posted on February 14, 2009 20:05
Greg Annand squatted on a patch of rough road as bushfires rapidly approached, seemingly destined to become another statistic in the deadly outbreak of firestorms that this week killed more than 200 people and destroyed dozens of communities in the Australian state of Victoria.
But the weatherbeaten 72-year-old was miraculously spared as the raging fire turned into what he described as a "fireball in the sky" before lobbing over his head and continuing on its destructive course.
"We lost everything," he said, possessions, a housein Kinglake West that was once a tea shop, and a Shetland pony.
Mr Annand, who has lived all his life in the harsh Aussie bush, is not sure he will ever return. "Nobody wants to see children burnt to death. But we have nowhere else to go. We are not city people."
His dilemma is shared by many of the 7,000 displaced and bewildered country Australians. Many are now housed in tents, caravans and temporary army accommodation around the town of Whittlesea, less than 60km from Melbourne, after fires destroyed more than 1,800 homes.
The official death toll of 181 will rise beyond 200 in coming days, according to officials, and the Victorian coroner has warned the total might approach 300. That would be four times higher than Australia's previous worst bushfire tragedy, the Ash Wednesday fires of February 1983 which struck Victoria and neighbouring South Australia.
Bushfires are common in Australia's long, hot summer and part of life for those inhabiting the earth's driest continent alongside drought, cyclones and, paradoxically, floods, which are currently wreaking havoc in Queensland.
But this year's fires have been particularly lethal due to a combination of many years of drought and weeks of record temperatures, in some areas exceeding 47°C, which turned Australia's fire-prone scrub and inflammable Eucalyptus into a tinder box.
Strong hot winds originating in the desert interior, which led to 100km an hour gusts, supercharged the fires, before a cool change brought further devastation by, without warning, switching wind direction and turning some blazes into huge fire fronts.
Few of the displaced seem to blame the authorities for not doing more. Angela Mathews, a young mother of five who swapped suburbia for rural Kinglake three years ago, articulates what many believe.
"There was no warning because it was just too quick. People had minutes," she says outside a community centre packed with donations of food, clothing and toys. "Because it was so hot many people were sitting inside watching DVDs and so they didn't know what was going on . . . and then when they tried to get out [of Kinglake] all the roads were blocked by fires and burning trees."
In the immediate aftermath of the weekend blazes, however, Australia has found its share of culprits and critics. The police have arrested a number of men suspected of arson, a crime Kevin Rudd, the prime minister, said was equivalent to "mass murder". One has been charged over a fire in Churchill where 21 died.
The government has also come in for criticism, not least for delays in setting up a telephone-based warning system targeting individual communities amid reports that both federal and state governments baulked at the A$20m (US$13.2m, €10.2m, £9.1m) cost. Mr Rudd this week pledged to have a system in place soon. "I'm determined to see this thing implemented across the nation," he said. "If it means cracking heads to ensure it happens, we'll do that."
Some critics, including Germaine Greer, the expatriate Australian feminist author and academic, have blamed Australia's government and administrators for failing to control the bush by adopting a "burn off" strategy during cooler seasons.
Victoria's department of sustainability and environment, however, points out that the debate is far more nuanced than critics suggest. Of the 24m hectares in Victoria, 8m are state forests, national parks and crown land - and the recent fires covered 400,000 hectares.
To undertake "prescribed burning", which is designed to reduce fuel loads in forests, in the 8m hectares owned by the government would take 20 years even if an area the size of this week's bushfires was burnt off each year.
Marysville, one of the worst affected areas this week and where many of the fatalities occurred, had undergone prescribed burning a couple of years go, the government said.
"The fire was so intense by the time it got to Marysville no amount of prescribed burning would have made any difference. It was so intense it was travelling through the crowns of the trees," said Kevin Love, a spokesman.
He said that previous strategies to undertake prescribed burning had led to lives being lost and homes destroyed, and that Australia's climate meant there were very few months when the strategy could be employed with any degree of safety.
Burning forests also releases huge amounts of carbon into the earth's atmosphere.
The Australian fire authorities might review what some regard as a highly unusual strategy, which advises people to either leave their homes "early" or, if they decide to stay and fight a bushfire, to "prepare and defend".
The strategy places more responsibility on homeowners, whereas in Canada and the US, with some isolated exceptions, fire authorities operate on the basis that threatened residents are "evacuated".
Harold Schaitberger, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, says Australia's policy has had limited success.
"Public safety is the responsibility of federal, state and local governments," Mr Schaitberger said in a comment piece last month for the Los Angeles Times. "Taxpayers expect public safety to remain an essential government function performed by highly trained professionals."
The Victorian government this week announced a Royal Commission into the blazes which will examine the state's bushfire strategy.
Australia's lingering drought, characterised as the worst in a century, has pushed the long-term effects of climate change up the political agenda. The severity of the bushfires and the death toll has forced Australia to consider the more immediate effects of extreme hot weather, which is expected to occur more frequently.
There are more pressing matters for the likes of Colin Banford, a Yorkshireman who has lived in Australia for 33 years. He has lost his house, uninsured, in the small town of Flowerdale at the age of 65.
Mr Banford is determined to go back despite his reduced circumstances and the threat of living in a region that faces bushfire risk.
"You spend a month here. It's a quiet and peaceful life and I don't know anything else these days," he says. "You should spend some time here."
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
By in Whittlesea
Published: February 14 2009 02:00 | Last updated: February 14 2009 02:00
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