Frank Allan helps carry her out. He knows her as a fellow CFA volunteer, but she’s so badly burnt, blackened and doubled over with pain that he doesn’t recognise her. By this stage there are a lot of things he isn’t recognising: he’s spent so long on the front line, either fighting the fire or wielding a chainsaw, that he can barely see. His eyes are giving him hell; he’s suffering from both smoke inhalation and flash burns. When he eventually makes it down the mountain, he’ll be put straight into hospital.
Linda Craske sits with Wendy in the back seat. She’s been watching her injured colleague carefully, her concerns escalating by the minute. Wendy has severe internal burns and scarring on the lungs; her breathing is becoming more and more laboured. The fear is that her lungs will soon become so swollen she won’t be able to breathe at all.
Wood has been in some tricky situations, but never one like this: leading a convoy in a midnight ride though treacherous, burnt-out terrain with a group of critically injured victims on board.
‘Seat belts on!’ he orders. It’s going to be a rough ride.
CFA volunteer Jim MacLeod, who’s been working hard all night keeping the pumps and generators going, is taking a quick breather when he sees the convoy go roaring out into the night.
Speaking months later, he is a man with many criticisms to make of the overall response to the Black Saturday disaster. A forthright Glaswegian—he worked on the docks with Billy Connolly—he isn’t afraid to speak his mind. And like a lot of other residents, he’s angry at the lack of warnings, the slowness of the official response, the bureaucratic contortions of the recovery process, the arbitrary dictates of many of the outside police who later descended upon the town.
But of his own locals? The Kinglake coppers?
‘That drive down the mountain, in the middle of the night,’ he comments in his thick Glaswegian accent. ‘Everything still on fire? Trees falling?
‘Balls of steel, those fellers. Balls of steel.’
DOWN THE MOUNTAIN
Wood takes it slowly at the start. It’s not long since they came through, carving a path through the blockages and debris, but the fires are still raging and more trees are coming down. There’s thick smoke still over the road, visibility down to ten or twenty metres. They leave the internal lights on so that Linda Craske can keep a closer watch on Wendy.
The patient is conscious and amazingly calm, given her circumstances, but worried. Her breathing is becoming more and more laboured. Linda examines her, desperately hoping to see some signs of improvement; not finding any.
Roger has eyes only for the road. So does Cameron, for the most part: a look-out is crucial on a journey like this. But from time to time he peers into the back and tries to say something reassuring: ‘You’ll be right, Wendy. Not long to go now.’
But it is long, and they’re far from convinced that she will be right. They can see she’s struggling for air. Craske is thinking emergency tracheotomies: ‘I’d seen them done, but I was thinking, Oh christ, I can’t do that.’
Wendy’s mouth is burnt dry and she’s severely dehydrated. Craske gives her sips of water, but has to restrain her from drinking too much. She’s worried Wendy could breathe water into her lungs and drown.
From time to time Linda looks up through the car windows, and she comes to understand the shock she saw on the policemen’s faces when they entered the CFA. Huge fires continue to burn on either side of the road. As they climb to the top of the mountain she can peer down into the gullies of the escarpment: it’s all ablaze. Images whizz by: burnt-out cars, crazy leaning power poles, a horse with a broken leg struggling through a charred paddock. The odd little untouched miracle: washing on a line behind a ravaged house, a blue plastic pool, a wheelie bin.
They’re moving quicker than they did on the way into Kinglake, but they have to balance the need for speed against the disastrous implications of an accident. As obstacles loom out of the smoke, Cameron calls out directions: ‘Left! Right! Too far! Watch it!’ They duck, dodge and swerve their way down the mountain. They weave their way round dozens of trees, over fallen power lines, off the road and back on again.
They reach the Whittlesea–Yea Road intersection and see something they can hardly believe. This was where Wood set up the roadblock earlier in the day, where he’d had the conversation with Meg, the elderly woman with the shack near the intersection. He’d pleaded with her to leave and she flatly refused.
They’re driving past the shack now, and like just about everything else in the vicinity it’s burnt to the ground. Then suddenly she’s there: Meg, in the middle of the road. Still in her bare feet, bottle in hand, staring at the blazing forest.
Roger has to shake his head. He wonders if he’s seeing a ghost. After what he’s seen, he didn’t think anybody could have survived around here, especially somebody as poorly prepared as Meg. They drive past her, a pale, bewildered figure illuminated by the glowing bush.
‘You see her?’ he asks Cam.
‘Yep.’
‘Good. Thought I was losing it.’
They don’t have time to dwell on the apparition. Wendy is sounding worse. At one stage, she begins vomiting blood. Then it sounds like she’s stopped breathing. There’s a long moment of shared anxiety, but the breathing kicks in again and they all sigh, exhaling in sympathy.
Finally they reach the bottom of the mountain. The road is straight, the landscape unburnt.
‘Hang on,’ says Wood, and puts his foot down.
The night air streams past their windows as they race across the flatlands, reaching speeds of up to 150 kilometres per hour. Roger Wood has already seen too much death today, knows there’ll be more to come over the next few days. Doesn’t want any more on his conscience.
The flashing lights of a police roadblock appear in the distance. They swing around it, power on into Whittlesea. The world here is as magnesium-bright as the mountain was crimson. A massive bank of lights guides them to the showgrounds, where a staging area has been established. Here are the medical facilities they’ve been thirsting for on the mountain: rows of ambulances, Red Cross caravans and tents, medical specialists of every description.
Wood slams to a halt outside the biggest tent. A team of emergency medical personnel appear, fifteen, twenty of them: doctors, nurses, orderlies. They swarm round the car, whisk the patient away. Linda follows, rattling out the medical history.
The two policemen settle back into their seats for a moment, close their eyes, breathe deeply. Allow themselves a moment’s respite.
Wood takes out his phone again. The reception might be better in Whittlesea. He punches the number, another attempt to call home.
For the first time all night, it’s answered.
‘Oh Rodge…’ Jo’s voice is drawn, weary. Enormously relieved. ‘I’ve been so worried about you. Been trying to call you all night.’
‘Same here. Worried you were dead.’ He blinks back tears. ‘Kids okay?’
‘They’re fine.’
He slumps forward in the seat: the long-held tension slackens like a cut rope, and he’s suddenly aware of the terror he’s been struggling with for so many hours.
‘It was that wind change that saved us.’ Jo is still talking. ‘It was only seconds away when it turned around.’ He is struck by the irony of that. The southerly buster that diverted the fire from St Andrews and saved his own family had driven it up the escarpment to wipe out Kinglake.
‘When you coming home, Rodge? Everything’s still on fire down here.’
‘Soon, honey,’ he says. A wrenching need to be there. ‘Not just yet.’
‘How’s Kinglake?’
‘Pretty much wiped out.’
A brief silence. ‘You do what you have to, Roger.’
‘Love you.’
‘Yes.’
Roger Wood’s family had a close shave. They’d spent an anxious day watching the smoke build up in the north, grow stronger as it approached St Andrews. Jo called her father, Ray, who came up fr
om the city to add an extra pair of hands to the defence.
First they were showered with embers and ran around frantically putting them out. The first fires appeared, reached the property across the road; they saw the neighbours out there, attacking it with beaters. It was heading straight for them. Jo went through a rehearsal with the younger kids: they would shelter under a blanket in the bath while she, Ray and eighteen-year-old Dylan fought.
The wind became so wild Jo could barely stand up. The fire accelerated. The horses wheeled in a mob around the paddock, panicking. One broke its neck, another would die the next day from smoke and stress.
She felt a wave of fear, a trembling, teary moment. But that passed. She was a country woman, familiar with pumps and hoses. And she had the kids under her care. She went into action. Tried hosing down the house, but saw the water disappear into steam almost before it hit the wood.
She heard the terrifying roar and looked up reflexively, commenting that somebody was flying pretty low.
‘That’s not a jet,’ said Ray.
‘Oh my god,’ she whispered.
She called Roger, the unbearable truncated phone call that sent him into such a spin at Kinglake West.
As the connection went down, it seemed the fire would be upon them in a matter of seconds. There was a moment of stillness. The fire died down, a lull. Then a cool wind came streaming across her shoulders and the flames flared up again, but in a different direction, sweeping up towards the escarpment. The change had arrived.
She watched in disbelief. ‘Thank you, Mavis,’ she whispered. A prayer of gratitude to Roger’s mother, who had died six months earlier and who, Jo knew, was looking after them.
She went inside, got a glass of water from the tap. Almost dropped it as she stared out the kitchen window. Another fire there, to the south, in the bush behind the house. Heading in their direction, driven this time by the southerly change.
‘Not again,’ she pleaded, as people all over the ranges were doing at that moment. She heard that roaring again, the sound like an aircraft overhead.
But this time it was. The helicrane, the monstrous chopper they called Elvis, came roaring in from the west, hit the fire with a load of water. Refilled at the dam and hit it again. Kept hitting it until the fire was beaten into submission.
The kids came outside, stood watching as the fire rampaged up the slopes to where their father was on duty.
Back at Whittlesea, Roger slumps forward in the seat, rests his head on the wheel. Drained. A nurse comes out and glares, insists on giving him and Cameron a check-up. Both men’s eyes are stinging from the constant exposure to smoke and fire, their throats are raw. She takes them in and flushes out their eyes. Senior police officers appear, suggest it’s time they call it a day, they’ve done enough. The medical staff concur.
Roger and Cam look at each other, the same response plain on their faces.
Bullshit.
Now that the first proper strike teams and ambulances are ready to tackle the mountain, they know their local knowledge will be needed more than ever. They’ve been in Whittlesea maybe fifteen minutes. It’s time to get back up to Kinglake.
They jump back in the Pajero.
They don’t see Wendy Duncan until a few weeks later, when she comes back to thank them for saving her life.
CONVOY
As Wood and Caine race out of Whittlesea they raise their eyes to the ranges: the first chance they’ve had to observe the scene from a distance. Only now do they realise how widespread the inferno has been. The hemisphere above them is on fire, a livid, swirling tableau; from the rolling foothills to the craggiest heights, everything is ablaze.
Just past the roadblock they catch up with an enormous convoy struggling up the mountain—maybe fifteen ambulances, half a dozen fire trucks—and at last they have a sense that things are stirring. Our wealthy, advanced society is bringing its weight to bear upon the disaster.
Roger and Cam made their rally-cross scramble down this road a mere twenty minutes ago, but already the road is impassable again. The return is a stop-start crawl that makes them aware just how lucky they were to make it down at all. Wood shudders to think what could have happened if they had been stranded on the way down.
In the short time since they made their descent, trees have continued to fall on the road. There are now so many that, even with a backhoe labouring at the front of the column, it takes them over an hour to complete a trip they’d normally do in ten minutes.
The falling of trees—those gargantuan denizens of the Kinglake forest—is a constant backdrop to everything the emergency services personnel do that night and for a long time afterwards. Trees fall for days, weeks. One of the two emergency services personnel who die in the campaign is killed by a falling tree.
(This in itself is remarkable in comparison with previous disasters: that despite numerous burnovers, entrapments and crashes, only two emergency services workers were killed during the entire crisis. The many, many commentators who were to criticise Fire Chief Russell Rees might think about that. It was on his watch that the advances in training and fire-ground practice that saved the lives of so many volunteers were instigated.)
The convoy grinds its way up the mountain. Metre by blackened metre, tree by fallen tree, the kilometre-long column of flashing lights continues its progress, bringing a skerrick of hope to those who see it. Help is on the way.
Roger Wood opens the throttle and overtakes the convoy, comes across a police car at the front: Terry Asquith and Scott Melville, two colleagues from Seymour. The only vehicle ahead of them is a backhoe heaving the burning debris off the road. They watch the heavy machine reef up flaming trees, power lines and poles, smashing a way through, and wish they’d had a few of those available earlier on. Behind them the convoy stretches off into the darkness.
One of the trucks back there is from Panton Hill and among its crew is a firefighter named Bernie Broom. The Panton Hill tanker has been in the thick of it all afternoon down in St Andrews. They managed to save at least one house and Bernie, tackling his first big fire, thought they’d done pretty well.
Then they enter the fire zone. He and two of his crew-mates are sitting on the back under the roll-over protection canopy. They look back in horror as the vehicle inches its way up the hill, begins to trail past flaming houses and burnt-out cars, the carnage rolling out for kilometre after kilometre.
‘Oh those poor fuckers.’ Tanya, beside him, shakes her head and gives succinct expression to the emotion they all feel. ‘Those poor fuckers.’
Like others, Bernie is struck by the quietness of the mountain: aside from the rumble of their own trucks and the odd crashing tree, there’s an unnerving silence drawn over the scene. The stars are shining brightly, parabolas of embers arc from the trees.
They see few signs of life. They’re observing one of the features of this disaster: there is a relatively small number of injuries. People either escaped or they died. When the figures are eventually tallied, it is found that there were 173 deaths and only 414 recorded injuries. Many of the houses they drive past now will later be found to have bodies in them.
At one stage, while the loader grinds away up ahead, they pull up close to a burning pile of logs. The crew on the back with Bernie notice, with some discomfort, the heat it is throwing out. Even now, six or seven hours after the fire passed through, it is still blasting out an intense radiant energy. ‘Like sitting too close to an electric fire,’ says Bernie. ‘We stopped there for some obstacle up front and it just glowed—it was white hot in the middle.’
When the convoy reaches Kinglake West, the police officers find themselves in an argument with the leader of the medical team, who has been told to go straight through to Kinglake; Wood insists that they spare some of their number for Kinglake West.
The ambulance officer has her orders and sticks to her guns; she wants to push on. But the argument is resolved when members of the Kinglake West CFA flag them down, say they have casualties
and need support. The ambo relents and assigns several vehicles to Kinglake West.
When the rest of the convoy finally crawls into Kinglake proper, the Panton Hill firefighters, like everybody else entering the town that night, are stunned.
‘It was like a burning ghost town,’ comments Bernie Broom. Then they reach the CFA building, still lit up by the jets from the service station, and there are people everywhere, dogs, cars. They are quiet, still in shock. After a quick conference with Captain Paul Hendrie, they set out to do what they can around the town.
Wood pulls into the police station. The burning utility and its trailer are still sitting in front of the station, and the building has sustained minor damage—a burnt veranda, cracked plate-glass windows—but the generator is still going and the interior lights beckon.
The two cops climb out, stand for a moment watching the emergency services teams swing into action. The paramedics begin treating people, the fire tankers are setting out in different directions. They both understand that they still have work to do, and traumatic times ahead of them, but, for the moment, it’s simply an enormous relief to know that theirs aren’t the only flashing lights on the mountain.
Wood has been on the move for over fourteen hours. He thinks maybe a cup of tea is in order. He hasn’t eaten a morsel of food all day, and maybe the tannin hit will convince some interior corner of his brain that the world isn’t totally off its rocker.
They give themselves ten minutes. Sit alone in the station kitchen, mostly silent. The light from the burning servo casts its flickering glow across them.
Then they get on the road again.
ON AND OFF ROAD
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