your past experience that
12 you had had at 7 February, what did you think about how
13 long that fire might take to reach you, if in fact it
14 reached you?---Well, I would have considered that we had a
15 day at least, two days. The fires in 2006 were moving
16 slowly and that's where your measure of confidence comes
17 from, in your previous experiences. This fire, it was
18 beyond comprehension the way in which this thing came
19 quickly. We have had fires up at our vineyard, we have a
20 vineyard in Eurobin, which is more of a pastime, and there
21 were some bad fires in Myrtleford and they went within
22 hundreds of metres of our property. In fact, there was a
23 spot fire on our property. The CFA fire units were
24 sitting at the end of the road. They couldn't go in
25 because of the rules and regulations, they could not go in
26 and put the fire out that had started from some spotting
27 earlier on, and the farmers took off and put the fire off.
28 It's as simple as that.
29 In relation to this fire, is it fair to say that nothing you
30 had heard or been advised of or warned about gave you any
31 impression about how quickly a fire might reach your
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 property?---No, absolutely not. No. I think it was
2 unprecedented, the speed of the winds, and the conditions
3 that prevailed on the 7th were - as I say, it's a
4 culmination of days, it's not just what happened on that
5 day. If you look at the Sunday, the day after, it was a
6 coolish day. It was a cool day. Monday was cool.
7 Can I take you to about 3 o'clock on the afternoon of the 7th.
8 You say you'd seen - there was a clear blue sky and there
9 was no evidence of any fire that you could see from your
10 house at that time?---That would be because our views is
11 looking towards the east. We looked straight over towards
12 Mount St Leonard, which is, you know, maybe 100-odd
13 degrees out and our house is in a hole. We dug it into
14 the mountainside as we were sort of advised to, to create
15 some sort of a fire break with it, so obviously we
16 couldn't see anything from the windows apart from a
17 hillside.
18 And at about 3 o'clock you left to go where?---We had to go to
19 the airport to pick up my daughter, which was, for me,
20 I was annoyed about it. It saved my life. A 47 degree
21 day, I cannot imagine what a bloke really wants to do;
22 would want to sit down, would want to get the remote
23 control out and watch the TV and that's it and do
24 absolutely nothing, not that it doesn't need to be
25 47 degrees for that to happen, but that is how it was on
26 that day. We had to go and pick up my daughter. The
27 reason we had to pick her up was she had had - her
28 boyfriend wouldn't pick her up and that was it. We just
29 got in the car. Absolutely no sign of the fire. No sign
30 of it whatsoever. The wind was absolutely howling. It
31 was like a baking oven going outside. Got in the car,
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 drove up to the top of our driveway which heads, I would
2 say, pointing west, and that was the first time we saw the
3 smoke, and we just - it was such a pall of smoke, it was
4 just extraordinary. As I say, I have seen a few fires,
5 but I have never seen anything like this in my life. It
6 was massive. I don't want to start with this colourful
7 language to try and describe how it was. It was massive.
8 And that was over Mount Disappointment?---That would have been
9 coming from that direction, yes.
10 And you kept going towards the airport because you had to pick
11 up your daughter?---We turned right from our driveway to
12 get to the main road and that was where we decided that we
13 needed to listen to the radio to find out anything else.
14 The fire was purportedly in Kilmore and we just carried on
15 driving. The weather conditions were absolutely
16 atrocious. I have never experienced weather like it.
17 I have lived all over the world and I have been in
18 conditions which would scare a lot of people, earthquakes,
19 various other things, and the one thing that does give me
20 moments of trepidation are high winds. It is something
21 you cannot control or get out of the way of.
22 You drove down the hill from Kinglake West towards Whittlesea
23 and by about 3.30 you could see the fire coming along
24 Mount Disappointment?---Yes.
25 At that stage you say you thought it was going to hit Humevale,
26 but if there was a wind change it would probably reach
27 Kinglake?---If I have put "if" there is a wind change,
28 I should have said "when", because, as I say again, it is
29 a matter of when. We know that when the wind swings
30 around from the north, even if it only went to slightly
31 south-west, it would have shot up the mountain anyway.
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 But it did come up with an incredible ferocity.
2 You kept going towards the airport listening to the radio as
3 you went, you say?---Yes.
4 What, if anything, did you hear about Kinglake?---Nothing. We
5 considered that we had enough time, with our past
6 experience and knowledge of talking to people about fires,
7 we felt we had enough time to get to the airport, pick our
8 daughter up, take her to Port Melbourne and drive back to
9 Kinglake to prepare to fight the fire.
10 So once you got to the airport and got out of the car, what was
11 your experience of the wind?---It was to the point where
12 my wife and I hung on to one of the poles outside of the
13 Hilton Hotel, the wind was blowing so hard. There are
14 some poles which hold up - steel poles about eight inches
15 round. Literally we had to hold on to them. People were
16 being blown off their feet, there was such a tremendous
17 gust of wind at that time, and my wife said to me, or
18 I said, "We're gone," and she said, "We went ages ago,"
19 I think were her words.
20 Meaning what had happened in Kinglake?---Kinglake's in trouble.
21 Dr Harvey, you say that you received a voicemail message from
22 your neighbour which you didn't get until the next day,
23 but you understand it was sent about 4.30?---It was
24 exactly 4.30. I will never forget it. I will never
25 forget it on my telephone when it told me the message was
26 received. However, due to communications breakdown,
27 whether it was weather conditions, I don't know, I don't
28 know what affects radio signals so much, but it didn't
29 come through until the next day on my telephone.
30 What was the message from your neighbour, Carol
31 Holcombe?---Carol said, "Chris, this is Carol Holcombe
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 speaking. It's half past four. We have been told there
2 is a fire at the bottom of Bald Spur Road and there is no
3 need to worry. We don't believe it is a problem." And
4 that was it, that was it. And Carol - she is a very
5 confident person, she is a high school teacher, she
6 teaches 18 year old kids, so she has a good strong voice
7 and her voice was faltering a lot more than mine was just
8 then. She was scared. I can assure you if I had answered
9 that telephone I would have told them to get out.
10 And Carol and her husband died in the fire?---(Witness nods.)
11 At their property next to their car?---In their driveway, yes,
12 heading that way.
13 Dr Harvey, you picked up your daughter from the airport and it
14 doesn't indicate this in your statement, but is it right
15 that you dropped your daughter off at the apartment in
16 Melbourne that you have?---In Port Melbourne, yes.
17 And then you sought to make your way back to Kinglake but you
18 were stopped at a roadblock in Whittlesea?---Yes.
19 Did you stay there for some time before eventually returning to
20 your apartment in Port Melbourne?---We stayed there until
21 half past 10, 11 o'clock at night. It was light, it was
22 very light. There was nothing open in Whittlesea
23 food-wise. From the position we were, I know the
24 topography of the mountain very well indeed, so we could
25 see where the fire was. We knew where it was, so we just
26 said, "Well, we're tired" and we went.
27 So you went, stayed in Melbourne briefly and then returned to
28 Kinglake very early the next morning?---That's correct,
29 yes. We were in the queue by half past 5-ish.
30 What did you find when you went back to your property?---Well,
31 the police wouldn't let us back. We have lived on the
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 mountain a long time. We know our way up the mountain.
2 And when you eventually got to Bald Spur Road?---It was gone.
3 The whole community was gone. Our friends, gone.
4 Dr Harvey, having put all of the preparations in place that you
5 did and having had the long history of fire preparation,
6 now having lived through the 7th of February, what would
7 you do again? If you were faced with that situation
8 again, would you stay behind or would you leave?---We
9 intend full well to build, rebuild our home, but we are
10 not making any preparations to fight or stay to fight any
11 fire ever again.
12 You made the comment earlier in evidence that "our properties
13 were prepared but the bush wasn't"?---Yes.
14 What did you mean by that?---The idea is if you reduce fuel,
15 there is no fire. If there is no fuel, there is no fire.
16 Bald Spur Road has never, or the mountain either side of
17 it, has never had a fuel reduction burn. The last fire
18 which went through Bald Spur Road was in 1962 and it was a
19 reasonably cool bushfire. There is 47 years of negligence
20 on that mountain. I would suggest, from the duty of care
21 which we as residents deserve to have, we prepared
22 ourselves. Murrindindi shire and the DSE did nothing to
23 help us. They have to have a bushfire plan. They have
24 plans. They have an officer inside their shire with plans
25 which are reviewed every three years by the CFA to say,
26 "Yes, your fire precaution plan is okay." These are Acts,
27 this is a 1959 CFA Act or something like that. The DSE
28 have never been up there to do any burning off, which it
29 would be the state forest which wasn't prepared. It was
30 metres deep in places with leaves and debris from 47 years
31 worth of - do we call it negligence? I would call it
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 negligence, but I don't know whether I'm being fair. It
2 may well be an inability to perceive the problem or it was
3 easier not to perceive the problem maybe. I don't know.
4 This is my opinion, and I think it is also other people's
5 opinions also.
6 Dr Harvey, you say that you feel that most of your neighbours
7 who were caught in the fire did not understand how
8 dangerous it was going to be and you talk about the view
9 that the forest fire danger index should be made more
10 publicly available. Can you explain why you think
11 that?---Because the CFA and the DSE are not private
12 companies, however much they may wish to appear to be.
13 They are in the public domain. Information which they
14 have has to be given to us. We aren't idiots, we are not
15 fools, we are not imbeciles. There were professors and
16 teachers and educated people who died on that mountain.
17 We can take in information and we can calculate whether it
18 is dangerous or not. If you have the forest fire danger
19 index given to people along with the extreme fire danger
20 warning, that would be sufficient for people to make an
21 assessment. However, for people to learn how to interpret
22 the forest fire danger index people must be educated and
23 an education program has to begin right now to show
24 people, "This is how we calculate", the CFA or the DSE,
25 "This is how we calculate to give the forest fire danger
26 index"; fuel loads, temperature, wind speed, all these
27 factors that go into making this number that tells you
28 whether you are in trouble or not. We ought to be given
29 information about - well, I don't think - in 1939 they
30 didn't have something like that, but for Ash Wednesday I'm
31 pretty certain there was a forest fire danger index. Now,
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 we could possibly - there are a lot of computers that can
2 do all sorts of things nowadays and given the conditions,
3 that some people still remember 1939, we may well be able
4 to put these items into a computer, get a computation out
5 at the end of the day and say, "Look, guys, today is a day
6 of extreme fire danger." At 30" - I don't know, when the
7 forest fire danger index reaches 30, just for figures'
8 sake - "this is where we call an extreme fire danger day.
9 Now, on Ash Wednesday that danger suddenly got up to 50
10 and we don't really like people being around when it gets
11 this bad because you know what happened then." Now,
12 February 7th it was apparently, I have been told, I don't
13 know, 157, something like that. I don't know, I really
14 don't know for a fact; people bandy all sorts of figures
15 around. But people should be able to make their own mind
16 up about, "This is where an extreme fire danger day is,
17 this is what happened when it got to 50, this is what
18 happens when it gets to 157 and our computers," because
19 everybody believes a computer, "these are the computations
20 we did for Black Friday," which are probably three of the
21 worst fires that we've had in this state, and they would
22 say, "Okay, on Black Friday it did this, on Ash Wednesday
23 it was this, February 7th was this." People need an
24 education program to go along with it so that they can be
25 prepared. We can do it in schools. It can be started
26 now, that sort of thing, to make people more and more
27 aware of what an extreme fire danger is. You know, you
28 can't be calling it a very extreme fire danger day, you
29 can't use that sort of language, it just doesn't mean a
30 thing. Numbers mean things to people.
31 You say, Dr Harvey, do you, that in hindsight, with that kind
Bushfires Royal Commission
1 of information or that kind of understanding, you would
2 not, even though you weren't in fact at your property on
3 the day, you would have made the decision to go rather
4 than to defend?---Absolutely.
5 Dr Harvey, I have no more questions for you, but there might be
6 some other questions.
7 CHAIRMAN: Dr Harvey, can I just clarify the position. On the
8 information that was provided by the police, it seems that
9 there were four deaths at number 15 Bald Spur Road?---Yes.
10 And four deaths at number 29 Bald Spur Road?---Yes.
11 And four deaths at 39 Bald Spur Road?---Yes.
12 And two deaths at number 50 Bald Spur Road?---Yes.
13 Presumably you don't know the position at the other end of Bald
14 Spur Road where - - -?---Down at the bottom?
15 Yes?---Yes.
16 At 370 there was a death?---Down at the bottom of Bald Spur
17 Road - - -
18 You don't know that?---I only found out the other day, yes.
19 I was absolutely heartbroken to find out about my very
20 close neighbours and friends who we built our houses with,
21 and I only went down Bald Spur Road a couple of weeks ago
22 to have a look down at the bottom and it looked like a
23 cemetery to me with the flowers which were there. It was
24 providence that I wasn't there, that my family are safe,
25 pure providence, and my direct neighbours, they had an
26 appointment with their son at the doctor's at 9 o'clock in
27 the morning. Otherwise we would have all been in this
28 together. It would have been a lot higher.
29 Thank you very much, indeed, Dr Harvey. We very much
30 appreciate you giving evidence?---Thank you for giving me
31 the opportunity.
///////////////////// 2009 Royal Bushfire Commission: Chris Harvey //////////////////////////
next >>>