Real Lessons: Evacuating from the Grampians Bushfires
Co-Founder and Managing Director of Service Central, Danial Ahchow, along with his wife and two children had to evacuate their home in the Grampians for three days as bushfires burned a short distance away. This is the very valuable and practical lessons that Danial and his family learned from this traumatic event.
Bushfire Plan
Having been through the experience, we couldn’t emphasize how important having a pre-prepared Bushfire Plan really is. As my wife and I have two young children, our plan was to leave and leave early. We had a Bushfire Plan booklet and had taken the time to sit down together and fill it out. Most importantly, were firm that in the event of a fire we were leaving.
On that point, having already made that firm decision to leave helped put an end to my overwhelming urge to “stay and defend”. Even though we had already said 100 times that we would leave, when it came to seeing a fire heading towards our home, all I wanted to do was grab our hoses and take it on. I thought I could do it, especially when a friend offered to help me. If it wasn’t for my wife firmly reminding me (time and time again) that we have already agreed that we would leave, then I would have tried to break our plan and stayed.
Even if you have a Plan to leave, its important that you still prepare yourself and your home to stay and defend. You never know how much time you will have to leave, and twice we were informed that our main way to town from our house was potentially going to be blocked off.
Get your Bushfire Plan here: http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/plan-prepare/
Stay Together
In these cases of emergency, you would be amazed with how much your mind focuses on your family. For this reason its really important to stay together. There are so many “excuses” for driving off to do something on your own, but you are only creating a situation where you and your family worry about where each other is and whether they are safe.
You do and say very dumb things
As a reminder of just how important a Bushfire Plan is, in this type of emergency you lose your mind. You absolutely lose your ability to think (and communicate) clearly. Unless you have previously discussed (and written down) what you are going to do, you will do dumb things.
Apart from me randomly deciding I was going to “stay and defend”, here are some more dumb things we said and did:
My wife looked at the red sun shrouded by smoke and said “look there is a full moon today”.
We packed our suitcases in preparation for our house to burn down and us never to return, yet we forgot to pack any socks, jumpers or t-shirts. What were we thinking?
My wife ran around and grabbed all of her valuables, yet I couldn’t think of what my valuables actually were. In hindsight there were a lot of things I would have regretted losing.
Our neighbour was rambling along about how much he wanted his house to burn down. He had all of these plans for how his new house was going to be so much better. I bet when we see him next time, he will admit this was pretty dumb.
I smashed my iPhone screen when getting too close to an Elvis helicopter that was taking off. Actually the video is actually pretty funny, as Elvis started taking off as we stood about 50m away, we were blasted with gravel and had to run for cover. I was picking stones out of my hair for hours afterwards.
Dumb things to avoid:
In a bushfire you don’t hide in the Bathroom. You want to be in a room where you can see the fire, and have access to the outside. The bathroom doesn’t have access to the outside, and often has the smallest window in your house. Lots of people get trapped in their bathrooms in a bushfire.
Don’t climb up on your roof. More people get hurt during bushfires by falling off of their roof, than people hurt by the actual fires.
Information is Integral
Without information you feel like you are powerless. The more information you can get your hands on, the better and safer you feel.
The following sources of information (for a bushfire in Victoria) were fantastic:
The Victorian Emergency website: http://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/#now which lists details of all of the fires in your area, including what to do if you are near them.
The CFA Fire Ready App. Like the Victorian Emergency website this is a great way of being alerted about what is happening in your area: http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/plan-prepare/fireready-app/
Victorian Bushfire Information Line (call 1800 240 667) were fantastic to speak to when we had specific queries about the fire near us. One time we spent 30 minutes on the phone to one of their operators in the middle of the night, and she was fantastic.
ABC Local Radio was fantastic. Often reiterating important messages when your internet access is slow or non-existent.
Facebook is a fantastic way to update all of your friends about where you are and whether you are safe. You don’t want to have to be on your phone updating friends and family that are hundreds of km’s away and unable to help.
Friends in the CFA (fire brigade) are a fantastic resource for telling you the unofficial information about what is actually happening on the fire front (although you need to be careful as there can be lots of conflicting information).
Stay away from mainstream media
I love reading The Age, but found it completely useless when it came to learning about the fires near us. In fact, the amount of sensationalism that The Age and TV stations put out was just disgraceful. They were trying to present a situation that effectively the whole country was going to burn down, even though we could see clearly with our own two eyes that they were spinning absolute rubbish.
The worst case of this was when the mainstream media made it sound that Halls Gap Zoo were planning to abandon all of their animals except from the most endangered ones. This rebuttal from the owner of Halls Gap Zoo demonstrates just how much the mainstream media went out of their way to sensationalise things, rather than report honestly and with integrity: https://www.facebook.com/hallsgapzoo/posts/622196011151016
It is sad to say that even the ABC promoted this false story.
Friends are amazing!
We were absolutely overwhelmed with the support that we received from our friends. In particular we would like to thank the Crofts who kindly let us stay with them for three nights, providing us with not only accommodation but every type of support you could imagine. Their efforts included taking a day off of work to look after our kids for us (as we ran around like headless chooks), and joking around with us helping us make light of these very serious circumstances.
Similarly, our friends Lynley and Glenn were amazing. Their local knowledge was invaluable. Knowledge of how and where local fires had burned in the past. Knowledge of where to get the best information, of who to speak to, or what to say. Most importantly, they took the time to calmly explain to us that our home wasn’t in immediate danger, why its not in danger (i.e. what the guys on the frontline of the bushfire had done to stop the spread of the fire) and what would have to change before we were in danger. This detailed information was invaluable to us.
The emergency services are even more amazing!
The massive bushfires in the Grampians brought together all of the emergency services (CFA, SES, Police, Ambulance, DPI, etc) in our small town of Stawell in a very short period of time, and coordinated together to protect the local communities. Their ability to bring so many highly trained people together in such a coordinated manner, that was able to not only fight the fires, but also quickly communicate what was happening on the front time, was amazing.
The locals who have had a lot of experience with bushfires before, have said time and time again that the Emergency Services obviously have learned a lot from the tragedy of the Black Saturday fires and the result is fantastic. These people, the vast majority of whom are volunteers, are absolute legends!
If you would like to support the CFA in particular, you can do that here: http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/supporting-cfa/
Other Tips
Fill up your car with a full tank of petrol, you would be surprised about how much driving around you will do.
iPhones really have crap batteries. My iPhone lasted about 4 hours. Make sure you have chargers (including car chargers) with you.
Drink lots and lots of water. I’m not someone used to carrying around a water bottle so this was a very hard thing to do. I ended up with bad headaches caused by dehydration.
Prepare a list of your valuables and sentimental things in advance.
You are truly exhausted when it finally ends. After all of the nerves and adrenaline, you fall in a heap when the threat of the bushfire is over.
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Daniel,
over a year ago by Michael
I was one of the people who stayed to protect their house from the Bunyip Ridge fire on Black Saturday. (Saved the house, but lost everything else on the property).
Everything you have said here is so completely true. You really do need to prepare yourself for the fire season in Australia. Even if you live in a big city like Melbourne, grass and scrub fires can happen anywhere.
There are two things that I want to add.
1. CFA (Victorian Country Fire Authority) brigades have community information and planning sessions to help people plan. DO go to your local meetings.
in late 2008 I went to my local community information session. There were 8 of us there. At 6pm on the 6th of February we had a community meeting about the fire that was already burning. There were hundreds of people there asking questions that we had dealt with months ago. Just before a fire approaches is too late to start preparing. Do it Now!!!
2. I agree with your comment about climbing on your roof. The number of news stories that have people standing on their roofs wearing singlets shorts and thongs is incredible. And incredibly stupid! Wetting your rood down won't help. Tile and tin don't burn easily. Houses burn down from embers getting underneath or next to doors or windows. Protecting your house from the ground is much more effective. AND only wearing singlets shorts and thongs is criminally stupid. Fires burn you with radiant heat. There is a reason fire fighters were natural fibre long sleeved jackets and trousers. Jeans, boots, and long sleeved cotton shirts are the minimum you should wear.
Michael.
