We are all used to disasters. Modern communications bring images of disaster from all over the world, directly to our living rooms, as they happen. You would think this relentless exposure to the cruelty of both man and nature would prepare us for when disaster strikes close to home. It doesn’t.
Saturday, February 7, 2009 was a hot day in Victoria. Unbelievably hot. As they had the week before, temperatures ramped up to levels three and four degrees higher than had been recorded in any previous year. That’s the meteorological equivalent of taking a full second off the 100m sprint record.
These temperatures combined with hellish winds, dry air and an already baked countryside to create the most bushfire conducive circumstances in living memory.
For days before, the weather bureau had been warning of these conditions. This gave the situation a surreal difference from many others in that we all knew it was coming but we didn’t know where or when, how fast or how dangerous.
For those of us safely holed up in suburban Melbourne there was no danger, but there was plenty of dread. For those on bush properties, there was really only hope. Emergency services – staffed mostly be courageous volunteers – waited anxiously across the state. They pounced as reports of fires started to trickle, then teem in.
Much of the worst damage took place late on Saturday afternoon and into that night. As a result it was not until Sunday morning that the scale of the destruction became apparent.
Victorians are well used to bushfires affecting our communities. There is a strange informal categorisation of our reactions. If a fire burns a large area of bushland, that’s bad. If it burns a few properties as well, that’s terrible. Very occasionally a small number of lives are lost: a tragedy.
The Black Saturday fires destroyed nearly 2000 homes and took over 200 lives. Two sizeable towns, along with some smaller ones, were virtually totally destroyed. To put this in perspective, the death toll represents roughly the same proportion of Australia’s population as the September 11 toll represented of the United State’s population.
We have no category for this.
The scale of this disaster has left few Victorians untouched. Nearly everyone knows someone who was killed, or lost a loved one, or lost their house, or was otherwise directly affected.
As recover begins, our communities will learn many lessons from this disaster, some of which may be worth sharing down the track. But for the moment, our thoughts need to stay with those who have lost so much.
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