Page 77 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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close the firestorm came to entirely overwhelming Canberra. The coroner has recorded the facts as presented to her, and released the findings; yet we still have the Chief Minister saying the coroner is wrong, tantamount to lying—a dangerous place to be, living in denial.
For the families of the deceased the pain and uncertainty are reopened daily. Laying loved ones to rest should have been a form of closure to commence their healing, but the raucous and outrageous denials, hypocrisy, blame shifting and empty platitudes are still echoing four years on. How can these courageous people accept that their territory government, and more importantly their elected ministers, and in particular the Chief Minister, have learned from the sacrifices and now have the wisdom to act properly when the next tragedy looms large, God forbid?
There were 435 people injured. Let us think about that for a moment. Let us put this into perspective. Imagine every single student and staff member of, say, a large primary school, like Wanniassa Hills, filing past you, carried on stretchers or shuffling as walking burned or wounded fleeing a disaster zone. The faces of the injured are etched into our minds and we respect the courage that their physical healing has required.
What are the immeasurable inner scars that remain? There is the panic we fight to quell when we all smell forest smoke; the schoolchildren who today still carry their precious things to school every day, hidden in their backpacks, just to be sure they will not be lost again. The destruction of 487 homes meant that at least 487 families lost their roots. If you visited the affected suburbs just after the tragedy, like I and probably many of us did, you will share my utter bewilderment at the senseless devastation.
Two hundred and thirty-eight other premises, including those owned by business and government, and many situated in my electorate of Molonglo, the electorate that was given a front-up, heads-up warning that a disaster may strike, were destroyed or damaged: the RSPCA, ACT Forests work sites, a service station, Actew infrastructure, a local church complex, one of the biggest in Canberra—the list of vital services affected goes on and on and on.
It was not just buildings, not just bricks and mortar, something that we can flick away as a statistic, that were destroyed; it was people’s livelihoods. It was the very fabric of our community that was destroyed and rent apart through the inaction and inability to cope. This Chief Minister was simply not up to the task.
Let us reflect on some of the words and some of the sentences of some of the survivors as recorded in the coroner’s report. One spoke of how “a great blizzard of embers” invaded his property and how he was overcome with exhaustion and became disoriented in his attempts to control the flames. He had gone back inside for more belongings when police officers arrived and said to him, “You’ve got to get out. If you don’t get out you’re going to die”. He left with his wife and son, seeing their house and others consumed as they drove away. Another said, “We never saw a fire truck, the only people that anyone saw were the three households who spoke to the police officer. I just want to know why we were not forewarned and why we had no help.”
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