Scars run deep: the healing process in the aftermath of the bushfire disaster

MICHAEL ESPOSITO

The summer of 2019-20 was a black parade of devastating bushfires that raged across Australia, with several parts of South Australia, particularly Kangaroo Island, decimated by the horrific blazes. In this story, The Bulletin speaks to three South Australian lawyers who were all caught up in the Adelaide Hills fires. They all suffered losses but were lucky the consequences weren’t worse. Here they recount their experience of the Cudlee Creek fire and the community’s slow road to recovery in the middle of a pandemic.

Most South Australians would remember the 20th of December 2019. It was so suffocatingly hot that, at 46C, it set a new record for SA, and then, in a wild mood swing, the sky opened up and pelted the State with a drenching downpour.

As the last Friday before Christmas, many people were sweltering through endof-year work parties, but for family lawyer Lisa Gough, it was “the worst Christmas party ever”.

Lisa was on her way to her firm’s Christmas party when news emerged that the Cudlee Creek fire was out of control and heading for Woodside. At first she was not concerned that her small farm property would be in the fire’s path, but as she kept her eye on the CFS website it soon became apparent that her colleague’s house near Woodside was under threat. The fire tore through the property, destroying most of the stock, sheds and fences, but sparing the house.

Lisa spent several anxious hours monitoring the news and waiting for word from her husband, before finally getting a call from her husband telling her that the fire had gone through their property and burnt large parts of their farm, but the house and the cattle were saved.

Lisa is acutely aware that she is one of the lucky ones. The blackened earth that still characterises parts of the Adelaide Hills serves as a constant reminder that a number of people lost far more. But what was so heartbreaking for Lisa was seeing the wholesale destruction of the area she called home, an idyllic hillscape turned to ash.

Karen Stanley, who lives on a 50-acre farm with her husband and three children, spent most of that fateful day not knowing if her husband had survived the fire, and spoke of the collective grief that is felt by the community after such a tragic event.

“I have friends and neighbours who lost everything,” Karen, a traffic and criminal lawyer, said. “There is survivor guilt because we still have the house, shared sadness with our friends who lost more than we did, community grief at the losses, and trauma of those who stayed to defend. I know kids in my children’s school classes who couldn’t evacuate in time and had to fight the fire on their property. It’s all a great big mess.”

Recovering from such a harrowing ordeal, in both a practical and psychological sense, is a long and arduous road.

“There is a public perception that people are quickly rebuilding, but that is far from reality,” Karen said. “Most of us are still cleaning up the mess. The first rains this year brought landslides on our property because there was no vegetation to hold the topsoil in place. The trees that didn’t fall during the fires are now falling with the rain and damp soil, so we are doing constant clean-up work.”

“There is just so much to do. We need to rebuild sheds and fences and get feed for the stock. There is no feed around because so much pasture was lost. We can’t get contractors to do our fencing or spraying or re-pasturing. We are doing it all ourselves. We have had friends come up and help with work on the land which has been amazingly kind and generous.”

While Karen considers herself extremely lucky to have escaped a far worse fate, she said the experience of the day still bears a heavy emotional toll. Her husband had to battle a 30m high wall of fire to save the house – it’s not an experience you can simply erase from your mind and move on.

Above: The fire comes over the hill on to Karen Stanley's property; and below: the blackened earth immediately after the fire had gone through the property

Photos supplied by Karen Stanley

Karen and her children evacuated in the morning but had not received any word from her husband until 5pm that night, when police advised Karen that they had been in contact with him. The first time Karen had spoken to her husband since evacuating early that morning was 9pm, when he called via a neighbour’s satellite phone to tell her that the fire front had moved on and was incinerating neighbouring properties.

“I remember driving up early the next morning, not sure whether my husband or house had survived,” Karen said.

When she did return, she saw kilometres of blackened earth, razed houses, scores of dead animals, and charred trees. And in the middle of this terrible scene was Karen’s verdant garden.

Lisa’s property was also defended by her husband, and, like Karen’s home, looked like “a green oasis in a sea of black”.

“Returning home after two days of trying to get through the roadblocks was an experience of jubilance,” Lisa said. “Words cannot describe how lucky I felt that we were all alive, safe and well.”

“However, driving through the carnage each day after that, and seeing the large-scale devastation of this event was an ordeal. The burnt fences, trees and paddocks are still etched in my mind, even though it is now difficult to see where the fires went through in many places. Tell-tale black patches on the road side where the heat of the fires was particularly high, or vacant lots where houses once stood are now the only reminder in some places.”

Anyone who has experienced a bushfire knows how unpredictable they can be, and that that main threat to property is flying embers.

Solicitor Graeme* left work to defend his 15-acre hobby farm. As the fire took hold in the Mount Crawford forest, it descended on the lawyer’s property from the north, while a separate fire front headed towards his property from the south west. The property was showered with embers and he spent all night patrolling his property and fighting off ember attacks.

Graeme’s wife had also rushed to the property earlier to evacuate the cats and dogs.

With the property surrounded by fire, Graeme had no choice but to abandon his newly established orchard and the sheds, and to focus on defending the house. The sheds provided some cover and apart from one which burnt down, remained mostly intact. The fire destroyed most of the pasture, a number of tools and implements, almost all fencing, and all of the sheep.

While the experience defending one’s home against a monstrous fire can trigger its fair share of anguish, Graeme suggests that the experience of those who evacuated but were completely in the dark about the safety of those who remained in the fire zone is particularly traumatic.

“The toll on us has been very hard to measure,” Graeme said. “In many respects the stress for my wife and children was significant - not knowing what was happening and then coming back to a scene of devastation.”

EMERGENCY SERVICES CAN’T DO IT ALL

The experiences of Lisa, Karen, Graeme demonstrate the critical role that the community plays in fighting bushfires. The MFS and CFS are rightly hailed as heroes, but without the residents themselves joining the effort, the losses would have been even worse.

Graeme said he did not see the CFS until 11.30pm on the night of the fire. “The CFS cannot be everywhere and cannot help everyone,” Graeme said. “If you make a decision to stay and defend, you have to assume that you will not receive any assistance.”

Karen was listening to the CFS scanner when she heard a commander advise that they were pulling out of the area her property was on because it was too dangerous, meaning her husband defended the house on his own.

“On my road, which was particularly badly hit, with several houses destroyed, there is a small group of houses that survived. I have no doubt that without my husband and neighbour, all the houses

would be have been destroyed” Karen said.

“Of course, the firefighters were amazing… but I hear time and time again about property owners saving not only their own properties, but driving around through the smoke looking out for their neighbours. The losses would have been far worse without the property owners staying and defending.”

Lisa’s husband also managed to save their house without the assistance of a fire crew.

“The reality of the sheer scale of the disaster meant that they were unable to assist many people as the front tore through their properties,” Lisa said. “By that time of day the fires had extended beyond Lobethal, Woodside, Harrogate and Mount Torrens and the CFS were understandably inundated.”

“The CFS, including air crew, were invaluable in the early hours of the 21st December and the following days. Flareups continued even as late as New Year's Day and they were dedicated and tireless.”

Just as dedicated and self-sacrificial were the community who banded together in the wake of the heart-wrenching destruction.

“The community sprang into action immediately with individuals stepping up to take on and allocate various roles - getting houses ready for families whose homes had burned, organising donations, collecting and distributing generators, arranging information sessions, cooking and supplying food at the disaster relief centre that sprung up the next day,” Karen said. “It’s very hard to think about the outpouring of kindness and support without getting emotional.”

Lisa said her days following the fires consisted of “digging up smouldering tree roots, putting out tree stumps, checking the CFS website and the news, then falling in a heap with a cold drink before doing it all over again.”

“This was a gruelling and exhausting time of hyper vigilance for us and a time when the community really had to pull together,” Lisa said.

Photo supplied by BlazeAid Inc

“The unsung heroes were the local people who took it upon themselves to go out to neighbours and friends and work tirelessly containing stock, safely containing flareups with their fire-fighting rigs on the backs of their utes, or just talking and listening and providing support.”

Lisa said that the fires brought together unlikely groups who worked together to deliver critical items, such as food, to affected areas, including Kangaroo Island.

“BlazeAid also deserve a special mention as volunteer fencing efforts secured many properties.” She said.

Lisa said she has been humbled by the inner strength and resilience of Adelaide Hills residents, and has heard inspiring stories of people sneaking behind police lines and travelling back roads to save houses, animals and people.

Graeme said that despite the outward stoicism of the community, there is unquestionably a profound suffering among those who have borne significant losses.

“While much of the hills area appears reasonably robust, there is a very deep scar which is just below that surface,” he said.

LEAVE OR STAY?

In spite of the carnage wrought by the fires, neither Karen, Lisa or Graeme and their families have any plans to move to a less fire-prone location.

Karen summed her reasons up succinctly: “We are staying put. It’s our home.”

Graeme said he thought his wife would want to move after the ordeal, but to his surprise, the family unanimously chose to remain at their home.

All three mentioned the importance of having a detailed fire plan in place and ready to activate at the drop of a hat, and the imperative to prepare your property so it is as fire resistant as possible.

Graeme’s property has a number of European trees strategically placed to block ember attacks.

“No tree will stop a fire,” Graeme

explained, “but these trees are quite lush and are intended to block the initial burst of embers and slow the fire down.”

Graeme said he was surprised at how many Hills residents admitted to him that they did not do not have a bushfire plan.

Pledging to evacuate in the event of a fire is not enough.

“We are all aware that we may wake up in the middle of the night to discover that there is a bushfire around us and that there is no escape. Because of this, we have tried to make sure that our firefighting response is comprehensive,” Graeme said.

“The system has to work because once the fire arrives, there is no escape from the house. I saw this first hand as I spent the following two days working with my tractor and chainsaw, clearing the roads around our house. In two cases, I cleared a road and went back a little later only to find that another tree had fallen.”

Graeme said the most important measure he took was filling his 25,000-litre header tank (while he still had power), and gravity feeding the water to all of the hoses and sprinklers.

Karen said her family grazes stock all year round to create a firebreak around the house.

“We pack our valuables at the beginning of every bushfire season, ready for an evacuation,” Karen said.

Despite this level of preparation, Karen and her three children still had only three minutes to escape once it became apparent their property was genuinely threatened by a building fire storm.

FROM ONE EMERGENCY TO ANOTHER

During the bushfires and in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe, there was a massive outpouring of support from Australians, in the form of multimillion-dollar fundraising efforts, fire relief concerts, and people donating goods, money and time to help victims recover. But by March the focus of the country shifted squarely on the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the pandemic understandably commanded our attention, bushfire victims were still in the early stages of piecing their lives back together.

Lisa said that the pandemic set fire recovery efforts back. “The fear and alarm of this new disaster, particularly in March when Australians we were not sure whether we would be emulating Singapore on the one hand or Italy (at that time), exacerbated elements of post-traumatic stress for some who had probably considered they had survived the fires relatively unscathed, or who thought they had bounced back successfully, only to find that they were not travelling as well as they thought they were,” she said

Graeme saw the enforced isolation as a double-edged sword for victims.

“For one group, I think it's actually been good for them to focus on their properties,” he said. “However, there is another group who have happily isolated but what they really needed was access to other people as much as possible. For those people, I suspect that the cost of the fires and the pandemic will not be obvious for some time. While those persons really need professional support, access to others would be the next best thing, but I fear that the obligation to isolate will give them an excuse not to seek that camaraderie.”

Karen acknowledged the extra burden that COVID-19 would have placed on already suffering families, but for her, the pandemic offered an opportunity to take stock of the ordeal.

“I think everyone affected by the bushfires reacted differently to COVID. For me, the pandemic was a chance for our family to finally have the break that we didn’t get over Christmas. For my family, it was the first time we really breathed in months.”

“I know for others the pandemic has been terribly traumatic, particularly those who relied on assistance from people such as volunteers and counsellors.”

Lisa said she hoped the pandemic would not stall necessary improvements to the State’s fire response infrastructure, such as ensuring that more fire vehicles had GPS tracking capabilities.

“Obviously the CFS staff and volunteers would have valuable insight into changes and improvements which should be made before summer arrives again, but I fear that the pandemic has shifted focus from these issues,” she said.

“I would hope that those in charge will remember calls in December and January for a national effort to coordinate funding for more large fire-fighting aircraft for example, and that focus can remain on supporting these vital services and fine tuning their strategies and methods.”

“In the Australian landscape it is difficult to see how fires can be prevented entirely and obviously some flora require the heat of fire to germinate.”

Graeme was similarly surprised the lack of technology available to provide information to emergency services about the precise position of fires.

“The technologies that are available ought, as much as possible, to equip them to not only fight a fire, but to ensure the safety of those who are fighting the fire,” he said.

Karen was philosophical about the experience, acknowledging the inevitable risks of living in the Hills.

“Fires are what makes our native vegetation regenerate,” she said. “We can hardly build houses in densely vegetated areas and expect that there won’t be any fires.”

There’s no doubt that the Adelaide Hills abounds with natural beauty and spectacular scenery. But this idyllic environment can suddenly turn grotesque, and that is the trade-off that all those who live in fire-prone areas implicitly accept.

“Living among trees is wonderful but problematic,” Graeme said.” Come what may, you need a plan and to plan for the worst.”