I understand that the victorian bushfires last week have made world headlines and rightfully so with the extreme conditions contributing to probably the worlds worst firezone
expecting the death toll to exceed 300
as well as thousands of homes destroyed
to comprehend the ferocity and intensity
they say that the fire travelled 14km in 6 minutes
fire walls exceeding 50 metres
heat intense enough to melt cars or anything in its path
below is an extract from a victorian policeman who is also a keen golfer who put this story on a local golf forum site
thought it was worth spreading around................................................
In late August, last year, I took my family for a day trip to the snow at Lake Mountain. On the way, we stopped for lunch at the little town of Marysville.
As we drove into town, we passed the Marysville Golf Club which is amongst the prettiest courses I have played. My wife, Ann, had never visited Marysville before and was impressed with the beauty of the town.
Marysville is set into a gully between two large hills. It was surrounded by a forest of towering mountain ash trees, large tree ferns and other beautiful flora and fauna. The town itself had a nice mixture of old and new buildings and seemed to seamlessly merge with the surrounding bushland. Street plantings of none native deciduous trees melded nicely with the many existing native species.
Marysville was one of the prettiest towns in Victoria.
I returned to Marysville on Sunday as one of the first police members to enter the town since the fires.
I drove in along the same tree lined road from Buxton as I had five months earlier. But this time there was no greenery. The tall eucalypts were now completely blackened and many were still burning. Fallen trees and power lines lay across the road and the ground was devoid of all vegetation.
Along the eleven kilometre drive from Buxton to Marysville, were the scattered carcases of both native and domestic animals which had been caught in the fire. More disturbing were the surviving cattle with their singed hides wondering on the roads in search of feed.
As I entered the outskirts of Marysville, I passed the golf course. I saw that many of the tall ash trees through which the fairways meandered had been burnt but was pleased to see that the much of the course had survived the fury of the fire. The watered fairways were like an oasis amongst the surrounding blackened ground.
I continued towards the township and was struck by the eerie silence. It was a surreal scene. Smoke had settled like fog between the tall blackened tree trunks of what was once thick forest. It resembled something out of a horror movie.
Nothing in twenty years of policing could have prepared me for what I was to find in the town. Comparisons to war zones and nuclear bomb sites are not over stated. The whole town had been razed to the ground.
Of the hundreds of buildings which once stood, only a few remained standing. In the centre of town, the bakery, where we had eaten lunch last year, still stood, as did a two storey motel a short distance up the road. As if by some sort of sick joke, these buildings seemed relatively unscathed while everything around them was absolutely levelled.
I attended at the CFA shed which was also undamaged. I later found out that many townspeople had sheltered here while a fire tanker sprayed the outside of the shed with water. This undoubtedly saved the shed and the lives of those inside.
At the CFA shed, I met the only living resident of Marysville I was to encounter this day. Five months ago, the town was teeming with thousands of locals and visitors. This day, other than police, I was to see just the one.
I spoke to this bloke, a CFA volunteer, and he described to me the fury of the fire. He said that the first he saw of the fire was a distant glow from over a hill 12 kilometres away. Minutes later, the fire had passed them, leaving much of the town unscathed. But, then a second fire storm swept straight through the centre of town, demolishing everything in its path.
The fire was so large that it dwarfed the 30 metre tall mountain ashes which fuelled it and so fast that nobody in its path could hope to escape.
I then set about performing the tasks I was assigned. These included welfare checks of properties for persons feared to be caught in the fire as well as finding and marking the locations of deceased persons.
There were many truly awful scenes. There were bodies in cars, in the streets and in house yards. There will, no doubt, be many more located in the debris of houses once a more thorough search is conducted. I have never seen anything like this before and I hope I will never have to again.
I completed my duties late that night and headed back to Seymour.
I had to stop my car on the way out of town for a baby possum crossing the road. I watched as it wondered across the road and onto the charred earth on the other side where it prodded the ground with its nose in search for food. It will not find any and is certain to die. Like the people of Marysville, the possum had lost everything.
As I left Marysville, the smoke which choked the air caused my eyes to well with tears.