The different between 1930′s and now is that 1930′s and old mine shaft (or dugout) with wet hessian over the doorway was a good as you would get

These days – (techonology) we have to have everything lined to make sure we don;t get dirty – we have to have this, we have to have that.

Sometimes the old ways are the better ways of doing things . NOT always, but sometimes AND common sense has gone out the door – everyone looks to government to solve the problems. What about your own personal backyard first?

There is no stopping these fires – they will continue to occur, criminally started OR other means. EVERYONE MUST be prepared.

For people in the hills both near and far – they have to think ahead. Get out if your house is overgrown with trees. Get out if log cabin (but then again, The Crossways) Marysville survived, with the help of the Steavnsons river

Nothing is known until the time – you have to prepare to stay and fight and perhaps die and take that risk and accept the blame and not blame others if something goes wrong OR GET OUT and accept you may lose your house

I know I am staying – Some of my neighbours are staying

This time round – the 17yo took her car and exacuated with the 81yo and 71yo neighbour. she lead the party down to the ‘burbs.

Illegal or not – I wasn;t prepared to have others risk their lives because they couldn;t get out – or didn’t know when to leave

Are you aware that the gravity fed water supply for the township failed due to commerical premises being comsumed by flames.

The losses in Marysville ALONE should have been higher if it wasn’ for a VERY brave individual who alerted the township using a carhorn.

As for preparedness – some people no matter how hard you pushed them, seemed to think it couldn’t/wouldn’t happen to them.

Fire bunkers are of little use UNLESS they are maintained and even then could prove to be fatal – just ask the watchman on the Mt Gordon fire tower near Marysville.

The fire in Kilmore moved too fast for anyone to stop it – the only thing that saved the outer suburbs of Melbourne was a 15′ wind change. But even then people in the path of the fire before the change – thought it couldn’t happen to them

AND YES – I was affected by the Kilmore fire and was in Marysville before most outside emergency crews got in – so I am not just blowing my own horn.

Even now the thoughts that 1 person in 1 township saved so many and lost their life makes me imagine what life would be like now if the CFA hierachy hadn’t succumbed to public pressure regarding testing and use of the fire siren. Public refuges were no longer recommended because the Government and Council didn’t the liability if the case of what if.

YET at the last minute told residents to evacuate to a point that 5 years was condemned as unsafe due to %^&*() public liability.

and in closing – thank-you to all – who stood in the face of that fire and risked their own lives to save others.

Let us pray that this is a once in a life time event and let our children never ever forget this event. EVER

We also need to keep in mind that, even if no-one had died in these fires we would still be talking about the devastation of property loss to individuals and communites. Stay and fight makes sense provided that people know what they are doing, have adequate equipment and the house does have a refuge. I used to run emergency services in a small town that was periodically at risk from cyclones. Many of the practices used for cyclones woudl make sense in bushfire prone areas. In particular:
1. Fire inductions when people move into the area.
2. Houses have some resistance to fires and defendability.
3. Areas near houses clear of tress that can fall on roofs and refuges and obvious fire hazards.
4. Refuges that will withstand any bushfire that may reach the house.
5. Fire preparation check at the start of the fire season to check house, refuge, equipment etc as well as checking for people who may need special help.
6. A series of alert levels with action plans for each level. This includes action after the fire has passed or risk has reduced. Community action to help those needing special help and to help protect houses with no one at home is desirable.

We can certainly have done better both before and during these fires

DAMN the Brumby Government for announcing which towns arsonists should target this summer (”Towns in the line of fire”, The Age, 19/8). Arsonists now have a guidebook of the choicest places to attack. With this action, the Government has ensured that the likelihood of burning has gone from high to almost a certainty, putting residents of those towns under even more stress. Sheer stupidity – doesn’t anybody think before they act and speak any more?

Christine Pruneau, Woodend

Couldn’t find a link for the article she cites.

She’s right – but what is the alternative? Clearly we need to warn the affected people in the towns most at risk. But we don’t know who are the arsonists as some of them are amongst that very group. And it’s no solution to confine that information to formal town meetings about fire safety, for the same reason; some arsonists are even in the CFA.

The way to structure and administer a warning system is far from clear and this is only one of many issues.

What I was suggesting was that ‘national service’ or ‘CFA juniors’ are not the only ways of diffusing fire safety and first aid knowledge through the community.

We live in provincial Victoria, but once lived just south of Churchill. The “Churchill-Jeeralang” fire raced past our former house, narrowly missing it and the hiuses of several former neighbours. Devastating, and many died later that day because of that fire. As Paul Norton notes, it started in a pine plantation, swept into bushland, farmland, other plantations, spotting tens of kms ahead.

Yes that day was a shocker. We took Premier Brumby’s warnings very seriously. The low humidity, high temperatures, strong winds, were a nasty combination.

I wonder if we took the warnings seriously because we had lived on a steep, bushclad hill for 22 years (so fire prevention and precautions had been a necessity)??

We weren’t in direct danger that day. Blackened leaves and bark fell from the smoke plume blowing across from Bunyip State Park, but houses were damaged only a few kms from our town. The wind change saved us, and incinerated many others.

But the best firefighting organization in the world couldn’t have stopped those fires, and it was inevitable that some people were going to die. But a smarter response would probably have reduced the death toll a great deal.

More on topic… that day of the fires – it was a shocker of a day. It had been stinking hot for weeks, I got sunburnt at 10am putting the washing on the line. I live in the inner city, and remember the streets looking like late autumn, with dead, utterly crispy dry leaves from all the elm trees flying about everywhere, and all piled up in the gutters. It was weird and strange, and the worst summer I’ve ever felt. And the wind was just whipping about.

Clearly, in those conditions, ANY fire was going to be huge. I don’t think its fair to blame those who were trying their hardest to save people and property for not doing enough.