Victorian bushfires remembered: Burnt into memory

Editorial: Jesse Wray-McCann and Clare O’Donnell

Photography: Jesse Wray-McCann and George Katris

After more than 34 years in policing, many of which have been spent in senior leadership roles, Superintendent Simon Humphrey has made countless big decisions with significant consequences.

But there are few that still weigh on him like the decision to send a team of police officers into Cann River on 30 December 2019, as bushfires began to take hold in areas around the small town.

As the Divisional Area Commander for the East Gippsland Region, Supt Humphrey was one of those at Bairnsdale Police Station in charge of managing police resources in response to the massive fires.

“We were making life and death decisions several times a shift, and the deployment into Cann River was really challenging for us,” Supt Humphrey said.

Officers working at the Bairnsdale Incident Police Operations Centre during the fires.

Supt Humphrey needed to replace police officers who had been working for a number of days in and around Cann River to operate roadblocks, maintain order and provide community reassurance.

The information from the control agency Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning’s Incident Control Centre (ICC) in Bairnsdale was that sophisticated modelling and weather predictions showed the fires were not expected to hit Cann River.

Supt Humphrey put together a team of police, mostly made up of officers from Melbourne, and sent them in to relieve their colleagues.

About 10pm that night, Supt Humphrey told the 24 police officers in Cann River that although there was a fire 15km away and another 20km away, the ICC was comfortable the town was not at risk.

But this was a fire season like no other, and these were fires that behaved like none before them.

The fires had turned so ferocious they were creating their own weather, including thunderstorms and a wind change that had pushed the fires back towards Cann River.

About 3am on 31 December, the police who were off-duty and sleeping had to evacuate their accommodation.

They joined their colleagues and about 200 other people at the school in town, which had been identified as a place of last resort for the community.

The officers donned protective fire equipment and some even joined local Country Fire Brigade (CFA) firefighters in manning the hoses at the school.

As the blaze got closer to Cann River, police and firefighters sought to keep people safe at the local school.

Supt Humphrey said the fire came within 500m of the school, leaving some of the officers fearing it may hit the town.

As they tried to keep the community members calm, a heroic group of local contractors used their bulldozers to clear vital fire breaks on the edge of Cann River.

A favourable change in conditions then directed the fires away from the town, ensuring everyone’s safety.

With the fires cutting off all the roads around Cann River, the beleaguered officers were among the last to evacuate the town days later, doing so under CFA escort through tracks that were still on fire in some parts.

Supt Humphrey said the ordeal had left some of the officers traumatised.

Although no one could predict the fire conditions that eventuated, Supt Humphrey remains troubled by the situation his troops faced.

“Some hours after they got to Cann River, it quickly became anything but safe,” he said.

“Even when the fire got close, the consistent advice we had from the ICC was they would be safe at the school, but this was just a beast of a fire and would have been frightening to be confronted with.

I still feel very deeply about putting those officers in harm’s way.

“Decisions around routine deployments like this are generally made as a collective by the incident management team but, as the police commander, it was ultimately my decision.

“While any deployment during an emergency event carries some element of risk, what was initially a safe changeover of staff quickly turned into a dangerous and precarious situation.”

But Supt Humphrey praised the “incredible” efforts and bravery of the police and other authorities involved in keeping people safe through the fires.

“Their ability to just keep pushing on and on and on, day after day after day was really heroic, and I think we provided really good support to the communities,” he said.