18 January 2003 firestorm - Mount Stromlo stories Oliver Schnurr RSAA Visiting Fellow at Mount Stromlo Observatory – email interview, 28 March 2003

Mr Schnurr was an RSAA Visiting Fellow from overseas. On the day of the fire (18 January 2003), he returned to the Bachelors' Quarters (where he was living) after working for most of the previous night. He went to sleep in his room, and was unaware of the evacuation. He woke up while the fire front was passing over the building.

Bart Meehan: What was your role/studies at Mount Stromlo?

Oliver Schnurr: I was observer at the 74" from the outside, hence not figuring on any staff lists.

B – Is it true that you had been observing on the night of 17 January and then returned to the Bachelors Quarters to sleep? What time did you get back to the bachelors quarters? Did anyone know you were in the quarters?

S – I was not observing due to heavy smoke in the air, but I worked all night in the control room of the 74". Being used to working at nights, I couldn't sleep anyway. I came back around 9 in the morning, where I met Mark Whittle and David Rosario moving out from the Bachelors Quarters to their own house (Residence 2 or so, which is for staff of the U of Virginia). We talked a bit, and eventually I went to bed around 11.

Before falling asleep I heard Kim, resident of the other half of the complex, cleaning the gutters around the house.

B – Were you aware of any bush fire threat to the site prior to the 18 January 2003?

S – Kim and other residents of #16 (the other half of the house) showed me the fire on Friday evening before I went to the dome. Since no one was particularly worried, I did not realise that there was a real danger. I heard that a kind of evacuation order ("prepare to leave within 24 hours") had been issued for Stromlo. But not only was nobody actually worried, it remained unclear to me whether this evacuation plan said "to leave after a period of 24 hours" or "prepare to leave within 24 hours after ANOTHER order has been issued". Both ways, it evidently did not matter since the call was too late anyway.

B – When did you first realise that the fire was on the site and what was your immediate reaction?

S – I realised that the fire was on site when I woke up (I don't know why) and noticed the red light. Thinking of it being sunset, I wondered why I was still so tired. Checking the clock (1500 hours plus/minus 2 minutes) made me look outside. It took, I guess, a couple of seconds before I realized that I was seeing NOTHING but a pinkish wall, and that this was the fire. That is, there was no apparent structure in what I saw, no flames, not even trees could be seen because of the intense pink glow of everything.

I jumped out of the bed, put on my jeans and a T-shirt, slipped into light shoes, and ran into the kitchen with a long-sleaved shirt and two towels. At this time, my room was virtually smoke-free, while the rest of the house was slightly filled with smoke (it would actually take a couple of minutes before the smoke detector started to ring).

In the kitchen, I used the rest of the water coming out of the taps to wet my cloths and the towels, however there was not enough water – steam came out of the tap. Luckily, I had a 2 litre bottle of water in the fridge. With that, I wet my (long) hair, went back to my room and wet the blanket of my bed [that] I intended to use as cover and a heat shield. (Oh, I just remember that I tried out the phone. Of course it was dead, and while hanging up I smiled and imagined myself telling the operator "uuh, I gotta kinda problem here, Ma'am" – what would THAT have helped? What was I supposed to tell him or her?)

At this time, and also while standing in the kitchen, I looked outside and realised that I was completely surrounded by the fire. Since I saw no flames I figured I was in the MIDDLE of the fire front (only days later I saw pictures with the 150m high flames on top of Stromlo). I was aware of the fact that I could not leave the house and that I had to wait until the fire front had gone through; at least so I read in the brochure (see below). However, since the house was in no way prepared for a fire (hosed down, gutters filled, perimeters cleared of underwood etc), I had to hope for the front moving faster than the house starting to catch fire.

It was pretty obvious to me that I would have to stay in a house which was possibly already burning. I was terribly afraid of carbon monoxide, smoke and parts of the roof coming down. On the other hand, I had not seen the fire coming, hence I did not know in which direction it would go precisely – you don't want to run out of a house and into a fire front, do you? Thus I decided to stay in the house as long as possible. I stayed in my room (number 1), laying on the floor and under my wet blanket, breathing through the wet towels I had flung around my neck in order to protect my hair from the heat. Periodically, maybe every 2 minutes or so, I looked up and out of the window in order to see whether the front had already gone through. (I had removed the curtain because I was afraid of it catching fire should the window burst, which was quite possible given the fact the cracks were already visible.)

Slowly, the house was filling with smoke. While I had shut the bathroom window (getting a small blister on one finger, which indeed has been my only injury), the toilet window was open – by construction. Hence, smoke was coming in form the toilet, which I tried (too late, by the way) to stop by stuffing a blanket between door and floor. But already there were flames leaking through the conditioning holes in the walls, which indicated that the roof had caught fire.

The Bachelors' Quarters are, as you know, one half of a house, separated by a wall from the other half. Where this separation wall meets the ceiling, flames started to leak in. I concluded that the other half of the house had burst into flames, and that it was time for leaving. I prepared my backpack with my passport, plane ticket, and cash, and went into the corridor. Outside, the fire had gone, but it was still very smoky. I knew (from Hollywood movies) that by opening the main door, oxygen would flood into the house and that the small flames leaking in from everywhere would burst into a major thing, hence I had only one chance to get out, since the backdraft would inhibit a return into the house, should I have to change my plans.

I waited a minute or so more, knocked a couple of times against the separation wall in order to see whether other people had also been caught by the fire, and opened the door. Of course there was a sucking nose as air was pouring in, and of course the house went up in flames. I had planned to run onto the small playground next to the BQ, where I figured I would be safe from radiant heat (embers) and smaller fires, as well as from burning trees.

I first intended to run down the little slope right next to the Bachelors Quarters, but the underwood that had been there was a pile of embers, and the heat was too intense. I turned round and ran down the little dirt track, carefully avoiding the cedar tree, jumped over the fence surrounding the playground and ran to a point roughly in the middle of this ground. Until I had reached the fence, visibility was about 1.5m or so, I could barely see the ground.

On the playground, I turned back and saw the Bachelors Quarters in flames. Everywhere was smoke and embers, yet no flames. I sat down, using the blanket as a heat shield against the residual heat of what used to be the woods at the west of the Bachelors Quarters, and decided to wait until next morning before walking down the hill. I supposed I was the only one on the hill; all the cars usually standing in front of my neighbour's had left. Hence I did not bother to look for other people, and decided to stay where I was instead.

However, after 10 or 15 minutes, I saw two people in yellow firefighter uniforms, Mark and Andrew, both of whom I'd never met before. I walked towards them and presented myself. They then brought me inside, giving me something to drink. While they were out, putting out spot fires, I remained inside Mark's house for a while. After some time, an hour or so, we three went out to check the other buildings. Walking up the dirt track from the Bachelors Quarters to Admin, we did not dare go beyond Admin, since it was burning, emitting huge clouds of smoke with possibly toxic fumes.

At nightfall Mark's wife Suzanna came up the hill, and after a while both Suzie and me left in her car, going down to Duffy to spend the night there. Hence, I did not see the telescopes or other houses before Sunday morning, when we drove back to Stromlo.

B – How did you know what to do when the fire arrived?

S –Antoine Bouchard had picked up a brochure while on a trip to Ceduna, SA, and showed it to me the day of my arrival in Australia, December 31st. As a matter of fact, we were making fun about the instructions given in this brochure, but in the end, recalling them and a bunch of movies (especially "Backdraft", ha ha) saved my life. At least, although not KNOWING what to do, I HAD something to do, so I had no time to panic.

B – What was your status at the school?

S – External observer at the MSO 74" telescope, scheduled from Jan 03–28. I was not member of RSAA, not even affiliated.

B – How long had you been in Australia?

S – I arrived in the afternoon of December 31 2002.

B – You mention there was steam coming from the taps when you tried to wet the towels. Tell me more.

S – For maybe 10 seconds or so, water had come out, then steam came out of the tap. But not tremendous amounts, just a desperate "phhht" before the flow stopped. I was never in danger of getting cooked.

B – Was there any power or water in the house as the fire passed?

S – No, power was the first thing to shut down (the power line posts came down, since it was on the fire's side, thus it was hit first). I think I remember that there was maybe half a minute or so power left, grand maximum. The light went out fairly quickly.

B – Do you believe that the fire entered the building through the fixed open windows as well as the roof?

S – As a matter of fact, I believe that the fixed open window saved most of the toilet, at least it looked like the least destroyed afterwards. A reason could be that smoke filled the room, and oxygen was sucked out by the fire. To illustrate this: there was a plastic bottle of cleaning agent right on the window shelf inside – is was still there after the fire, it had not even melted away...

I rather believe that the roof was the first thing to catch fire, and furthermore that this had happened first to the other half of the residence. Remember that my room was the last to fill with smoke, and that flames were leaking over the separation wall between the Bachelors Quarters and the other half. This is why I think the other half was already burning *inside* while I was still in relative safety on my side, and why I thought the fire came from the "other" side. It might be of interest to ask the people from there (i.e. other half) if they had left open one or more windows through which the fire could have come in.

-o0o-