‘It’s gone’: With a home destroyed, fire evacuees can do nothing but hope

As fires raged on the outskirts of the Victorian town of Longwood, Mark Jenkin could do nothing but watch helplessly as his neighbour’s home burnt to the ground.

“All his paddock and house there was untouched when we came up this morning, but another fire started in behind here and raged up through the pine trees … Eventually it got to his house, and it’s gone,” he said.

Jenkin said that at first the gate caught fire. Soon, the roof started to sag.

“You could hear his LPG gas making a weird, sort of high-pressure, squirting sound,” he said. “It went on for ages.”

The gas seeping out of the bottles was still burning on Thursday night.

Jenkin had to break the news to his neighbour over the phone that his house, along with the antique clocks inside, had burnt to the ground in about an hour around 4pm. The westerly wind kept the flames from lapping at Jenkin’s own door.

“I was a bit worried,” he said.

Jenkin and his wife had tried to leave their home for a motel in Euroa but were unable to drive down the forested track out of the hills of Longwood East, about 150 kilometres north of Melbourne, on Thursday morning.

The couple had heeded the advice from emergency services and spent Wednesday night at the motel but returned home on Thursday to finish packing up their belongings, anticipating they would stay away until the weekend.

“I mucked around a bit around here watering things down and by the time we went to leave the end of the track was an inferno,” Jenkin said. “We thought we’d better go back, and we’ve been here ever since.”

Blackened ground surrounded their property on Thursday, just metres from their front door. A water tank in the backyard had melted into the ground. Most of it had burnt down on Wednesday night, Jenkin said.

The couple moved into their home in the hills of Lockwood East just before the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009. After the devastating inferno, they decided to buy a generator, which kept their power on during this bushfire.

Around the corner from the Jenkins house, father and son John and Wyatt Moncrieff returned home to find their house, cattle and birds had survived the fire largely unscathed. A shed still burnt next to the charred remains of a red RAV 4 – now unrecognisable. The pair swung quickly to work, checking on the animals.

Earlier on Thursday afternoon they had to dodge fallen tree limbs and winch trunks out of the way as they used their four-wheel-drive to return home.

People evacuated from their properties in Longwood could do nothing but hope on Thursday, and watch as tall plumes of black smoke rose above the treeline.

Temporarily homeless, they huddled in caravans and vans, sheltering from the extreme heat. The air became so thick with smoke overnight it was difficult to breathe.

Jim Kades was filling a bowl of water for his 18-month-old kelpie, Sharni, while his housemate Warren Carr rested inside the caravan they’d hurriedly parked at a local reserve.

Carr wore thick white bandages on both arms. On Wednesday a surgeon had sliced off skin cancers on both limbs. A canary named Boy sat inside a cage in the back of their 4WD.

Emergency authorities called them on Thursday morning, urging them to evacuate. They put together a hazy plan to stay with Kades’ brother in Shepparton. Carr did not know if the house they shared would still be there when they returned. “I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night,” he said.

“Tomorrow’s meant to be worse,” added Kades. “I don’t know when we’re going to be allowed back.”

Longwood is home to just a few hundred people, but the sprawling grasslands in the area make good thoroughbred country. On Thursday, as the hills caught fire, spooked horses could be seen trotting up and down the paddocks as water bombers operated above.

Flames leapt up the hill behind a property and by sheds. The site was a patchwork of green paddocks and burnt-out grass.

Residents and workers, some in their teens, waited at the intersection of Longwood-Ruffy and Faithfull roads to receive news from the fire ground. Just before 4pm a short but welcome burst of rain swept across the property, just enough water to put the embers out.

Architectural designer Drew Kitchen pointed at a silver structure on top of a hill in Longwood East, barely visible in the thick smoke.

“That’s my house there,” he said, standing at the police checkpoint on Faithfull Road in Longwood East.

Behind it was another home Kitchen had spent the past 18 months building. Both were now in the path of the fire.

“Yesterday, I was down in Queenscliff and then raced home and just loaded up the car with all the replaceable stuff, went over to Mansfield at like 10-11 o’clock at night or something, stayed there, then got a water cart, came back this morning and just, I’ve just been hanging around here all day,” he said.

His plan was to help put out some of the grass fires in the area in the hope of preventing further damage. His partner and young son were out of harm’s way at work and childcare.

“The house is made of steel and mostly non-flammable stuff, and it’s pretty clear around the house, so just fingers crossed,” he said.

Kitchen, who moved into his property in Longwood East five years ago, grew up in the Otways, where the threat of a bushfire was always looming. This time though, it felt too close to home for comfort.

“It’s really stressful, but at least I got my work stuff,” he said before going back to winding up a hose in the back of the water cart.

At the checkpoint, two locals were glued to a mobile phone, watching a live security camera feed. Flames burnt at the edge of a property surrounded by smoke.

A short while later, police manning the checkpoint comforted a man whose home had been engulfed by flames.

A firefighting helicopter could be seen flying overhead. Fire burned in a paddock nearby.

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