Page 909 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 24 February 2009
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machinery that you can put into these areas, and we could not shift this tree. It was enormous. It was burning at the top and generating a lot of sparks that were crossing the fire break. So it was tackled with chainsaws and brought down very effectively and in a very safe manner by the volunteers.
That professionalism, I suspect, was a repeat of 2003, but for a large number of the volunteers it was the first major fire they had been to and I think that the ACT has got out of it a rural fire service with a great deal of experience. Some of the volunteers went down for two of the four task forces and I know that some were planning to go back for a third time.
It is testament to the professionalism of the task force that, at times, where there were excess vehicles or crews being rested we were split up and used to man Victorian vehicles. At one stage task force 3 had five tankers and three light units. Most nights we managed to pick up another five or six Victorian light units and it was impressive to see all those vehicles working together to achieve the objectives. That was at Beechworth.
When we arrived, parts of Beechworth were out of control. On the eastern road out of Beechworth parts of the fire had got to within about 50 metres of the last house in Beechworth. So it did get very close. But while that fire was dangerous, weather conditions made it far safer than what was faced further south. I do not know if people know Beechworth, but there is a campus of La Trobe University there—it used to be the Beechworth mental asylum—and there is a nice bank that overlooks the oval. One task force was sitting there as the task force that included David Balfour drove off. We were all quite happy to be going home. We were sitting back and waving goodbye and none of us had any idea of what might happen. As they were leaving we were told that their first objective would be to cut a fire break in an area near the big river. The front in that area was 100 kilometres wide. There was 100 kilometres of unrestricted, running flames. Their first job was to ensure that that fire break went in, and they did a good job.
The Victorians were very professional. Large deployments are interesting because there is a lot of hurry-up and waiting in situations like this as things are ascertained, but when you get on the fire ground you do the job. But at all times safety was stressed. Just reflecting on the incident shift plans for some of the shifts that were done down there, the key messages included: highest priority and beware of falling limbs and trees, especially when blacking out. Mr Corbell is a member of the Rivers Brigade and he will testify that most of your time is spent splitting open logs on the ground or bringing trees down and putting on the things that continue to burn. It was in circumstances like those that David Balfour died.
It is the luck of the draw in many ways. The trees are big. They are amazing. They are just hanging there. You cannot understand how structurally they can just remain, but they do. If you have ever used a chainsaw, you will know the sound. There is this moment when the tree gives way. It finally surrenders and there is this crack and you can see all the heads go up. At night often you cannot tell which tree has given way. They fall with such speed and they are so big, particularly the trees down there, that when they fall, they shatter and bits go everywhere. Such are the circumstances and it
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