By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Ten years on from Black Saturday, the fire-risk conditions are eerily similar, says CFA Acting Chief Officer Trevor Owen.
Based at the CFA’s incident control centre at Dandenong, Mr Owen oversees the South East Region already trying to suppress multiple bushfires in East Gippsland this summer.
And that’s before we hit February, traditionally the most fire-dangerous month.
Mr Owen was one of the few fire and emergency commanders singled out for his cool-headed decisiveness by a Royal Commission into the 2009 disaster.
He had made the tough call to divert fire trucks from a fast-moving grassfire among homes in Narre Warren South to avert a potential catastrophe in Harkaway.
If unchecked, the galloping Harkaway blaze buffeted by a fierce south-westerly wind could envelope the Dandenongs in an Ash Wednesday-like horror scenario.
It was the right call. A matter of life and death.
But it was a difficult one. During that hellish afternoon, he got a call from his wife working in a supermarket in Narre Warren South – not far from his home.
“Have you got some fire trucks coming?” she asked.
“We don’t have any left,” Mr Owen replied.
In the meantime, fire crews and appliances were being ferried across from the Bellerine Peninsula as urgent support.
The local crews were “stretched to our maximum capacity” tackling blazes breaking out throughout the region, such as Cranbourne, Narre Warren North and Eastlink.
“If we had another fire of any significance we would have struggled,” Mr Owen recalled.
“It could have gone horribly wrong but it didn’t.”
The harrowing events on Black Saturday are etched deeply.
Looking back, Mr Owen feels many in the community underestimated the dire conditions and warnings. They thought they could get through “just one day”.
Mr Owen had felt an impending danger. The Bunyip Ridge fire had been burning for five days and was set to jump out of control.
In the lead-up, fires in Frankston and Dandenong South had moved at astonishing speed.
“We knew we were in serious trouble. We did everything we could to people how serious it was.
“It showed up our vulnerability in terms of listening to authorities and messaging.”
It’s “naive” to think there will never be another Black Saturday, he says.
Despite the better technology, equipment and co-operation between fire agencies and the traumatic lessons.
Victoria remains one of the most fire-prone areas in the world. The fire season starts earlier and ends later.
“People need to really understand the environment we live in
“If we don’t get some rain in the next three weeks and get really strong hot northerly days, we could be in serious trouble.
“That’s why we’re doing all we can to put out the fires we’ve got.
“People think when we say things it’s the old ‘Cry Wolf’. We don’t cry wolf.”
