Images of Black Saturday: by Linda Harrington, Yarck CFA
Hot.
The thirsty air drank from my very skin, leaving it dry as parchment.
Unbearably hot.
So hot that the fruit cooked on our orchard trees.
The air eerily calm, like in the eye of a storm.
Then it came.
A searing wind that scorched the life out of all it touched;
a blow torch out of control.
The dust filled sky radiated a scary orange brown,
An ominous prediction of things to come.
Birds stopped singing.
Animals cowered.
We cowered under the awesome might of nature,
Then we rose up
and fought.
Yarck’s CFA tankers had gone,
called away to fight fires erupting at Kilmore.
At three pm, the unbelievable – a power outage.
A power outage to a town with only tank water
And water pumps need power!
A town vulnerable
put their fire plan into action.
No time to think.
Stay to defend or leave.
Hesitation, Disbelief.
This won’t happen to us.
This can’t happen.
I won’t leave, some said.
We’ll defend with a bucket and mop!
And pray the fire doesn’t come our way.
The radio presenter’s voice turned to disbelief and horror
As the fire raped and razed towns and moved on.
Kilmore, Wandong, Flowerdale, Hazeldene, Humevale,
Kinglake West, Strathewen, Arthur’s Creek, Kinglake.
Our shire was on fire!
More fires at Narbethong, Buxton, Marysville and Taggerty.
The fire’s velocity was merciless.
Our tankers were diverted to Marysville.
But there was no mention of Marysville on the radio.
Maybe it was all a hideous mistake.
Rostered to relieve the first crew at 3 a.m.
I learnt that Tanker 2 had been abandoned amidst the Marysville inferno.
The crew escaped with minor burns and had joined Tanker 1.
Also in trouble, valiantly the crew protected themselves from the radiant heat
And barged their way to safety.
Seven a.m. Sunday
I am on another tanker, going to Marysville.
Escorting the ambulance, food and emergency vehicles -
Why is there still no mention of Marysville on the radio.
Was it just a bad dream? Or a horror movie?
The road in was hideous,
Fallen trees, dead animals, burnt homes, some still burning.
And burnt out cars.
People who had tried to escape
But the fury of the fire was merciless.
As we entered our picturesque historic town,
Disbelief and shock.
We were greeted with blackened twisted rubble.
It seemed that ash and debris was all that was left,
and a river flowing black with soot.
But no,
On the oval huddled a group of survivors.
Townsfolk in shock.
Firefighters in shock
Support services in shock – and supporting one another.
On the back of the fire truck tears welled in our eyes,
speechless at the sights facing us.
Humbled by the survivor’s courage and spirit
I knew that we might have lost this battle
But we would win the war.
Just thought I would send a little prayer/song which we are doing at the beginning and end of one of our presentations. We do it as a prayer at the beginning and a song at the end. It is a powerpoint slide with a few different pictures attached to it. So you have to start the slide show to get the special effects. Would like to put it on the blog. Not sure if possible!
