To Hell and Back in Five Days

Between February 7 and March 14, 2009, more than 400 bush fires across the state of Victoria, Australia, scorched over a million acres of land, killing 173 and injuring 414. Engineers at Goulburn Valley Water (GVW), provider of urban water and wastewater services to 54 towns and cities on the outskirts of Melbourne, watched as their telemetry system from the Kilmore Dissolved Air Filtration plant reported an ambient control room temperature of 142 °F before going silent on the afternoon of Saturday, February 7. A site visit on the following day revealed that while the treatment plant survived the fire, its control room was completely incinerated, destroying the electrical switchgear, plant HMI, laboratory, instrumentation and chemical dosing systems. With only five days worth of water stored, an emergency response plan to rebuild the control room and recommission the plant went into action.