the new woodend star Circulation of 3150 throughout Woodend postal district, Newham, Hesket, Ashbourne, North Woodend, Hanging Rock, Carlsruhe, Cobaw.
AN INITIATIVE OF THE ROTARY CLUB OF WOODEND February 2009
A Monthly Community Periodical
First Publication 1997
Volume Thirteen No. 1
Woodend Township Saved
Several weeks ago I wrote my monthly article for the Woodend Star (you’ll see it later in this edition) focusing on the dangers the actual township of Woodend faces in a bushire. It is somewhat ironic that a few days later that nearly became a reality. On Thursday January 22, it was a total fire ban so the Woodend CFA had emergency volunteers on stand-by at the station. Around 2pm we were called out to a grass fire near Chambers Road, which was attended by Woodend Car and two tankers. The fire burnt around one acre and was quickly contained. Woodend Car and Tanker 1 returned to station, while Woodend Tanker 2 remained on scene to monitor the situation. A short time later all hell broke loose. We were paged to a new fire in the vicinity of Harpers Road. Woodend Car and T1 immediately turned out, while T2 went direct to the fire from the above location. On route Woodend Car (Captain Mick Christie, George Keyes and Andrew Price) saw the extent of the smoke and immediately called to ‘Make Tankers 5’, which means that he wanted five tankers to turn out (three in addition to the two from Woodend). As Captain Christie got closer and saw the extent of the fire in the horrible windy conditions this was quickly upgraded to ‘Make Tankers 10’ and then ‘Make Tankers 20’. To get a better view they drove through paddocks off Harpers Road towards the fire front which was down in the valley along the Campaspe River. Just as they reached the hill overlooking the valley, the fire front roared up in front of them with a flame wall over 3 metres high. The car quickly returned in the direction of Harpers Road just as Woodend Tanker 1 (Steve Emmins, Rhys Lade, Richard Price, Geoff Wells, Rhys Hartney) and Tanker 2 (Keith Beman, Mike Dornau, Steve Rumble, Mick Bobic, Stewart McKinnon, Amber Smeenk) arrived on scene along with Tankers from Tylden, Newham, Macedon and Hesket-Kerrie. We drove into the paddock splitting the trucks to both sides of the fire front to flank the fire before it reached Harpers Road. Unfortunately the wind was gusting so strongly, that twice the flames turned and literally washed over our trucks. We turned away to re-form for another attack. The flames headed quickly towards Harpers Road and actually crossed the road, heading towards the Woodend Township. Fortunately more tankers had arrived by this stage, and we were able to pull up the fire some 100 metres before the railway line … the town wasn’t far away. If you drive down Harpers Road now, you can see a large green oat field that fortunately stopped the spread of the fire and narrowed the fire front to a much smaller spread that was much easier to hit and contain. At the height of the fire there were nearly 60 CFA trucks battling the fire (that’s over 300 people including Incident Control personnel) along with a large fleet of DSE vehicles and staff, three water-dropping helicopters, a CFA observing chopper and other aircraft.
Elsie, an Erickson Air-Crane visited Woodend to help with the fire response
Crews worked right through the night to contain and extinguish the fire at the Harpers Road front and in the valley along the Campaspe River. The following morning we were able to survey the extent of the scene which had burnt nearly 200 hectares of grass, scrub and gum forest. Four strike teams and DSE crews worked solidly all day Friday and Friday night to continue to extinguish the fire. On Saturday two crews from Woodend, along with crews from Hesket-Kerrie, Gisborne and Bullengarook continued the blacking out process. With 40 degree temperatures predicted for the week of Australia Day, two Woodend crews and Woodend Car, directed by Group Officer Brad Jepsen spent Australia Day morning back on the fire ground. We had also called in a Firebird helicopter, through Regional Officer Rohan Luke, with heat sensing technology (some of you may have seen it hovering around the fire area on that Monday morning) and this amazing machine was able to detect a further dozen hot spots that we were unable to detect from the ground. The crews remained on ground to continue blacking out. As I write this article, we sit well-prepared and with fingers crossed for the week ahead. See page 3 for community meeting details.
Australia Day in Woodend ... see page 3 and page 30 for details The New Woodend Star • Feb 2009
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