‘A damn lot of luck’: How three Victorian towns were spared by unstoppable fires

Fire conditions in Victoria effectively run on a scale from 1 up to 100. Above that point, which takes into account a raft of climatic and environmental inputs, the conditions are deemed catastrophic.

At Natimuk, a western Victorian hamlet, the local CFA captain and the town’s mayor were shocked to find last Friday it had reached 480.

They believe it is the highest mark ever reached in the state.

That could not be verified with fire authorities, but standing amid the ruined houses scattered through much of the town it is believable.

It explains why the fire – aided by 100km/h winds and temperatures pushing 44 degrees – could not be stopped as it galloped over short-crop stubble paddocks.

“I was 100 per cent confident that I could stop it,” says Michael Sudholz, leaning on 40 years in the CFA and battles against 20 fires in his lifetime. He was wrong.

It was a similar experience at other fires across western Victoria particularly Harcourt, Skipton and nearby Streatham.

In each case, the fires moved astonishingly quickly and destroyed a collective 86 homes and 32,000 hectares.

Locals dug in but quickly found themselves overwhelmed.

Lives and homes were often saved only by a stroke of luck and the tireless work of volunteers.

For Natimuk and Skipton, a just-in-time wind change spared residential streets.

In Harcourt, a band of unlikely heroes and their miniature railway park shielded the heart of the settlement.

Natimuk

The grass fire quickly became ferocious after sparking at 12.43pm about 13 kilometres outside town.

Sudholz thought he was well-prepared to fight the fire. He cut his lawn short and, before catastrophic fire danger days, left the sprinklers on overnight to soak the soil.

Sudholz first got an emergency alert on his phone, then 10 minutes later a call from a friend in town who said she could see smoke.

Five minutes later she called him again to say fire was racing across his paddock.

Sudholz jumped into his ute and, alongside a neighbour, raced into the field to try to subdue the fire. At this stage, he was confident he could bring it under control.

As Sudholz and his neighbour fought the blaze, large embers soared 20 metres over their heads and landed on his house, sliding through gaps in the roof and setting it alight.

“The two of us got there with hoses, and we stood there for a minute, and it was like pissing in the wind. And I looked at him [my neighbour], and he looked at me, and I said, ‘she’s gone’,” said Sudholz.

Most of Natimuk’s population of 500 is comfortable around fire, and the flat, sparse land suited for farming sheep and grain also lends itself to firefighting. But this fire was different.

“This is an unheard of thing in open country. This is something you see out bush. I’ve seen it out bush where it just charges out, and it just spits at you,” said Sudholz.

“I’ve been on strike teams into the Grampians, and seen firestorms there. I’ve been down to Harrow, that steep, hilly country, and the fire roars up there like a monster, and I thought that was scary.”

Sudholz’s wife, Lynette, was inside their home when it caught fire. She spotted flame in the air vents and smoke quickly filled the house. She escaped just in time, driving a car out of the garage as the roof caved in.

“She’s got burns to her arms, and it’s burned in her shirt… probably two more minutes and she might not get out of it,” Sudholz said.

Natalie Jones was working in Harrow, about 45 kilometres south-west of Natimuk, when her house was burnt down. Two doors down, her sister’s home was destroyed.

Each afternoon since the fire, Jones has stood amid the rubble of her home to water some singed trees.

“I still feel sick as a dog, still vomiting every morning,” she said.

“You wake up and are you right for about two minutes, and then that overwhelming anxiety comes into your body and you’re just sick. Sick to your stomach.”

David Sudholz, Natimuk CFA captain and Michael’s brother, rushed out to fight the fire when it was spotted at 12.43pm, and was astounded by its speed.

“One minute [there] was nothing, and next minute we’re in the smoke, and then there was fires everywhere around us, like all the grass was suddenly catching fire,” he said.

David was in a command vehicle with a colleague trying to coordinate the brigade’s firetrucks, but the swirling black smoke meant “it was just chaos on the radio”.

They tried flanking the fire, but it was moving so quick they struggled to keep up. He turned the ute onto a main highway – and saw the fire was already racing up the road towards them.

“We started to go into the smoke. And then we realised in the ute that we were actually in the fire. So we got it rolled over the top of us. We could barely see the road, but we just kept pushing.”

A wind change is what spared most of the town – sending the fire away from residential streets and into agricultural land.

There, fast-thinking farmers used speed tillers to carve firebreaks into fields, which, combined with calming weather and dozens of private and public firefighting vehicles, eventually brought the fire under control.

“It was really never going to have any hope initially to stop it just with the trucks and that – it was speed tills, and having people being a bit more coordinated by the time they did pull it up,” said David, who had several paddocks burnt by the fire.

Horsham Mayor Brian Klowss, who lost 90 per cent of his Natimuk farm, said stopping the fire “was probably down to a damn lot of luck”.

Although no lives were lost, he said the fire would leave some residents with mental scars.

“I’ve heard of people that are scared. I’ve heard stories of little kids that don’t want to go to their grandparents because they’re scared there might be a fire come through there.”

Harcourt

While the cause of the Harcourt fire remains a mystery, its destruction is obvious.

The fire started north-west of the town and burnt furiously through 54 homes and three businesses. Brick chimneys were all that remained of most homes, standing like sentinels amid the rubble.

Harcourt CFA Captain Andrew Wilson said that for the first 10 minutes, he was able to confidently manage logistics before it descended into chaos. After that, he was like a duck on a pond.

“You just try and be just cruising, but your feet are going like mad underneath,” he said.

While Wilson fought fires on Forgarty’s Gap Road, his 19-year-old daughter, Megan, was across town dousing flames from another firetruck.

“That sort of hits home, that you don’t know where each other are,” he said.

The fire burnt in haphazard and strange patterns, Wilson said, but it undeniably headed straight for the heart of town. It was only pulled up short when it reached the Victorian Miniature Railway.

Volunteers at the 63-acre wide railway tourist park had kept the grass cut short as a fire safety precaution, which turned it into a massive firebreak and proved essential in saving the town.

This, combined with the CFA fighting the fire at the front of the railway, forced the fire to break in half, move either side of the park and the town.

“It basically split the fire. So it went one side to the north and one to the other. So it could have gone through, taking the whole town out really,” said Wilson.

The railway park’s founder and president, Andrew Mierisch, said: “Our property care and the CFA is what saved the town. One hundred per cent.”

Strong winds caused spot fires throughout parts of the railway park, but Mierisch and other railway members rushed to put out the flames.

Mierisch fought the fire using a hose attached to a small water-tank carriage normally used to douse any fires caused by the miniature steam engine. The carriage carries only 300 litres but was hooked up to an 18,000-litre tank, which allowed Mierisch to freely race along the tracks and operate the hose.

“There was no way in hell I was going to lose this after 10 years of 95 per cent volunteer toiling,” he said of the railway. “We’ve built this. We’ve welded these beams. We’ve screwed those roof sheets.”

Skipton

What Richard Graham will mourn most about the Carranballac cricket team clubrooms is the history.

Built in 1956, the clubrooms were torn down by a bushfire which started 5.3 kilometres north of nearby Streatham and burnt fiercely westward through to the outskirts of Skipton.

The club didn’t have many trophies, but losing the honour board and memorabilia stings.

“You’re sad for the history to be gone, but the club’s still here,” Graham said, with country stoicism.

The neighbouring community hall, which was used for 21st birthday parties, weddings and group meetings, also burnt down.

Now the fires in Skipton, Harcourt and Natimuk are contained, their victims wait for insurance assessors to visit their razed homes so they can start to clean up and move on. So far, more than 2000 insurance claims have been lodged across the state related to these fires.

Some residents are intending to move out of the town, away from the danger of the country and seeking a fresh start. But most will stay.

In Natimuk, Michael Sudholz isn’t going anywhere.

“Our plan is to pull this down and rip the concrete up and rebuild.”

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