How Battle for Victoria was Fought and Lost

Big spend on the fast track as Senate says yesMatthew FranklinChief political correspondent

KEVIN Rudd will shower middleAustralia with $12.7 billion in cashand fast-track spending on theMurray-Darling Basin after bro-kering Senate approval for his$42 billion economic stimuluspackage.

Parents, workers and drought-

affected farmers will receive one-off cheques for up to $950 underthe package, which sits at theheart of the Prime Minister’spush to lift economic activity andcounter the effects of the globaleconomic crisis.

And next week, states will startrolling out $28.8 billion in newspending on school buildings andpublic housing in a bid to save at

least 90,000 jobs in the next18 months.

Yesterday’s Senate approval ofthe stimulus package followed afrantic fortnight of political activ-ity culminating in its rejection ina Senate ballot on Thursday.

But intense overnight negoti-ation with independent SouthAustralian senator Nick Xeno-phon, who had rejected the pack-

age, produced a breakthroughyesterday.

The Government won SenatorXenophon’s support by agreeingto fast-track over the next twoyears $900 million in plannedspending on the Murray-DarlingBasin.

Under the deal, the Govern-ment will spend $500 million forwater licence buybacks, $200 mil-

lion in funding for local govern-ments for re-engineering worksand $200 million for stormwaterrecycling.

Mr Rudd declared the ballot a

Continued — Page 8World — Page 13Editorial — Page 16Inquirer — Page 27Wall Street Journal — Page 32

Fears mount RAAF’s$3.8bn spy plane a dudTHE RAAF’s $3.8 billion hi-tech airborne surveillance andearly warning system, ProjectWedgetail, is in deep troubleand may never achieve theperformance levels expected bythe air force.

So fundamental are the prob-lems surrounding Wedgetail

that Defence has had to get atop laboratory at the Massachu-setts Institute of Technology toconduct an independent designand performance review of theaircraft’s radar, which was de-veloped by US defence giantNorthrop Grumman.Full report — Page 10

How the battlefor Victoria wasfought and lostCameron Stewart and Corrie Perkinreconstruct the events surroundingAustralia’s worst bushfire disaster

INSIDE STORY BRUCE Esplin woke at 6am lastSaturday with a gnawing feelingin his gut. Victoria’s EmergencyServices Commissioner knew theodds were not good for the 3582firefighters and emergency work-ers who had been placed like toysoldiers across the breadth of hisstate.

‘‘We were about to faceweather beyond our experience,and I just had this feeling ofdread,’’ Esplin says.

Across town, Ewan Waller, theGovernment’s chief fire officer,was also on edge. By 7.30am hewas already sitting in the Inte-grated Emergency Co-ordinationCentre in central Melbourne,otherwise known as the ‘‘warroom’’, where he would spend thenext 15 hours alongside chiefCountry Fire Authority officerRussell Rees. These two menwould jointly manage the defenceof Victoria against the worstweather forecast in memory.

Barely 60km to the north,thousands of families scatteredacross the hillside regions ofKinglake, St Andrews and Marys-ville were waking up to a lazySaturday. Many of these were treechangers: city commuters whohad embraced the lush forestedhills for both lifestyle and finan-cial reasons.

They were mostly young famil-ies with young kids, and with thetemperature tipped to hit 44Cwith strong, hot wind gusts, it wascooler to stay in their hillsidehomes than travel.

In Marysville, 20-year-oldLucie O’Meara spent the morn-ing making pancakes for herhusband, Luke, and their seven-month-old daughter, Charlotte.She then sat down at her com-puter and wrote on her Facebooksite: ‘‘I am so enjoying theview from my desk, Marysville isbeautiful.’’

Just before 9.30am, StuartCoombs arrived at the Victorianweather bureau’s headquarters inMelbourne’s Docklands to starthis shift.

One of his jobs was to compilethunderstorm warnings. Butwhen he scanned the charts hesaw something that disturbed himeven more than the ‘‘very dread-

ful’’ forecast of the previousnight. ‘‘The thunderstorm condi-tions (meant) we knew therewould be fire activity (from light-ening strikes),’’ Coombs said.

Even so, for the next few hours,the war room was buoyed by whatthey saw. Although they wereconcerned by a fire that hadjumped containment lines in theBunyip State Forest, east of Mel-bourne, fire activity around thestate was modest.

The day, which Premier JohnBrumby had warned on Fridaymight be the state’s worst, hadstarted well.

‘‘There was a sense of ‘well,we’ve got to lunchtime and so farso good’,’’ Esplin says. ‘‘But weknew the most dangerous part ofthe day would be late afternoon.’’

None of the 60-odd officialsfrom multiple agencies who hadgathered in the war room wereaware the spark that would set offthe worst day in Victoria’s historyhad already been lit.

At 11.30am, Liz Jackson lookedout the window of her house inKilmore East, a township near theHume Highway, 60km north ofMelbourne, and saw smoke.

It came from the hill oppositeher home where a single powerpole stood. She called the CFA butthe fire spread quickly, fanned byincreasingly strong hot northerlywind gusts of up to 125km/h.

WANDONGIn the nearby community ofWandong, former CFA firefighterChris Isbister says he witnessedthe moment when this little firegrew fangs. ‘‘Me and my mateheaded up the highway to check itout and we saw it go into the pineplantation and get really big.’’

He returned home to preparethe house, while watching the firecome closer. Police advised resi-dents to evacuate, but Isbister andtwo mates stayed and watched thefire’s progress.

‘‘We watched the actual fireroll down one hill and upContinued — Pages 6-7

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Arson suspect moved for safetyTHE Gippsland man chargedwith setting the Churchillbushfire, which has killed at least21 people, is being held inMelbourne for his own safety.

The 39-year-old was arrestedin his home town yesterday andcharged with arson causingdeath, intentionally or recklessly

causing a bushfire andpossessing child pornography.

He appeared at MorwellMagistrates Court and he wasremoved to the MelbourneCustody Centre. Enraged localspounded the police van carryingthe suspect as it departed.Full report — Page 5

Life or lifestyle, warns fire chiefCameron StewartNatasha Bita

Hope lives on: Emilee De Maria, 8, rides her scooter among the blackened remains of her Flowerdale home, northeast of Melbourne Picture: Ian Currie

AUSTRALIANS living in thebush and in semi-rural suburbsmust change the way they live orelse risk dying in bushfires,according to the man leading thefight against the Black Saturdayfires.

Russell Rees, chief officer ofVictoria’s Country Fire Author-ity, yesterday said firefighterscould no longer guarantee savingthe lives of those who chose tosurround themselves with vegeta-tion despite the obvious fire risks.

His warnings came as itemerged that Victoria hadignored repeated demands toreduce bushfire hazards andcrack down on ‘‘tree-changer’’housing estates in the yearsleading up to Saturday’s deadlyfires, which are believed to havekilled more than 200 people andleft 7000 homeless.

The state was berated by thefederal government in 2007 forignoring some of the findings oftwo national bushfire inquiriesheld after the 2003 Canberrablaze.

As shattered communities pre-pare to rebuild from the ashes,the Australasian Fire AuthoritiesCouncil yesterday called for morecontrols over housing develop-ment in bushland on the urbanfringe.

The CFA’s Mr Rees told TheWeekend Australian that fire-fighters were on the ‘‘receivingend’’ of the tree-change trend inwhich people choose to escapeurban living for a bush lifestyleamid dense vegetation on thefringes of major cities.

‘‘We’ve got to choose,’’ hesaid. ‘If we choose to live in thisway, then who do we blame? Myfear is that people will say the fireservice failed (last Saturday) and Iwill go to my grave saying wefought our guts out.

‘‘Fundamentally, our com-munity is choosing to live in away I can’t, and our people can’t,guarantee their survival. Why dowe choose a system of civilisationthat puts itself at so much risk?’’

Tree-change communitiessuch as Kinglake, St Andrews andStrathewen suffered the most inthe death toll from last week-end’s fires.

AFAC — representing thenation’s fire and emergency ser-vices — yesterday criticised Vic-toria’s ‘‘piecemeal approach’’ tothe planning and construction ofhouses in bushfire-prone zones.

‘‘Currently there is not suit-able and comprehensive legisla-tion,’’ AFAC chief executiveNaomi Brown said. ‘‘This in-cludes such things as the con-struction and maintenance stan-dards of buildings, planning fornew sub-divisions, and defend-able spaces around structures so

the property can be defendedduring a fire. There is no cohesiveapproach to assessing and enforc-ing the application of existingcontrols that are clearly linked tothe fire risk around Victoria andAustralia.’’

Similar concerns were raisedby the federal Department ofAgriculture, Fisheries and For-estry in a submission to Victoria’s2007 bushfire inquiry. ‘‘There is aclear need to manage the bushfirehazard more effectively than cur-rent practices seem to be achiev-ing,’’ it said.

‘‘The following important is-sues need to be addressed: im-proved fire management plan-ning at the urban interface;

improved access for firefighting;enhanced implementation ofeffective prescribed-burning pro-grams; and ongoing applied firemanagement research at the statelevel.’’

The firefighters’ union yester-day called on the federal Govern-ment to seize control of firemanagement — including theintroduction of an automaticemergency-alert system — fromthe states and territories to savelives.

Continued — Page 4More reports — Pages 2-7Editorial — Page 16Inquirer — Pages 17-23Health — liftout inside

Residents brace for visitto burnt-out ground zeroEwin HannanJulie-Anne Davies

FOR those entering Black Satur-day’s ground zero, the refri-gerated semi-trailer is impossibleto miss. As is its purpose.

Positioned in the ash andrubble, the trailer is serving as atemporary morgue for the victimsof Marysville, the epicentre of thenation’s bushfire disaster.

This morning, the township’sresidents will be taken by bus intoMarysville for the first time sincelast weekend’s firestorm flattenedtheir properties and devastatedtheir lives.

At a closed meeting yesterday,police officers tried to preparethem before they re-entered whathas become Australia’s biggestcrime scene.

In a bid to minimise the traumato residents, the 150 police officerswho remain in the town searching

for bodies under collapsed homeswill stop their gruesome work.

Marysville resident StephenGuilfoyle, who was allowed backinto the town on Thursday tocollect supplies, said he had beentold by a Country Fire Authorityfriend who was working on thebody retrieval taskforce that 35bodies had been found so far.

Mr Guilfoyle said that tally wasfrom bodies recovered only fromthe Cumberland Resort, cars andthe town’s streets. Bodies buriedin Marysville’s collapsed houseswere still to be recovered.

‘‘I am just bracing myself forthe final toll because once theystart lifting the roofs off thoseplaces, the toll is going to sky-rocket,’’ he said. The Red Crossis still receiving missing personsreports, a week after the catas-trophe. Only 12 to 14 of hundredsof homes remain standing in theonce pretty tourist town.

Knowing they can’t camou-flage a 40-foot truck, police toldresidents what to expect.

‘‘We’re doing this as sensi-tively as we can,’’ said VictoriaPolice sergeant David Rowles.

‘‘Obviously there are certainthings up there that I haveadvised them as to what they willsee. They’re happy they know it’sthere and they’re preparedfor that.

‘‘They understand 100 per centwhat the job is. They empathisewith the police who have got atruly horrific job up there.’’

The residents who take the tourwill not be allowed to leave theirbuses. Mr Guilfoyle has alreadydecided he won’t be on board.

‘‘I’m going to herd cattle andbuild fences and do positive thingswith my kids,’’ he said.

Continued — Page 2

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How the battle for Victoria was foughtFrom Page 1

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ANATOMY OF A TRAGEDY

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BendigoHorsham BeechworthBeechworth

Coleraine

Road to nowhere: A track through a eucalyptus forest destroyed by bushfires near the town of Steels CreekQuick thinking: A group of people survive after huddling under blankets in a river

another,’’ Isbister says. ‘‘Thewind was so unbelievably strong,we had to hold on to fences tostand upright.’’

Only when the growing wall offlames got closer and jumped theHume Highway with ease didIsbister realise his mistake instaying. ‘‘The fire got into thetrees,’’ he says. ‘‘The trees wouldhave been 45 foot high and theflames were twice the size of thetrees. There was nothing we coulddo; we were surrounded by fire.’’

He and his mates fled to analready-burnt paddock and shel-tered under a wet hessian bag asthe house caught fire. They lived;four of their neighbours did not.

The East Kilmore fire sweptthrough Wandong, growing insize and in speed. It was beingpushed by mighty wind guststowards the communities of King-lake and St Andrews.

■ ■ ■

BACK in the war room, no oneknew what had happened inWandong. They had been alertedto the existence of the fire atKilmore East but it was one ofmany fires that had suddenlysprung up around the state andwere demanding their attention.

There was a new one nearBendigo, one near Beechworth,one near Coleraine, another nearHorsham and reports of one nearthe community of Churchill inGippsland in the state’s east, nearto where arsonists had lit severalrecent fires.

Even so, Waller, Rees andEsplin say they had a sense ofdread early on about the Kilmorefire. ‘‘I knew that was a danger-ous place for a fire,’’ Esplin says.‘A lot of tree changers had movedinto areas around there and it isdifficult fire-fighting country. Ihad a feeling of ‘Here it comes’.’’

Waller says: ‘‘As soon as wesaw that Kilmore fire, in a veryshort time we knew we had a realproblem. It was running towardspopulated areas. You could run aruler along where it was going torun — you knew straight away.’’

The ruler along the mapshowed the fire was headingdirectly for Kinglake.

What the war room did not yetfully understand was that this firewas behaving like none other theyhad experienced. It was muchfaster, much larger and was be-having more like a series offireballs than a cohesive fire.

The combination of steep hills— which can double fire speed —with howling winds and a tem-peratures in the mid-40s wereturning the Kilmore fire into amonster.

From this moment, and for therest of what would become knownas Black Saturday, the bulk of theCFA’s fire warnings being relayedon ABC radio trailed the realityon the ground. They came too lateto alert many of the communitiesin its path.

no one was watching the pro-gress of the East Kilmore firemore closely that Jason Lawrence,

the 35-year-old CFA incidentcontroller at Kangaroo Ground,who was responsible for shiftingfire trucks and tankers aroundthose communities near Kinglake.

Almost immediately, Lawrenceknew he was powerless to doanything. ‘‘It moved through withsuch ferocity that there wasnothing the local brigades coulddo,’’ Lawrence says.The size andspeed of the blaze meant decisionsabout the deployment of firetrucks would have to be made onthe ground by each individualCFA town chief. But with thegrowing confusion about thefire’s progress, they were given noclear warnings of its arrival.

This was not how the systemwas supposed to work.

KINGLAKE WESTOn the crest of a ridge nearKinglake West, Brian Naylor andhis wife, Moiree, were at home ontheir property, which enjoyedcommanding views over a distantMelbourne. Naylor, 78, was ahousehold name in Melbournehaving been the dominant news-reader of his era, anchoring Sev-en’s nightly news for 10 years andNine’s for 20.

The Naylors had survived the1983 Ash Wednesday fires in thishome, but nothing could haveprepared them for the Kilmorefire as it roared up the back oftheir property, away from theirline of sight.

It ate the house in an instant.The bodies of Naylor and Moireewere found fused together in anembrace.

At nearby Pheasant Creek,policeman Roger Wood found 50men, women and children cower-ing in a supermarket from theadvancing fire. After checking theroad was clear, he told them all tofollow him to the Kinglake WestCFA. They arrived just before thefire rolled over them. They sur-vived. The supermarket wasburned to the ground.

STRATHEWEN

The still-growing fire heavedsoutheast towards Strathewen, asmall community nestled in roll-ing hills near Kinglake.

The town was defended byCFA captain and local farmerDave McGahy, who was armedwith three fire trucks and atanker. His men were up behindthe town on Eagles Nest Roadwhen McGahy caught sight of thebehemoth coming his way.

‘Realising the approaching firewould gobble up his team,McGahy withdrew them all.

‘‘Even if I had 20 strike teams,all that would have happened isthat we would have had 50 deadfirefighters as well,’’ he says.

At least 30 people left in thetown had no chance. They died,huddled together in their baths, incellars, on the cricket oval and intheir cars as the fire roared overthem at 4.20pm.

The only safe refuge was thehome of local resident and CFAmember Barrie Tulley, who har-boured 19 terrified residents.

When they emerged from hishouse, Strathewen was no more.

ST ANDREWS

By the time the fire bore down onthe 250-strong community of StAndrews, it was fully formed andracing. With flames reported to beup to 50m high, it now had thepower to kill with radiant heatfrom 200m away.

The Australian’s reporter GaryHughes and his wife, Janice, werefrantically trying to escape thefire, which he says emerged fromnowhere and without warning.

‘‘The firestorm moves fasterthan you can think, let alonereact,’’ Hughes says. ‘You arefighting for your home and thenyou are fighting for your life.’’

Down the road in Yarra Glenn,Melanee Hermocilla, 23, her boy-friend, Greg Lloyd, 22, and herbrother Jason Hermocilla, 21,were house-sitting someone else’shome when the fire engulfedthem. They huddled togetherunder wet towels and phonedtheir parents to say goodbye.

BY 4.30pm, it was clear inside thewar room that things in the fieldwere going wrong fast, althoughno one yet knew of any deaths.

‘‘The map suddenly becamelike New Year’s Eve on SydneyHarbour, there were so manyfires,’’ Esplin says.

A separate fire had emergednear a sawmill in Murrindindi tothe north and was travellingparallel with the Kilmore firetowards the south of Marysville.

‘‘We were sure that the fireswere taking houses at that stagebut we had no idea they weretaking lives,’’ Esplin says.

‘‘I remember speaking with(CFA chief) Russell (Rees) and hesaid to me, ‘This is not good’.’’

Esplin called the Police andEmergency Services Minister BobCameron and advised him tocome immediately from his Bend-igo home to Melbourne.

‘‘I told him we are going toexperience losses and we need hisleadership,’’ Esplin says.

The war room was struggling tomaintain control of the situation.

A dense blanket of smoke fromthe fires was cutting off vitalintelligence about the movementof the fire fronts.

‘‘It became too dangerous forour planes to fly and to map theedge of the fires so for quite awhile we could not get theintelligence we wanted,’’ Waller

says. ‘‘We had to rely on bits andpieces — reports from the fieldand satellite information.’’

The war room was also moni-toring the local ABC which hadarguably the most up-to-dateinformation because people werecalling in with instant informationabout the fires in their area andeven in their street. ABC an-nouncer Jon Faine, who tooktheir calls and numerous SMSmessages, says: ‘‘They were or-dinary people in extraordinarydistress, they were confused andin desperate straits. And theywere listening to the radio. Theyhoped that by ringing us, theycould get information, that wecould give them answers.’’

With power lost in most townsshortly before the fire camethrough, battery transistor radiosprovided the only link to theoutside world.

KINGLAKE

About 4.30pm, the fire was bear-ing down on its most vulnerablevictim, the mountain town ofKinglake with 3000 residents.Kinglake CFA chief captain PaulHendrie had already sent both ofhis two tankers to fight the StAndrews fire in response to their

frantic requests for help. He hadno information suggesting theywould be needed for Kinglake.

‘‘There was nothing (no firetrucks) on the mountain (whenthe fire came),’’ Hendrie says,‘‘(but) you fight the fire you’vegot — you can’t predict thepredicament that will come.’’

He was not alone. Almost noone in Kinglake had more than afew minutes to realise the fire wasalmost upon them. Locals saythere were no warnings on radioor the CFA website and no sirens.

Nothing.With a darkening sky and a

thunderous roar signalling theapproach of the fire, many pan-icked and took to the road in theircars. For most, this was a fataldecision. The smoke movedahead of the fire, blinding drivers.Cars collided into each other.

In one of those cars were Alexand Anna Thomson, who weretrying to escape with their threeyoung children. With a black skyand flaming embers around them,they dragged their kids from theircrumpled vehicle and waved forhelp.

‘‘We tried to flag down somecar — and I don’t blame the fouror five that went past — but they

just kept going,’’ Anna says.‘‘Everyone was just doing whatthey could to survive. I thoughtwe were going to die. I couldn’tlook at the kids. I just keptthinking of them burning to deathand I couldn’t stand imaginingthem dying that way.’’

She had lost all hope when acar pulled over for her family.Two strangers — Karl and JayneAmatneiks — bundled them inand took them to a nearby house.They lived.

Another man who tried to driveout, Benjamin Banks, says his carwas hit by a wall of flame thatalmost tipped it over.

The heat melted his car win-dow, causing molten glass to driponto his hand and also his tyres,forcing him to drive on thescreeching metal rims.

He then smashed head-on intoanother car, and limped out witha broken ankle into a nearbypaddock. He also lived.

But many did not survive thedash out of Kinglake. They wereincinerated in their cars or cutdown as they fled their vehicles.

Arthur Enver died when hetried to drive out of town on hisHarley Davidson bike. His wife,who was driving the family car a

few metres in front of him,survived.

For those left in Kinglake,survival depended on nature’slottery: whether the fire chosetheir house or bypassed it.

‘‘All of a sudden there was thisblack, the column of fire camevirtually over us,’’ Hendrie says.‘‘We heard cars exploding, theservice station went up.

It just got worse and there wasblackness all over.’’

Karen Rolands, who was in herhouse with her husband, Paul, anddaughters Caitlin, 14, and Nicola,12, told a family member on thephone, ‘‘It’s too late, we’retrapped’’, shortly before theflames overwhelmed them.

One of her neighbours, Mary-anne Mercuri, was also trapped inher house with her husband andthree children. It was so dark shecould not see her children to wrapthem up properly in towels. Theytalked about heaven as the firesroared past them and, somehow,spared their house.

After the front passed, localresident Mike Flynn 64, wasfound by neighbours lying on thefootpath, literally smouldering.

Continued — Page 7

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