18 January 2003 firestorm - Mount Stromlo stories

Bruce Peterson

Every day at lunchtime, I walk up to the top of Mt. Stromlo, beyond the Oddie Telescope and the EOS laser tracking installation. On Tuesday, 14 January, the Brindabella Mountain Range could be seen against a background curtain of smoke. In front of the mountains lay the Molonglo and Murrumbidgee Rivers. On both sides of the rivers was parched and brown open grassland. Farther from river, on the foothills were pine plantations, including the one on Mt. Stromlo itself.

On Wednesday 15 January, I was joined at the top of Mt. Stromlo by a team from the CSIRO Bushfire Research Unit. I asked them how far away was the fire, and was told it was 15km distant. I asked how fast the fire could move and was told that it could move at a rate of anything from 5km/day to 5km/hour.  The following day, 16 January, two people from the CSIRO Bushfire Research Unit were again on the top of Mt. Stromlo when I reached the top. At this time I was told it was 10km off.  The same two people from the CSIRO Bushfire Research Unit were again on the top of Mt. Stromlo on Friday, 17 January. They told me the fire was now 5km away.

The Molonglo–Murrumbidgee valley was filled with a thin haze of smoke, but there was no evidence of any large back burns having been started in the valley. I had expected that a vigorous program of back burning would have commenced at the Molonglo and Murrumbidgee Rivers and would have been extended away from the rivers toward the fire. However, it appeared to me from my vantage point on top of the mountain that nothing effective was being done about this fire, which was slowly and steadily approaching Mt. Stromlo. I returned to the Observatory and started running backups of my data. I brought my car over to the Electronics Workshop and loaded the CCD camera that I was building with the University of Tokyo into my car and took it home at the end of the day.

On Saturday morning, 18 January, I came up to Mt. Stromlo and continued running backups. While the backups were running, I began loading my computers and selected data tapes and books from my office into my car to take home. About noon, Graeme Blackman came by and advised me to leave the mountain, which I did.

At home, my wife and I collected the cat and put her in her carry box. We got out the garden hoses and started spraying water on the roof of our house to wet it down, and to wet down whatever had collected in the gutters. We also sprayed water on the wooden fence, which surrounds our block, but it was so hot and the humidity was so low, that by the time one end for the fence was reached, the other end was dry again.

The sky was black overhead and orange around the western horizon. It was so dark that the street lights came on at about 3pm. We could hear the fire coming. It first sounded like freeway noise that was getting steadily louder. A spot fire started on Mt. Taylor to the north east of us. Then we could see large plumes of black smoke coming up from behind the Chapman Hills to the north west, and we realized that houses were burning in Chapman. Mt. Taylor was now a blazing fire. To the south, we saw the fire come over the hills behind the Murrumbidgee River, and then come over McQuoids Hill and Mt. Neighbour to the west and the Chapman Hills to the north west. The fire now sounded like jet aircraft idling on the runway before take off. It made very slow progress through the horse paddocks across Kambah Pool Road to the west – these had been largely eaten bare. However, when the fire jumped the Murrumbidgee River at Kambah Pool, it came racing up the gum trees planted along Kambah Pool Road behind our house. The flames were 3m high and moving at a running pace. At this point, garden hoses seemed very futile. We quickly clicked the hoses onto their usual rotary lawn sprinklers, grabbed the cat in her box, and drove off.

At no point in all this was there any help or advice from Emergency Services.

We returned an hour later to find that our house was still there, though two houses about 100m down the street from us were gone.

We got out some buckets and joined others in the neighbourhood in putting out spot fires that were too far for the garden hoses to reach. Our first encounter with Emergency Services was with a fire truck that drove up, paused, and then drove on.

The electricity was out. Continued inquiries about when power would be restored were answered with the reply, "tomorrow". After 4 days, all the food in the freezer was spoiled, the reply changed to "don't know". At that point, I obtained a generator. Four days later the power was restored.