Stay away from the bush Melbourne
The Ash Wednesday fires of 1983 were deadly - particularly around Melbourne!
“The question they must ask themselves is, do I need to take this trip?”
(Ewan Waller, Department of Sustainability and Environment warning people to “stay away from the bush” … today’s HeraldSun)
As I recall it, the worst impacts of the infamous Ash Wednesday bushfires of 1983 actually occurred within about 40 kms of Melbourne. The Dandenong Ranges at Cockatoo, the foothills around Beaconsfield and Macedon was where the most lives were lost. There were no fires in the north east at that time and, apart from the fires along the Great Ocean Road, the main carnage WAS NOT in rural areas but in the outskirts of suburbia.
Why then are our State officials warning people “not to travel to rural areas” tomorrow when, according to the CFA, we’ll be facing
“The State’s worst bushfire risk in history, with conditions worse than those that led to the Ash Wednesday firestorm in 1983 that killed 75 people”
What makes the DSE, the CFA and even Government Ministers think that people would be more at risk in Bright, for instance, than they would be in the fringes of metropolitan Melbourne? Well maybe those people were only kids back in ‘83 and don’t know what really happened, or much at all for that matter!
Because it’s not generally understood that people living around Melbourne are far more likely to be killed in a bushfire than those living (or holidaying) in country areas – check the records, even though we had massive fires in the north east in the summers of 2003 & 2006/7, NOT ONE SINGLE LIFE WAS LOST !
And that’s because bushfires up here tend to occur in the isolated bush. Sure, there’s plenty of remote and uninhabited wilderness up here and YES, it’s vulnerable to bushfires, but it’s nowhere near as potentially deadly as a bushfire in, say, Ferny Creek or even Mt Eliza. Yet still these d***heads tell people to stay away! Well, thanks a lot.
This reminds me of what the then Premier Steve Bracks did in early December 2006 when the bushfires first started in this area. Bracks went on TV saying the north east was “a no-go zone” and would remain so throughout the entire summer. He as much as told people to cancel their holidays and guess what, they did, and Bright’s tourism was down by at least 50% for the summer holiday period even though the fires around here were well and truly gone before Xmas.
Those that did come up were amazed to see no evidence of any fires that had been in the vicinity. They’d say, “I thought you’d been burnt out but it’s still all green up here, where were the fires?” Well, they were generally a long way from Bright and they didn’t really threaten us.
I might be tempting fate by saying this, but if Victoria ’burns’ tomorrow and we see a repeat of Ash Wednesday, my guess is it’ll mainly happen around Melbourne, and not up here. History tells us that.
So, if you’re worried about the “worst ever” conditions forecast for tomorrow and you live in Melbourne’s outskirts, I’d suggest you’d be much safer coming up here than staying at home, despite what these fuck half wits are telling you.
Contact: ray@grevilleagardens.com
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Well said, Ray.
I have friends living at Greensborough near Eltham. This is Hilly Woodlands country with high density housing built between the trees. You look out the back window and all you can see is a potential bushfire disaster. With all the little courts and winding streets, should a fire get in there, there will be a massacre as there is nowhere for the residents to escape.
Too true, Greg. I recently visited my daughter, who has now moved back to her Ferntree Gully home, and it is much drier around there (the Dandenongs) than it is up here. People forget that the (quite heavily populated) Dandenong ranges & surrounds have a very long history of raging and deadly bushfires.
I think you are a bit too complacent! Whilst history shows us that towns like Myrtleford and Bright have been spared in the past, that’s not a guarantee we are exempt from danger. This summer is particularly bad and could be a harbinger of things to come in future years.
Bright for one is at the neck of the Ovens Valley, surrounded by forest and pine plantations. Should the unthinkable happen there’d be a mad scramble to evacuate the town. There would be the risk of panic and confusion, compounded by poor visibility from smoke and heavy road traffic. Nobody would attempt to get out via Mt Hotham, so we’d see a mass exodus via Myrtleford. If Myrtleford was also under attack from surrounding pine plantations, then Gawd help us!
It would be most unfortunate under the circumstances if people heeded your advice and got out of Melbourne and came up here to escape the heat and local conflagrations. I for one would rather see us survive this summer free of serious public risk than having to contend with visitors who generally are not as fire savvy as us locals.
Don’t say it can never happen – remember Canberra in 2003 – they thought they were safe too!
So Noel, you’d rather have no one visit Bright this weekend because there ‘could’ be a fire event that (even if it happened) would most likely be far less dangerous than any fires in the Melbourne outer suburbs from where most of our customers come?
That doesn’t make any sense. Going by your logic we’d just shut the area down for the bulk of summer. Sheez.
As for your ‘armageddon’ scenario, I think we’d find refuge, Noel – and we’d get plenty of warning. Canberra happened because the NSW Fire Authorities just ignored a threatening fire that had been burning for a few days.
We shouldn’t let fear determine our destiny.
As usual, you try to support your argument by concentrating on only one part of someone’s response to try to demonstrate your supposedly superior logic.
Don’t bank on “plenty of warning”! Let me pose a “what if” scenario.
Some idiot decides to light a fire tomorrow close to Bright, let’s say in the hills on either side of the Great Alpine Road near Grevillea Gardens (we’ve had a few morons caught lately despite the restrictions & fire ban days), it gets out of control fed by a screaming northerly wind with 45degree temperatures ,creating a fire storm heading into the heart of town.
Couldn’t happen? Think again, buster!
Buster? Gee Noel, calm down, what’s wrong, is the heat getting to you?
I think you’ve missed the point of the post. This is a ‘Statewide alert’ and it’s not just confined to ‘rural areas’ or to the north east.
Melbourne is expecting a record temperature with “revolting conditions” (weather bureau’s description, not mine) and there’s already a big fire burning at Bunyip on the outer east of Melbourne that is predicted to threaten homes, yet the authorities have seen fit to warn people to stay away from ‘rural areas’ even though being in Melbourne’s outer suburbs clearly poses a greater danger to human life.
The point is that nowhere is immune to fire risk tomorrow so why should the authorities be telling people not to go away for the weekend? And, I repeat, a fire up here is far less likely to take human life than one on Melbourne’s outskirts, even it’s deliberately lit behind my place in your worst case scenario (I’d just jump in the pool, along with the
femalesguests).Ray, don’t you find it ironic that Ewan Waller from DSE is advising “people to stay out of the bush”? This the same bloke who heads up the organisation that allowed the 2003 and 2006 lightning strikes to link up into the mega fires that they eventually became by not seriously attacking them early enough. This is also the same organisation who pursues (along with their tree hugging comradres in Parks Victoria) the “lock it up and leave it” approach to conservation of PUBLIC lands. Ewan Waller should be recognised for what he really is – a politically savvy bureaucrat who is intent on expanding his own organisation of PAID fire crews on the back of the public goodwill for the 56000 ODD majority volunteer CFA! His comments should therefore be judged for what they truly are – political spin.
Yes Herb, he’s a ….. best left unsaid! Firefighting has become one of the biggest growth industries in the country in the last 5 or 6 years and, you’re right, it’s the DSE ‘empire building’ that is giving it a bad name. I can see a future State Govt (not this one) eventually privatising DSE’s firefighting division. And then we’ll have 6 week blazes around here every year!
Well Ray, incredibly tonight almost exactly what you have said here has occured. The massive firestorms that broke out yesterday were all in highly populated dense areas close to Melbourne (Kilmore, Wandong, Whittlesea, Marysville, Kinglake, Upper Beconsfield, Neerim) and unfortunately hundreds of homes are gone along with many deaths. Its unbelieveable. Its been a horrendous day and is still over 30 degrees now.
It just seemed logical to me, Heide, that if the conditions applied to the whole State (as they did) then the worst fires with most potential to kill people would be close to Melbourne. History and common sense tells us that.
It’s tragic and the loss of life could be much higher than the 14 so far confirmed. The thing that bothers me is how those people in the Wandong & Kinglake area for instance were not told to evacuate. It was an out of control fire-storm and no one should have been given the option of staying to defend their homes.
That said, as we speak a fire that started south of Beechworth late Saturday afternoon is now down as far as Myrtleford & Rosewhite. It’s actually headed this way. I doubt we’ll see any loss of life because a weather change should take it away from Myrtleford and prevent it from threatening Bright, but we need to be alert. You can see the red glow and the massive pall of smoke outside, take a look.