Group 2

Ash Wednesday, 16 February 1983

On 16 February 1983, a series of bushfires swept across South Australia and Victoria. The fires caused 75 deaths and left 9,000 people homeless. They destroyed 2500 buildings, at an estimated damage cost of $45m.

Residents recall the day was part of a heatwave during a 10-month drought, with very low humidity, temperatures as high as 43C and winds reaching more than 100 kilometres per hour.

The first fire of the day was reported south of Adelaide mid-morning. Within hours, more than 180 fires had broken out across two states.

They would eventually destroy 400,000 hectares — an area four times the size of metropolitan Melbourne.

"The whole hills were alight," remembers Susan Laundy, a resident of Mylor, a small community inland from Adelaide.

Volunteer Russell Grear did most of his work that day in a helicopter, coordinating crew and making observations from the air. He says he was astounded by what he saw. "There was one fire front that I reckon was 10 kilometres long and there wasn't a soul to be seen in relation to fire fighting or anything else," he said. "People had tried to do what they could to save their houses but it was just moving too fast."

After a wind change, which turned the long fire flank into a massive fire front, the blaze was throwing up so much dust and smoke that Mr Grear and his team were forced to land their chopper in a paddock for two hours while the fire passed.

Country Fire Authority fire fighters recall the Melbourne metropolitan area being surrounded by a ring of bushfires.

Loss of life: 75

Buildings destroyed: 2,500

Livestock lost: 32,750

Area burnt: 210,000 ha

Insurance Cost: $45.6m

Homeless people: 9,000

Group 1

Daylesford, Victoria 8-9 January 1969

The bushfires on 8 January 1969 in Daylesford, Victoria burnt over two days.

The fast moving grass fire left 800 people homeless. 23 people lost their life which included 17 motorists who were trapped on the Geelong to Melbourne freeway at Lara Victoria. 280 fires broke out on this day in 1969. The grass fires burnt 250,000 hectares.

Areas seriously affected included Lara, Daylesford, Dulgana, Yea, Darraweit, Kangaroo Flat and Korongvale.

The fires also destroyed 230 houses, 21 other buildings and more than 12,000 livestock.

Footscray footballer Gary Dempsey almost lost his life in the Lara fires spending seven weeks in hospital. At 20 years old Dempsey had only played two seasons with Footscray, he was told he would never play football again. He came back to take his total to 329 games with the Bulldogs and North Melbourne, winning the Brownlow Medal in 1975.

The grassfire was fanned by strong winds which generated a fire ball around 4 meters high the motorists were caught by a wind change.

Freelance TV News cameraman Barry Thomas who captured the scene on 16mm film shortly after the fire front went through, said a number of people who died left their cars and tried to out run the fire. “It was a very scary thing to see,” said Mr Thomas, “the once lush green trees in Daylesford, Victoria had turned black as far as the eye could see.”

Loss of life: 23

Buildings destroyed: 251

Livestock lost: 12,000

Area burnt: 250,000 ha

Homeless people: 800

Group 3

Black Tuesday, 7 February 1967 to 14 February 1967

On 7 February 1967, dozens of fires across south-east Tasmania developed into a firestorm, and within a few hours 62 people had lost their lives, 900 injured, 7,000 homeless and tens of thousands of hectares burnt. In the fires, 4,000 buildings were destroyed and 86,450 livestock were lost.

The spring of 1966 in Tasmania had brought with it heavy rainfall and plentiful vegetative growth followed by abnormally dry conditions. The summer of 1966-67 was the driest since 1885.

By early February grasses and other vegetation had dried out and fuel flammability reached a critical level, made worse by the build up of fuel over a period of years in timbered and semi-timbered country. On Tuesday, February 7, the combination of high temperatures, low humidity and extremely strong north-westerly winds made a disaster inevitable.

Gerald Crawford, from the Tasmania Fire Service said the entire south-east of the state was effectively ablaze. "Some of the smaller fires just got bigger, some smaller ones joined up with each other, and some of the bigger ones joined up." He said fire fighting at the time was much more difficult than today.

Former Tasmania Fire Service chief fire officer John Gledhill said phone calls were impossible. "Even links to the mainland had been lost because in those days, telecommunications were carried on wires on poles, poles were the first things to burn down so as well as power, communications went," he said. Fire-struck towns were cut off for days.

Of the 110 fires, 88 were found to be deliberately lit, although the exact causes are unclear. Some were from burn-offs started in the days prior.

Loss of life: 62

Buildings destroyed: 4,000

Livestock lost: 86,450

Area burnt: 270,000 ha

Insurance Cost: $61.0m

Homeless people: 7,000

Group 4

Black Friday, Victoria 13-20 January 1939

Large areas of north-eastern Victoria and Gippsland were destroyed by the Black Friday fires. About 3000 people from towns including Rubicon, Woods Point, Warrandyte were left homeless and 71 people lost their lives.

Fanned by extremely strong winds, these fires swept rapidly across large areas of Victoria, causing widespread destruction. An area of almost two million hectares was burned across the state. Whole towns were destroyed, many buildings burned to the ground and thousands of sheep, cattle and horses were killed by the intense heat and flames.

Black Friday happened after a long, dry and hot summer following a drought period that had lasted several years. Many creeks and rivers had dried up and people living in Melbourne were on water restrictions. Dry heat and hot winds dried much of the moisture from the ground, leaving forest floors and the open plains dry.

Prior to January 13, many fires were already burning. High temperatures and strong northerly winds fanned these separate fires on the day. The fires eventually combined and created a massive fire front that swept mainly over the mountain country in the north east of Victoria, and along the coast in the south west.

The fires that resulted in Black Friday came from a combination of human causes. Land owners, miners, forest workers and campers either deliberately or carelessly contributed to the 1939 fires by lighting fires before 13 January. The causes included burning off for land clearing and grass growth, lighting campfires and domestic fires.

The 1939 bushfires were the most significant event in the environmental history of Victoria, greatly damaging millions of hectares of forests, affecting soil fertility and impacting important water catchments for years later.

Loss of life: 71

Buildings destroyed: 1,300

Livestock lost: 2,500

Area burnt: 1,750,000 ha

Homeless people: 3,000

Group 7

Black Saturday, February 2009

On a 46C temperature day on 7 February 2009, multiple fires started burning across Victoria and caused Australia's greatest loss of life from a bushfire. The death toll reached 173. A further 414 were injured as a result of the fires, and more than 2000 homes were lost

More than 78 communities across Victoria were directly affected. On 7 February, now known as Black Saturday, Victorian towns including Marysville, Kinglake, Kinglake West, Narbethong, Flowerdale and Strathewen were devastated. More than 19,000 Country Fire Authority members were involved in fighting the fires.

Immediately before Black Saturday there were a number of days of extreme temperatures reaching up to 46 degrees Celsius. This heat wave was the worst in Victoria’s history. Often described as a once in millennium drought, it included little to no recorded rainfall in the two months before Black Saturday.

Another big contributing factor was the wind which reached up to and beyond 100km/h (62 mph). The wind was also hot and dry from passing over the Australian outback. The wind then changed to gale force south-westerly winds which reached up to 120 km per hour. This second wind caused the fires to merge into one huge fire front that burned with speed and ferocity never witnessed before.

It is estimated that the Black Saturday bushfires disaster in February 2009 cost the economy over $4.4 billion. The biggest expense from the fires has been insurance claims paid out, which the Insurance Council of Australia said totalled about $1.2 billion. Of these, 84 per cent are property claims, the remaining 16 per cent are motor vehicle claims. It is also believed that about 13 per cent of destroyed homes may have been without insurance.

Loss of life: 173

Buildings destroyed: 2,133

Area burnt: 450,000 ha

Group 6

Gippsland & Black Sunday, 14 February to 3 March 1926

During the 1925–26 Victorian bushfire season a series of major bushfires occurred between 26 January and 10 March 1926 in the state of Victoria in Australia. A total of 60 people lost their life, 700 were injured, and 1,000 buildings were destroyed across the south-east of the state. The blaze tore through over 400,000 hectares of land.

On Sunday 14 February 1926, later referred to as Black Sunday, bushfires swept across Gippsland, the Yarra Valley, the Dandenong Ranges and the Kinglake area in Victoria.

The fires started in forest areas on 26 January, but wind gusts of up to 97 km per hour led to the joining of the fire fronts on 14 February.

Extreme temperatures were also considered to be a contributing factor to the Gippsland and Black Sunday fires.

In the Warburton area alone, 31 deaths were recorded including 14 at Wooley's Mill in Gilderoy, 6 at Big Pats Creek and 2 at Powelltown.

Other affected settlements included Noojee, Erica and Kinglake, where St Mary's Church and Thompson's Hotel were amongst the buildings destroyed.

The fires were said to have changed the landscape of the Gippsland hills, turning the green hills into grey and black hills of ash.

A survivor of the bushfires, Private J Sparks from the 46th Battalion had only a heap of melted pennies and a returned soldier’s medal left after the fires consumed all his other belongings. Other survivors described destroyed landscapes, the remains of a railway bridge and glowing hills at night time where the fires still burned.

Loss of life: 60

Buildings destroyed: 1,000

Area burnt: 400,000 ha

Group 5

Blue Mountains, NSW November 1957 to January 1958

The Blue Mountains fire destroyed 158 properties, including businesses, shops, schools and a hospital. The fire burnt more than 2million hectares and led to five deaths.

The spring of 1957 was hot and dry, which set the stage for a busy fire season. September 1957 remains the driest September on record for Katoomba. November 1957 was nearly five degrees warmer than average, with daily maximum temperatures frequently exceeding 30˚C (Figure 2). The day of the 1957 Leura Fires, the maximum temperature in Katoomba was a scorching 34.4˚C.

These conditions added to a major fire season in New South Wales and set the stage for the devastating fires that struck Leura and Wentworth Falls on 2 December 1957. There were also several significant fires in the Blue Mountains during November 1957.

On Saturday 30 November, 1957, nine boys set out into the Blue Gum Forest from Perry’s Lookdown on a bushwalk. They could see fires in the distance to the east so after lunchtime the group decided to walk up out of the forest. Tragically, the fire front caught up with the boys. Four boys lost their lives, another four survived by running down the hill through the fire front and camping in a riverbed overnight.

On 2 December 1957 over 170 properties in Leura and Wentworth Falls were burnt to the ground. The fire began around 12:45pm, reportedly originating near the rubbish tip in northeast Katoomba. The Katoomba Fire Brigade occurrence book suggests that at around 12:53pm assistance was needed at Queens Road. The fire quickly gained intensity, aided by hot temperatures and strong winds from the northwest. Witnesses recall the fire embers appearing to “jump” from property to property.

Group 4

Loss of life: 5 Buildings destroyed: 158

Area burnt: 2,000,000 ha