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= Ash Wednesday bushfires =
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Introduction
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The Ash Wednesday bushfires, known in South Australia as Ash Wednesday
II, were a series of bushfires that occurred in south-eastern
Australia in 1983 on 16 February, the Christian holy day Ash
Wednesday. Within twelve hours, more than 180 fires fanned by hot
winds of up to caused widespread destruction across the states of
Victoria and South Australia. Years of severe drought and extreme
weather combined to create one of Australia's worst fire days in a
century. The fires were the deadliest in Australian history until the
Black Saturday bushfires in 2009.
75 people died as a result of the fires; 47 in Victoria, and 28 in
South Australia. This included 14 Country Fire Authority and three
Country Fire Service personnel, all 17 were volunteer firefighters.
Many fatalities were as a result of firestorm conditions caused by a
sudden and violent wind change in the evening which rapidly changed
the direction and size of the fire front. The speed and ferocity of
the flames, aided by abundant fuels and a landscape immersed in smoke,
made fire suppression and containment impossible. In many cases,
residents fended for themselves as fires broke communications, cut off
escape routes and severed electricity and water supplies. Up to 8,000
people were evacuated in Victoria at the height of the crisis and a
state of disaster was declared for the first time in South Australia's
history.
A 2001 report found Ash Wednesday to be one of Australia's worst
fires. More than 3,700 buildings were destroyed or damaged and 2,545
individuals and families lost their homes. Livestock losses were very
high, with more than 340,000 sheep, 18,000 cattle and numerous native
animals either dead or later destroyed. A total of 4,540 insurance
claims were paid totalling A$176 million with a total estimated cost
of well over A$400 million (1983 values) for both states, equivalent
to A$1.3 billion in 2007.
The emergency saw the largest number of volunteers called to duty from
across Australia at the same time—an estimated 130,000 firefighters,
defence force personnel, relief workers and support crews.
1980 South Australian bushfires
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On Ash Wednesday in 1980 (20 February) during a virtually rainless
summer after a very wet spring in 1979, bushfires swept through the
Adelaide Hills in South Australia, destroying 51 houses. These fires
were referred to as "Ash Wednesday" until the 1983 fires, which became
notorious nationwide.
El Niño
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As 1982 came to a close, large areas of eastern Australia lay
devastated by a prolonged drought thought to be caused by the El Niño
climatic cycle. In many places, rainfall over winter and spring had
been as little as half the previous record low in a record dating back
to the 1870s and severe water restrictions were imposed in Melbourne
in November. On 24 November, the earliest Total Fire Ban in forty
years was proclaimed in Victoria. By February 1983, summer rainfall
for Victoria was up to 75% less than in previous years. The first week
of February was punctuated by intense heat, with record-high
temperatures experienced on 1 and 8 February. This combination further
destabilised an already volatile fire situation in the forested upland
areas surrounding the Victorian and South Australian capitals of
Melbourne and Adelaide.
Early fire season
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Victorian Government firefighting agencies employed extra staff and
organised for extra equipment and aircraft to be ready for
firefighting over the summer. The first big bushfire occurred on 25
November 1982 and was followed by large fires on 3 and 13 December
1982. Even before 16 February, fires were already causing destruction
in Victoria. An ongoing fire near Cann River in the state's east had
been burning uncontrolled for almost a month. Prior to that, a major
bushfire on 8 January had taken hold north of Bacchus Marsh in the
Wombat State Forest where two Forest Commission workers lost their
lives defending Greendale. On 1 February 1983, a fire burnt the north
face of Mount Macedon and areas of state forest. Fifty houses were
destroyed. These fires were already creating a strain on firefighting
resources. In the 1982/83 season, 3500 fires were reported to the
Country Fire Authority in Victoria alone.
Dust storm
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On 8 February, Melbourne was enveloped by a giant dust storm. The dust
cloud was over 300 m high, 500 km long and was composed of an
estimated 50,000 tonnes of topsoil from the drought-ravaged Wimmera
and Mallee areas of north-west Victoria. Leading a dry cool change and
preceded by record temperatures, the dust storm cut visibility in
Melbourne to 100 metres, creating near darkness for almost an hour.
There was also a dust storm in Adelaide on the day of the bushfires.
Events of 16 February
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Wednesday 16 February dawned as another unrelentingly hot, dry day.
The weather early on Ash Wednesday was complex and did not signify how
the day would develop. A front separated hot, dry air coming in from
the interior to the north, from cooler air moving eastwards from the
Southern Ocean. Ahead of the front were hot, turbulent, gale-force
northerly winds. Temperatures around Melbourne and Adelaide quickly
rose above , with winds gusting up to and relative humidity plunging
to as low as 6 per cent. From mid-morning, McArthur's fire danger
index was in excess of 100 in several places in Victoria and South
Australia. It would be one of the worst fire weather days in
south-east Australia since the disastrous Black Friday bushfires in
1939.
The first fire was reported at 11:30 am at McLaren Flat, south of
Adelaide. Within hours, multiple reports of breaking fires quickly
began to deluge Victoria's and South Australia's emergency services.
In Victoria alone, 180 fires were reported, eight of which became
major fires. At one stage, the entire Melbourne metropolitan area was
encircled by an arc of fire. Property loss began early in the
afternoon, particularly in the Adelaide Hills, east of Adelaide and
the Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne.
Murray Nicoll, a journalist from radio station 5DN and resident of the
Adelaide Hills, reported live from his local area where five people
died:
Mount Lofty Summit Road is lined by a number of historic mansions,
like Eurilla, Carminow and Mount Lofty House. The flames roared up the
tower of Carminow like a chimney, destroying everything, including the
gardens. Next door at Eurilla, Kym and Julie Bonython lost all of
their worldly possessions, including antiques, paintings and Kym
Bonython's extensive jazz record collection. He saved only his
favourite motorbike. At this time, this part of the Adelaide Hills was
still not connected to the mains water supply, so all of the houses
had only petrol-powered pumps and rainwater tanks. "The petrol in the
emergency pump just vaporised with the heat" said Kym Bonython. "We
could do nothing except watch the place burn". Across the road at Pine
Lodge (formerly the Mt Lofty Tea Rooms), the resident rolled out the
property's fire hose, connected it to the working diesel pump, only to
find that embers were already burning numerous holes in the hose,
rendering it useless. Down the road at Mount Lofty House, Mr and Mrs
James Morgan lost $150,000 worth of furniture and artwork, which they
had moved into the huge house only a fortnight before the fires, when
they purchased the property.
At 3:15 pm on Wednesday, Mr and Mrs Morgan went to pick up their
children from the local school and kindergarten. "Three quarters of an
hour later the roof was burning", said Mr Morgan. Flames across the
road and road blocks prevented the family from returning to the house,
until it was burnt to the ground. "It's worth nothing now", said Mr
Morgan. All of these houses have since been restored and are privately
owned. Mount Lofty House has since been turned into a boutique hotel.
St Michael's House, a mansion converted to an Anglican theological
college and priory in the 1940s, was also burnt in the fires, but not
restored and the whole site has since been cleared, leaving only the
ruins of the gate house.
More than 60 per cent of the houses lost in South Australia were in
the Mount Lofty Ranges. Of the 26 people who died in South Australia,
12 were in metropolitan areas, including four in the Adelaide suburb
of Greenhill.
Wind change
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The most disastrous factor in the Ash Wednesday fires occurred just
before nightfall when a fierce and dry wind change swept across South
Australia and Victoria. This abruptly changed the direction and
dramatically increased the intensity of the fires. The long corridors
of flame that had been driven all day by the strong northerly were
suddenly hit by gale-force south-westerly winds and became enormous
fire fronts, many kilometres wide, with wind reportedly moving faster
than .
The near-cyclonic strength of the wind change created an unstoppable
firestorm that produced tornado-like fire whirls and fireballs of
eucalyptus gas measuring over three metres across. Survivors reported
that the roar of the fire front was similar to that of a jet engine,
though multiplied fifty, a hundred times. The change in temperature
and air pressure was so savage that houses were seen exploding before
fire could touch them. A resident of Aireys Inlet, on Victoria's
western coast, was quoted:
Unusual phenomena arising from the extreme conditions were reported.
One survivor was startled to see a burning mattress hurtling through
the air. Others noted road surfaces that bubbled and caught fire.
experts later reported that, from evidence of melted metal, the heat
of the fires after the change rose to , exceeding that recorded during
the Allied bombing of Dresden in World War II. In fact, the Ash
Wednesday fires were measured at around 60,000 kilowatts of heat
energy per metre, leading to similarities with the atomic bomb dropped
on Hiroshima.
Whole townships were obliterated in minutes. In the Dandenong Ranges,
the villages of Cockatoo and Upper Beaconsfield were devastated, with
twelve volunteer firefighters losing their lives after being trapped
by a wall of flame when the wind change struck, while parts of
Belgrave Heights (where this fire started) and Belgrave South suffered
large areas of property loss.
Most of Macedon and much of historic Mount Macedon to the north-west
of Melbourne was razed, including many heritage-listed 19th-century
mansions and famed gardens.
A fire that started in Deans Marsh raced into the Otway Forest. When
the wind change happen the fire formed a huge front and headed for the
coast.
Burning all night, the morning after Ash Wednesday, first light
revealed the devastation of the popular coastal towns along the Great
Ocean Road such as Aireys Inlet, Anglesea and Lorne resembled barren
moonscapes. The fire on the coast had been so intense that
firefighters were forced to abandon all control efforts and let it
burn until it reached the ocean, destroying everything in its path.
Residents were forced down to the water edge of beaches in the areas
to escape the flames.
In Victoria, over 16,000 firefighters combatted the blaze, including
staff and works crews from the Forests Commission Victoria, National
Park Service, and volunteers from the Country Fire Authority and State
Emergency Service. Also involved were over 1,000 Victoria Police, 500
Australian Defence Force personnel and hundreds of local residents. A
variety of equipment was used, including 400 vehicles (fire-trucks,
water tankers and dozers), 11 helicopters and 14 fixed wing aircraft.
The total land area burnt was approximately in Victoria and in South
Australia. The summer bushfires of 1982/1983 razed approximately .
Aftermath
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Many of the Victorian fires were thought to have been caused by sparks
between short-circuiting power lines, and tree branches connecting
with power lines. A systematic review of fire safety was undertaken;
areas under high-tension pylons were cleared and local domestic lines
considered to be at risk were replaced with insulated three-phase
supply lines.
In South Australia, an inquest into the fires found that the
communication systems used by the Country Fire Service were inadequate
and, as a result, the government radio network was installed, although
this did not happen until almost 20 years later. Improvements in
weather forecasting, with particular reference to wind changes and
fronts, was undertaken by the Bureau of Meteorology. An emergency
disaster plan, known as Displan, was also legislated. Many of the
lessons learned in building better homes for fire survival, bush
management and emergency response efficiency in analysis of the fires
conducted by the CSIRO were to prove vital in later crises, including
the 1994 Eastern seaboard and 2003 Canberra fire outbreaks.
A study was conducted into the 32 fatalities (excluding firefighters)
that occurred in Victoria. It revealed that 25 were outside their
homes, several of whom died in vehicles while attempting to escape the
conflagration. It was found that delaying evacuation until the last
minute was a common failing.
Legacy
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Until the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, Ash Wednesday had the
highest-recorded death toll for a bushfire disaster, with 75 deaths.
For the next quarter century, Ash Wednesday was used as the measure
for all bushfire emergencies in Australia; though since 2009, that has
supplemented by the lessons learned from Black Saturday. It remains
well known as one of the worst natural disasters in Australia's
history.
Many psychological studies were undertaken in the months and years
after the fire and found that the events left many in the affected
communities with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, even
20 years after the disaster in 2003.
The lasting impact of Ash Wednesday was highlighted in 2008, when its
25th anniversary received much public and media attention.
Commemoration sites have been set up in areas that were hit worst by
the fires, with museums hosting exhibits inviting survivors to tell
their stories.
Areas affected in Victoria
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| align="left"| **Area/town**
| **Area (km2)**
| **Fatalities**
| **Buildings destroyed**
align="left"| Cudgee & Ballangeich 500 9 872
align="left"| Otway Ranges 410 3 782
align="left"| Warburton 400 0 57
align="left"| East Trentham & Mount Macedon 295 7 628
align="left"| Belgrave Heights & Upper Beaconsfield 92 21 238
align="left"| Monivae 31.81 0 3
align="left"| Cockatoo 18 6 307
align="left"| Branxholme 2 1 10
Source:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110408202308/http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/dse/nrenfoe.nsf/childdocs/-D79E4FB0C437E1B6CA256DA60008B9EF-7157D5E68CDC2002CA256DAB0027ECA3?open
Victorian Government Department of Sustainability and Environment]
See also
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* List of disasters in Australia by death toll
* South Australian Country Fire Service
* Country Fire Authority (Victoria)
* Mount Lofty (South Australia, location of one of the SA fires)
* Black Friday bushfires
* 1967 Tasmanian fires
* Black Saturday bushfires
* 2015 Sampson Flat bushfires
External links
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*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110408202308/http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/dse/nrenfoe.nsf/childdocs/-D79E4FB0C437E1B6CA256DA60008B9EF-7157D5E68CDC2002CA256DAB0027ECA3?open
Further information from the Victorian Government Department of
Sustainability and Environment]
* [http://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/bushfires/ State Library of Victoria's
Bushfires in Victoria Research Guide] Guide to locating books,
government reports, websites, statistics, newspaper reports and images
about the Ash Wednesday fires.
* McHugh, Peter. (2022). The 1982-83 Victorian Bushfire Season :
Including Ash Wednesday - 16 February 1983. A forester’s perspective.
https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3112961467/view
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20090212153450/http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23241106-27703,00.html
'Coming to grips with the price of flames' Newspaper article 'The
Australian'. ]
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20090415161227/http://www.anglesea-online.com.au/AshWednesday/default.htm
Anglesea Online: Remembering Ash Wednesday]
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20080608111217/http://users.ssc.net.au/gisbornecfa/Ash%20Wednesday.htm
Ash Wednesday in the Macedon Ranges]
*
[https://www.fire-brigade.asn.au/about-sacfs-history/publications/volunteer/017%20The%20Volunteer%20Autumn-Winter%20Issue%20March-June%201983.pdf
'The Volunteer'], official journal of the Country Fire Services, South
Australia: Autumn-Winter 1983 (March-June) issue. (PDF)
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Wednesday_bushfires