The decimated towns ravaged by raging the Pinery fires
COMMUNITIES faced a monster that stole lives and homes, but survivors are counting their blessings as well as the terrible cost
- LIVE: Rolling bushfire coverage
- GALLERY: Raging fires full of pain
- LOSSES: Farmers wake up to the devastation
- TRAGEDIES: Fatal Pinery fire victims identified
- BE INFORMED: CFS warnings and incidents
WASLEYS
ENVELOPED by a sudden black pall of acrid smoke and dust that left them in darkness, dozens of panicked residents fled the hamlet of Wasleys not believing they’d see their families or the town again.
Chaos reigned as the blaze roared fiercely towards the town about 2.30pm Wednesday. Within minutes, the Wasleys Bowling Club rooms were ablaze along with cars in the main street as residents struggled just to see each other in the smoky afternoon gloom.
Helen Miller was among those to flee the town and said she did not expect her home to remain standing. She said: “I’m surprised nobody died here — when we left I thought the whole town was going to go.”
Children from Wasleys Primary School were kept indoors as other residents tried to escape to safer areas. “When we left here you couldn’t see, it was black and I couldn’t find my car ... nobody knew where to go. I left like this with odd shoes, no money and the dogs in the car,” Mrs Miller said.
The damage in the town paled in comparison to the devastation wrought on properties surrounding it. Dozens of homes lay in ruins and hundreds of sheep dead in surrounding paddocks while volunteers undertook the grim task of destroying those left standing with cruel burns.
Sue McNicol fled the town with her six-year old grandson in the back of the car and was sent to Freeling and Nuriootpa before ending up in Lyndoch.
“Confusion, car crashes, smoke, embers flying everywhere and panicking not knowing where all our family was — it was just total confusion,” she said. “It was just so dark. My grandson thought it was night-time. I forgot how much a six-year-old talks when they’re scared — he just wanted his mum.”
Wasleys Bowling Club life member Dave Olive said townspeople had been staggered by the speed of the fire as it bore down on them.
“It just whooshed straight in and we didn’t realise it had got up into the roof cavity of the club and then, all of a sudden, flames were coming out from the roof,” Mr Olive said.
He added locals were unprepared for the ferocity of the blaze, which scorched wheat crops surrounding the town.
“Even our old residents who have been here 80 years have never seen anything like it, and then two hours later, the post office went up in flames,” Mr Olive said.
“There was ash flying through the air, you couldn’t see the person in front of you — it was just black.”
Then, two hours after the main fire front had passed, someone noticed a plume of smoke rising from the roof of the Wasleys Post Office.
Within a minute it was ablaze and the building sustained major damage.
Left standing was the 1866-built Wasleys Ridley Arms Hotel, where dozens of locals gathered yesterday afternoon to share stories of luck and loss.
Hotel owner Daniel O’Reilly believed a fence erected several years ago had stopped the blaze reaching gas bottles at the rear of the pub.
“If the fire had got to them, this place would not be here right now — we were very lucky,” he said.
Home of 46 years razed in seconds
FREELING AREA
By Meagan Dillon
BARB Schuster stood among the rubble of her Freeling home of 46 years when her young granddaughter came up and handed her a charred horse shoe.
“It didn’t bring us much luck,” the 69-year-old grandmother responded.
Mrs Schuster and her husband, David “Joey” Schuster, also 69, lost everything when their home was destroyed in Wednesday’s ferocious Pinery bushfire.
Mrs Schuster said her daughter told her about 2pm that there was a “big fire” closing in on Mallala from Pinery. “David woke up and said, ‘Oh God — you better look at it’,” Mrs Schuster said.
“That’s when he told me that I should get out.
“I headed for Freeling. I waited there and that’s when I tried to call my son, because he’s on (nearby) Templers Rd.
“I couldn’t get on to him so I tried to head out there, but it was just a ball of dust — that’s when I turned around and went back to Freeling.
“I could see it coming like a fireball and it was heading in one direction and I thought we were safe, but then I looked back and thought, ‘Oh no, it’s going to come around to us’.
“Then they evacuated Freeling and I had to go to Kapunda. I thought my son and grandchildren were trapped in their house.
“I couldn’t get them and I couldn’t get my husband — I didn’t know where he was and whether he was safe.
“About 5pm, my daughter rang me and told me they were all safe ... but she said, ‘The house is gone’.
“I couldn’t believe it. I was with a lady who thought her house was gone and we were both crying, and I said to her, ‘I’ve lived there for 46 years’.”
Mrs Schuster said she did not grab any valuables, including her engagement ring, photos and wedding dress, before fleeing her home.
Mr and Mrs Schuster’s historic home, which was insured, was built in 1908 but the couple had renovated it over the years. They had only installed solar panels on the roof on Monday.
The Schuster family was one of many that lost their home in the greater Freeling area on Wednesday.
At nearby Templers, three homes were destroyed.
Hope and humour help ease pain of devastating losses
HAMLEY BRIDGE
By Doug Robertson
PAUL Voege and Tina Mundy are wearing the only things they saved from their home after a rolling mass of fire swept through Hamley Bridge.
The couple took refuge in the bathroom when threatened by the blaze, which swept down from a hill about 1km away and reached their home in about 20 seconds.
In what seemed like a handful of seconds to the terrified couple, Wednesday’s fire destroyed almost everything they own. Mr Voege had to buy new socks because nothing was left in their home of 14 years.
The insurance assessor is yet to visit but Mr Voege said much of what was destroyed by the blaze would not be covered, including nine vehicles and a $25,000 American barn containing a near-new tractor.
“We’ll start again, we’ll rebuild,’’ he said. “We got home (from Adelaide) about 2pm and saw the smoke out there … and thought that’s going to miss us, then it turned around and changed (direction).
“The roar was coming with it and it was just rolling to us and in 20 seconds ... it just lit up everything right through and up on the house.
“When it had gone over into the paddock and we came out, everything was alight.
“(The smoke) was like going from sunlight to dark — you couldn’t see a thing.’’
They grabbed their fox terrier dog and sat in their car outside the property as all their cherished memories went up in smoke. Virtually nothing survived but, remarkably, four horses in the front yard did.
Ms Mundy, a CFS volunteer, admitted to being terrified while huddling in the bathroom and she said she was grateful for the fire pants she wore — it’s now all she has to wear. “I was going to have a spring clean but that was ridiculous,’’ she joked. “We’ll rebuild, you can’t do nothing — I like it here.’’
Hamley Bridge farmer and former AFL player Luke McCabe returned to the family home on Wednesday night to find it a blackened shell, but even in the grimmest of circumstances he was still counting his blessings.
Mr McCabe, who played 138 games for Hawthorn and is a dual Central District premiership player, was fighting the Pinery bushfire near Long Plains when the wind changed direction. Long Plains to Hamley Bridge is about 20km but Mr McCabe phoned wife Judy and told her to get out as soon as she could.
“That was 20-odd kilometres away and she only just got out in time, “ he said. “It gives you a bit of an idea how fast it was travelling,’’ he said. “Just in the nick of time to be honest.’’ Mr McCabe, who is the brother of Helen McCabe, editor-in-chief of TheAustralian Women’s Weekly, was unsure yesterday of the extent of his losses. Up to 400 lambs, a “fair bit’’ of grain sitting in silos, machinery and many recently installed fences. But he knows it could have been worse.
“I am just rapt we are all right,’’ he said. “I am pretty pragmatic about all that. It’s just important that people know how bad it is and there’s going to be a lot of people worse off than we are and they are going to need some help.’’
Mr McCabe even managed to find a moment of black humour while looking at his devastated home last night.
“It was the family home, and I grew up there,’’ he said.
“Having said that, it did need a little reno — so I will be able to do that now.’’