2009FEB201245
It's been 2 years now since Black Saturday. The first anniversary has come and gone. I missed going to Strathewen, Bowden Spur Road, Bald Spur road, Kinglake and Kingake West this year. I had some things I had to attend to.
So I'll be uploading images, footage, newspaper clippings I collected in date order to give you an idea how things escalated.
2009 Feb 7 was no ordinary day by any standards. I happened to take a short clip of the strong winds outside. What the clip doesn't show is how hot it got, 47C. Not long after I took the video I went to the pool and stayed till about 1800. I'd ditched plans to shoot up to Kinglake West during the day. I know from experience that on TFB days it wasn't wise to drive through fire prone areas.
So I stayed home.
All hell breaks loose
As I got home all hell started to break loose. First I got a call from my sister who said a big fire had passed through Kinglake West at my Dads house and that he'd called here, phone fading that he'd survived the initial fire, the house was saved, cars intact but all the sheds gone. So I quickly drove to a position some 70km away to see what was happening. This is what I saw. This is the first of a number of images I captured showing the fire burning between 2030 and 2120. The CFA started to issue fire maps indicating the location and extent of the fire. I also captured some overhead mapping showing how my Dads house survived. The bare 10Ha to the left of the image indicates the fire spotted and took off. Location helped as well. This is the plateau of Kinglake West with no steep hills. The lack of vegetation at the source mean the fire didn't get as hot as say Ridge Road.
News trickles out
When I got home, news reports started to trickle out of the extent of the fire. The next day news had eye witness accounts and images. The news didn't look good. From the start I knew the news for Strathewen wasn't good because there was no media coverage. In the next day papers I learned why.
Images like this started to appear. Then the death lists and missing. This was probably the most frantic time. People seeing the images I'd been putting up started contacting me. In fact this was occurring with anyone who knew people in the fire effected areas. You just didn't know peoples status.
This is someone I went to school with standing on the roof trying to save the pub in Kinglake. Things had got pretty desperate. But I was still a long way from the fire front. The fires had well and truly past my Dads and people I knew in effected areas. People had either survived or the didn't. Here's the weather, still hot and dry.
Fire Ops
Within 48 hours of the fire my brother and sister had organised and delivered a generator to my dad in Kinglake West. This is no mean feat considering all roads at this time where manned by the Police and access was restricted. Resourcefulness is the name of the game here. So my Dad had survived, but numerous problems started to emerge. Because so many people had perished, the police declared whole towns, crime scenes. This effectively meant no access. Once again resourcefulness played its part and we obtained the necessary authentication to move in and out of the Police controlled road blocks. I'm not going to mention how this was done. Power had been taken care of but water was now an issue. The water tanks had been compromised and the pump had no power and had to be inspected. Living off bottled water isn't ideal so I needed to organise water containers fast.
A good mate came to the rescue. He literally contacted me out of the blue and organised 3000Ltr of portable water capacity with a few phone calls. Such is the generosity of people I know. But first I had to pay for a new un-used tank and organise it's delivery. So down to Port Melbourne I go on another hot day.
Then I arranged to get the kit delivered some 100km to a staging area for delivery. And here they are with fittings (sans the Shutz). Ready to truck up to Kinglake West.
Services, the first of many
The funeral services I attended where sad but necessary. I met more people I'd known at the service than I had in the past 10-15 years. The shots you see here are for a Strathewen resident, a mates brother. It was hot. Before I went I got my suit pressed and bought an umbrella at the supermarket in Eltham. The lady asked why? I answered, "do you really want to know?" and proceeded to explain. I went through the road blocks at the Arthurs Creek / Yan Yean turn off, attended the service and later went to the Apteds place overlooking Strathewen and Sugarloaf. I didn't have the stomach to take more shots.
When I got home I took a quick shot of my Blundstone boots with my Pinstripe Suite. I'd changed out of the dress shoes to walk around the paddocks after I'd parked the car.
Tank Delivery
Couple of days later I rolled up to the staging area for the tanks, loaded them on the truck and travelled from Eltham to Kinglake West. This was to be the first time I'd my Dad and the property post fire.
Loaded and traveling through Yan Yean with Jackie the wonder dog checking out the cows to the left.
When we got to Whittlesea we stopped at the bakery to get some Pies, bread and something to drink.
next >>>
2009FEB201245
It's been 2 years now since Black Saturday. The first anniversary has come and gone. I missed going to Strathewen, Bowden Spur Road, Bald Spur road, Kinglake and Kingake West this year. I had some things I had to attend to.
So I'll be uploading images, footage, newspaper clippings I collected in date order to give you an idea how things escalated.
2009 Feb 7 was no ordinary day by any standards. I happened to take a short clip of the strong winds outside. What the clip doesn't show is how hot it got, 47C. Not long after I took the video I went to the pool and stayed till about 1800. I'd ditched plans to shoot up to Kinglake West during the day. I know from experience that on TFB days it wasn't wise to drive through fire prone areas.
So I stayed home.
All hell breaks loose
As I got home all hell started to break loose. First I got a call from my sister who said a big fire had passed through Kinglake West at my Dads house and that he'd called here, phone fading that he'd survived the initial fire, the house was saved, cars intact but all the sheds gone. So I quickly drove to a position some 70km away to see what was happening. This is what I saw. This is the first of a number of images I captured showing the fire burning between 2030 and 2120. The CFA started to issue fire maps indicating the location and extent of the fire. I also captured some overhead mapping showing how my Dads house survived. The bare 10Ha to the left of the image indicates the fire spotted and took off. Location helped as well. This is the plateau of Kinglake West with no steep hills. The lack of vegetation at the source mean the fire didn't get as hot as say Ridge Road.
News trickles out
When I got home, news reports started to trickle out of the extent of the fire. The next day news had eye witness accounts and images. The news didn't look good. From the start I knew the news for Strathewen wasn't good because there was no media coverage. In the next day papers I learned why.
Images like this started to appear. Then the death lists and missing. This was probably the most frantic time. People seeing the images I'd been putting up started contacting me. In fact this was occurring with anyone who knew people in the fire effected areas. You just didn't know peoples status.
This is someone I went to school with standing on the roof trying to save the pub in Kinglake. Things had got pretty desperate. But I was still a long way from the fire front. The fires had well and truly past my Dads and people I knew in effected areas. People had either survived or the didn't. Here's the weather, still hot and dry.
Fire Ops
Within 48 hours of the fire my brother and sister had organised and delivered a generator to my dad in Kinglake West. This is no mean feat considering all roads at this time where manned by the Police and access was restricted. Resourcefulness is the name of the game here. So my Dad had survived, but numerous problems started to emerge. Because so many people had perished, the police declared whole towns, crime scenes. This effectively meant no access. Once again resourcefulness played its part and we obtained the necessary authentication to move in and out of the Police controlled road blocks. I'm not going to mention how this was done. Power had been taken care of but water was now an issue. The water tanks had been compromised and the pump had no power and had to be inspected. Living off bottled water isn't ideal so I needed to organise water containers fast.
A good mate came to the rescue. He literally contacted me out of the blue and organised 3000Ltr of portable water capacity with a few phone calls. Such is the generosity of people I know. But first I had to pay for a new un-used tank and organise it's delivery. So down to Port Melbourne I go on another hot day.
Then I arranged to get the kit delivered some 100km to a staging area for delivery. And here they are with fittings (sans the Shutz). Ready to truck up to Kinglake West.
Services, the first of many
The funeral services I attended where sad but necessary. I met more people I'd known at the service than I had in the past 10-15 years. The shots you see here are for a Strathewen resident, a mates brother. It was hot. Before I went I got my suit pressed and bought an umbrella at the supermarket in Eltham. The lady asked why? I answered, "do you really want to know?" and proceeded to explain. I went through the road blocks at the Arthurs Creek / Yan Yean turn off, attended the service and later went to the Apteds place overlooking Strathewen and Sugarloaf. I didn't have the stomach to take more shots.
When I got home I took a quick shot of my Blundstone boots with my Pinstripe Suite. I'd changed out of the dress shoes to walk around the paddocks after I'd parked the car.
Tank Delivery
Couple of days later I rolled up to the staging area for the tanks, loaded them on the truck and travelled from Eltham to Kinglake West. This was to be the first time I'd my Dad and the property post fire.
Loaded and traveling through Yan Yean with Jackie the wonder dog checking out the cows to the left.
When we got to Whittlesea we stopped at the bakery to get some Pies, bread and something to drink.
next >>>