18 January 2003 firestorm - Mount Stromlo stories

Laura Stanford

The fires had started a week or so before January 18th, but seemed so far away. Every day there were reports that they were getting closer, but they weren't that close, and I assumed that they would be under control soon enough. My husband (Rob) and I had discussed the fires, and thought that if our house did burn down (we lived in House 11 on the mountain) then it wouldn't be too bad – we could replace everything in the house with no problems.

On Saturday the 18th of January I went to work at the Visitors' Centre as I did every Saturday at 11am. I worked as the Information Officer in the front office – handling phone calls and enquiries. The day before I had heard some talk that the may have to be shut down over the weekend if they thought the fires were getting too close (by "they" I mean the fire department or Mt Stromlo people). When I got to the Visitors' Centre, it already looked a bit chaotic. Sometime between when I arrived and 11:30, a fire truck and ute came up to the centre. Graeme Blackman, as site security officer, talked to them, and they advised that we would have to shut down the Visitors' Centre as Cotter Rd was being shut from Eucumbene Drive which meant that no-one would be able to come up the mountain to the centre. Simon and Joasia Robinson also talked to the firemen, and started their staff packing up their cafe. I talked to the explainer on duty – Hermann Weiner, who then closed down the Exhibit Hall. Frank Filardo was working in the Gift Shop that day, and started packing up as well. Both Frank and Hermann soon left. Graeme went off to inform all the residents who were on the mountain that we had been placed on alert to evacuate in case the fires came too close. I had also talked to the firemen, who did tell me that the fires looked to be worse than the fire that came through the mountain in the 1950's, but even though it was quite hot, it was a clear day – the smoke wasn't too thick as it had been for the last few days, the wind wasn't too bad. Also, the firemen didn't look as if they'd just come from fighting the fires, and didn't seem to be in a rush to go – I thought if it was as bad as they were saying they needed everyone out there fighting them. Before I left the Visitors' Centre I sent an email to all Mt Stromlo staff letting them know that the centre was being shut down and what I had been told about the situation. I also rang Catherine Drake and the explainers who were rostered on for the next day letting them know that they didn't need to come in on the Sunday. Catherine said that if we did get evacuated we could come to her house in Kambah. I then went home; it was about 12 noon at this stage.

When I got home, I talked with Rob, and even though we had been put on alert, we still didn't think that things were going to get serious. Since it was so hot, we had icecream for lunch – something we never do – and Rob played games on his playstation while I read one of my favourite books.

At about 1:30, we realised that the smoke was getting quite a bit thicker, and  decided to go for a walk to the top of the mountain to see what we could see. We met up with Isabel, Christine, and Marilena. I think those were the people there – I'm a bit hazy on that. We went behind the workshops and looked out over the valley. I think we could see three of the fire fronts. There was one well to the north, we didn't think that one would hit the mountain at all unless the wind changed drastically, the middle almost directly to the west also looked like it would pass to the north of us, and the southern most one looked as if it would pass south of us. We could see the flames in the southern most fire front coming down the other side of the valley – but quite slowly. Ken Freeman joined us behind the workshops. It was getting quite smoky at this stage and very windy. We started walking back to the main buildings when Rob turns to me and asks "What about that instrument thingy that Andre (from the electrical section) has been working on". He was talking about NIFS, and I had no idea what had been done with NIFS, we turned to Ken and asked him – he replied that it was in a cement lined room (I think) and it should be ok.

I decided to go to my office and back up some of my data, and set a tape going. Marilena was in the office next to me and we found out the phones were down at that stage. Rob went home to start packing up some of our things just in case. About 5 minutes later a police officer came to my door and said we had to evacuate the mountain now. I grabbed all my data tapes and some notes. He asked if there was anyone else in the building. We went and got Marilena and she said that Kim Sebo was here as well backing up the home areas (on the computers). Apparently John Norris had rung him earlier in the day and asked that he come up to do so. I went over to the Duffield building to Catherine's office to try and get her data. She had told me earlier that although she'd backed up her thesis, she had forgotten to take the data tape home with her. Unfortunately the door was too heavy and strong and neither I nor Liam Waldron (who tried very hard to break the door down for me) could get it open. I then ran home where Rob was busy packing the car wondering where I was. He'd tried to ring my office but had found out the phones were down.

By this time there was a police car on the mountain trying to get us off straight away. I grabbed a suitcase that Rob had left me and threw as many clothes in it as I could. We mainly grabbed good clothes – which was totally impractically for the days ahead. Rob grabbed some of his shirts – most of which turned out to be green! Rob had already grabbed some photos, a draw full of important papers, and a briefcase. I put my work stuff in the car – we only have a little Hyundai Excel which doesn't fit much into it. The last things I grabbed were 3 cans of dog food, and Rob grabbed our most expensive bottle of wine (the one we had been saving). By then most of everyone else had already left the mountain. Scottie – our dog – just wouldn't get into the car. We finally lifted him in but had no time to put his car harness on, and the back seat was almost full of things anyway so he had very little room. Rob drove, he left our driveway, and the police saw us – they'd thought we'd already left. I guess they wanted to make sure we left the mountain because they tailgated us down to the boom gate and made Rob drive at a speed that really bordered on being too fast. They stopped in at house 2 and 3 to check them while we went on down the mountain. Just after the big turn we caught up to Kim who was following Christine who was following Isabel. Isabel had kangaroos jumping in front of her the whole way – she did a good job of avoiding them – at this stage we'd slowed down a fair bit to a safer speed. We got to Cotter Rd and turned left towards the city. Due to road blocks we had to then go up Eucumbene, but we could see that further up Cotter Rd towards the city the forest was already on fire – big flames that engulfed the trees. We then had to go left along Benmark St (I think) where there were people backed up the opposite way arguing with police to be let through. Some were just cars, a fair few were people with horse floats. Everyone was turned back. We followed this road for a bit, but were again diverted in Chapman. We split up with the other Stromlo cars, and went towards Tuggeranong. We were finally able to get onto Drakeford Drive and head towards Catherine's house. By then it was getting quite dark and there was thick smoke everywhere.

We arrived at Catherine's at about 2:30pm. We didn't bother unpacking the car since we had since learned that more suburbs had been put on alert to evacuate and Kambah was one of them. One thing that did annoy us at the time was that the radio was saying that no-one had been evacuated yet – although we had. A few reasons for this were that Stromlo wasn't considered residential and that they just didn't get the information straight away. We heard that houses had been lost in Duffy and Chapman and as the day went on the number of houses destroyed just grew. Catherine started packing her car just in case, to make sure she could take everything that was important to her. We filled up her bath and got towels ready – just in case. It started to get darker and darker, and the wind really picked up. The sky turned red and we could hear the sirens from trucks going up and down Drakeford Drive. Ashes were continually falling from the sky – people were worried that they'd cause spot fires as they had elsewhere. Most of the neighbours were watering down their houses and trees. The weather was so hot though that most of the water instantaneously evaporated. We could also see the helicopter pick up water from somewhere towards Lake Tuggeranong regularly. We could see all the surrounding mountains on fire. The power went out at some stage, so we couldn't even hear reports on the radio anymore. We didn't have any batteries and nothing to put them in. We'd go out every hour to hear the latest reports on the car radio but we were always worried that we'd wear down the car battery if we listened for too long.

We made contact with as many of the students as we could to make sure everyone was OK. We kept a list of everyone's phone numbers. We also rang our relatives to let them know we were ok but were evacuated – I don't think that they'd heard much by this stage. I had a lot of trouble getting in contact with my mother – but eventually was able to. I also wanted to contact my family because it was my sister's birthday that day and wanted to wish her a happy birthday.

Even though we kept hearing the reports of more and more houses being lost, they never reported on Mt Stromlo and whether the houses up there had been hit. We knew that they wouldn't have sent trucks up the mountain to fight the fires, since they were needed more in the suburbs, but some news would have been good. Rob and I went for a walk to the nearest shops, hoping that it would be open so we could get some batteries and torches (I forget what else we wanted). Unfortunately all the power was out there as well and we couldn't get anything. We were amazed at all the traffic that was on Drakeford Drive. We couldn't work out where people were going, probably like us – looking for a shop that was open. Another thing that amazed us was the speed at which everyone was travelling. All the traffic lights were out, as were the street lights, and yet they were travelling at the normal speed limit of 80Km/h, and not stopping at the intersections.

All the way up the road in every direction, the mountains where on fire. They looked like volcanos – and with all the lights in the city out, were bright with glowing embers. Mt Taylor, Mt Arawang, the Urambi Hills next to Tuggeranong and the hills out toward Stromlo were all alight. We then walked back to Catherine's.

We had a dinner of salad sandwiches – luckily Catherine had just been shopping and so had plenty of food. We went to bed that night – I have no idea what time. It was difficult to sleep knowing that we may have to leave at any time. Rob and I slept in the clothes we had been wearing all day. They smelled so much like smoke but we didn't want to evacuate in our pj's. Scottie was very restless during the night, none of us slept well. The next morning we got up. We rang up Erindale shopping centre and found out it was still open and went there around 7 or 8 am, I think, to get a few things. I don't remember much of Sunday morning. We had a coffee at Michele's Patisserie – which was absolutely disgusting! We kept in contact with the students. I found out John Norris' home phone number and called – thinking that he may have information about what had happened on the mountain. John wasn't home and so I spoke with his wife – Robyn. She told me that he and Vince O'Connor had gone to try and get access to the mountain. We had heard on the radio that we weren't supposed to go into Weston – all the roads were closed off and we wouldn't be able to get back up the mountain.

The power was still out at mid morning. Minh Hyunh came over to Catherine's, she lived very close to the city and so didn't get a lot of what we had had. We heard on the radio that the ANU had set up a telephone line for information. I rang this number hoping to get some word of what had happened on Mt Stromlo. A lady told me that the Woolley and Duffield had survived but that was it – everything else was gone, including all the residences. I couldn't speak at all at this point and gave the phone to Rob, up until then I still had thought our house had survived. I rang Robyn again to see if there was any more information – she said that John had told her he had driven up the road and could see that houses 2 and 3 were ok, 7 was gone, 8 was ok, 18 was ok, 19 was gone and 20 was ok. Being so far back from the road there was no information on our house. So I started to have hope again that ours would have survived. All the telescopes were gone though, along with the admin building and workshops. The Visitors' Centre was still mostly intact as well. We were glad that the Woolley and Duffield buildings were OK seeing they contained so much research material.

A little later John called and told me that our house hadn't survived. We did hope that something had survived though.

We went to Rachel and Lachlan's for lunch. A lot of the students did. We were hoping to see the news reports on Stromlo. It was quite difficult to eat anything, and after a few hours we decided to go back to Catherine's. When we got back we found the power had been turned back on. We also heard from Sebastian, who told us that he had managed to get up the mountain. Rob, Catherine and I got in the car and drove up to Mt Stromlo. It was quite difficult to see all the houses destroyed and still smouldering. It was scary having to drive across fallen power lines as well. We had to go through a few road blocks, but they let us through since the address on my licence said Mt Stromlo. We got to the top of the mountain, to our house. We couldn't drive right up because there were power lines across the road. Everything was black. The house was totally destroyed. The roof was gone, there was nothing left anywhere. We could see the frame of our bed through the bedroom window – a mangled mess of metal. The temperature had gotten so hot that nothing survived. We found out later that the gas meter had blown off and there was a huge gas jet flying up into the sky above our house. We did go into the house, and found a cement pig that survived (it did lose its front toes though) and a snail. We collected little animals for every wedding anniversary and those were the only ones we could find. One of Rob's comments is as follows:

Even though there was only a slight chance that it wouldn't be destroyed, in the back of your mind you always hope it missed you and just burnt the grass or the shed or something.

It is so hard to believe when you go back and it isn't just fire damaged it is completely burnt out – gone. The house looks like a Lego house that a kid hasn't finished and in the middle of it is a large branch – even though there weren't any trees overhanging the house!

Instead of a linen cupboard there is a divot in what's left of the wall, a small tangle of metal is the fridge and the lawn mower is now attached to the ground.

We didn't cry or get very emotional about it then. I think it hadn't set in – it didn't really look like our home. We started arranging the insurance matters the next day – we had contents insurance (which was actually less than what we had in the house). We had made sure that the insurance had the correct address and was still valid the year before when the fires came through then. Then we started thinking about everything that we thought we could easily replace. Things like the bookshelf Rob gave me for my 21st, all my books, Rob's Star Wars collection, jewellery given to me by relatives. I realised that it meant a lot more to me than I thought it did. I never had much of a "home" when growing up, and this was the first house Rob and I had lived in that didn't feel like somebody else's. It was our home.

Everybody was very supportive. There were some people that had comments that weren't very helpful, but for the most part everyone was very kind and helpful. Catherine was the best. She let us stay at her house for 6 weeks and also looked after Scottie for 2 weeks when we went overseas (a trip that had been planned months earlier). At times it seems like the focus is a lot more on the Observatory than on the houses that were lost, but I see that side too – since the Observatory did lose a lot of itself. Rob and I were lucky – we were able to move back onto the mountain quite quickly (thanks to John and Penny I think) into one of the houses that survived – House 2. It was difficult at first being up here all the time, but I've really appreciated the fact that we are up here again.