Counting the loss

Press, 18 February 1983, Page 1

Counting the loss

By DAVID ROSS Thousands of stunned, shocked, and bereaved families yesterday sifted the ruins of their homes, dressed only in the clothes in which they fled the flames, but there were many who died fully dressed. They were the stubborn ones who. refused to leave their homes.

Colin Barton, a pensioner in the tiny seaside resort of Anglesey, on the western shoreline of Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay, refused to leave his timber cottage as a bush fire swept through the surrounding hillside. He told the police: “It’s.my house, a»d if it burns I will bum with it.”

His body was found in the charred remains of his home

yesterday afternoon. A police report said that his daughter had pleaded with Mr Barton to leave when she moved out with her children on Wednesday night.

From the air late yesterday the western holiday coastline along the Great Ocean Road of Port Phillip Bay was, as police helicopter pilots described it, a hellish mess.

Aireys Inlet, another small holiday • resort, looked as though it had been bombed with napalm. A high school teacher, Mr Bob Harrow, who escaped with 56 of his pupils as the fire roared into Airey’s Inlet, said, “It was horrific, bolts of flames were rolling down the hills, petrol tanks were exploding everywhere.

“Houses were going up like bombs; it was like war, and I don’t think that is too descriptive.” Elsewhere throughout Victoria luck smiled on some but turned its back on many others. For two brothers, Gary and Robbie Mclntosh, of Sunnymeade, another beach resort, a 8100,000 dream, went up in seconds. After working on their 15metre catamaran for three years they were ready to launch it for a world cruise within the next six weeks. “Here we had been thinking about all the problems we would face at sea,” Robbie Mclntosh, aged 23, laughed.

“Now we lose the boat before it even touches the water.” The blaze also claimed their house, car, and an assortment of motor-cycles. Throughout Victoria dawn broke late yesterday because of the dense smoke. As the sun finally filtered through it revealed a scene of devastation across Victoria. Along the western coastline of Port Phillip Bay and across the top of Melbourne and out to the far eastern reaches of Victoria, the drought-stricken land was a charred and barren wasteland. Experienced fire fighters said that they could not remember a worse night. Red-eyed firemen all agreed: “It is coming from everywhere.” Throughout the whole of yesterday they were to repeat the same words as the winds increased and the fires again spread their grim horror throughout Victoria. “The sky is red, then it’s white — it’s going crazy. We are in big trouble.” Those were the words of an Adelaide journalist, Murray Nichol, as he crouched watching raging fire destroy his home. “The flames are in the roof ... goddam it. It's just beyond belief, my own house. Everything around it is black, there’s absolutely . nothing I can do about it,” said Nichol, a New Zealander who has lived in Adelaide for at least the last 14 years. His frantic words captured the desperation of many as they watched and fled from Australia’s worst bush fires since Black Friday in 1939 when 79 people died in Victoria.