Fire

Normally, I love to tell a story. An experience has only been half lived until its been told and retold and catastrophized.

But this is a story I haven't particularly wanted to tell. When people ask, I sigh inwardly and think, 'here we go.' (But I do talk!)

First, let me say that we don't actually have all that much of a story to tell. We didn't get really near the fire. We didn't see flames. But we might have.

We were at Forest Edge Conference Center at Neerim East for my sister in law's wedding. A great time with family and many old friends. We were all staying on site which was lovely. The wedding ceremony was outside by the creek at 9.30, then there was morning tea and lunch and a chinese tea ceremony. The photos of the interesting sky (in post below) were taken at about 3pm. All of this time we knew that there were fires nearby, but we weren't concerned. It was very hot (47 degrees). Outside the wind was blowing fiercely, like in a fan forced oven, but inside it was crisp and even cold in the delightful air conditioning. Perhaps we should have had suspicions that something was wrong at about 4pm. Everything outside was olive coloured. Strange.

At around 5pm the alarms went off and we were called into the dinning room. The doors were shut and John, the camp site manager, spoke to us. He told us we were safe while we were in the dinning room. There were no trees very close by and we were in a valley. He said that it was a shame he couldn't get into contact with anyone but there was a fire plan and whatever we did we would do together. We still had power and he thought we might keep it for the next hour. While there was power we would have good air to breathe. After we lost power we'd have another hour of emergency lighting.

Outside the wind was howling. It was as black as night although it was still day. The sky was red. We weren't allowed to leave the room. I felt desperate to get out. I didn't have any shoes on my feet and was dressed most inappropriately for an emergency. I didn't have anything with me. No phone (not that I had reception anyway), no writing materials, nothing for the kids... Surely I was an exception and they'd let me go back to my room... But I had more sense than to ask!

A take-charge soul organised a roll call. There would have been 100+ people there, including quite a few kids. We were half way through the roll call when we lost power. At that point I got scared. No air, no lights (almost no lights anyway), no contact with the outside world, no shoes and this horrible noise of blinds beating against glass windows. We moved the kids away from the edge of the room. Nathan and Joel started to cry quietly. I paced up and down the room praying silently, wishing the roll call was over, wishing Andrew would come and cuddle me, and wishing someone would pray out loud. Looking out at that point it was hard to imagine that we would ever get out.

John said he had never seen anything like this before.

I soon started rationalising... thinking back to other fires I had heard about. It would be unusual for 100 people to die. Most likely many of us would get out. But perhaps we'd be heading home with fewer kids... Unhelpful thought.

Andrew's dad lead us all in prayer. I spoke to our kids. Told them they needed to be brave. And prayed with them again, and again a little later.

After that someone went outside and put up the blinds so they would stop making such an awful noise. It made us all calmer. Soon, things seemed much better. The intense adrenaline fear thing can only go on for so long (10 minutes, Arch Hart would say) and after that we all settled down into a longer term stress response. I played with my sister-in-law's hair, paced around some more, and found a phone that had reception (bless optus!) and called my mum and friend.

Older missionary types who knew about coping in times of danger got out board games. Scrabble anyone? Uno perhaps? Not me. Games like that stress me at the best of times! There were three guitars floating around. A guitar is such a comforting thing to hold. A few people sang.

The staff organised some food for us (they were wonderful!) John got a generator going and hooked up some fluro lights. He had a black face from all the ash outside. The wind seemed to die down a little and I was over the moon when there was a small amount of rain. (Actually, little bits of rain are worse than useless in a fire. The rain would have evaporated long before it came near the actual fire and the lightning that accompanied it lit three more fires.) We could see a tiny patch of normal sky. We all began to think that we'd just sit it out and be able to leave in a few hours.

At 8.30 one person from each family was sent back to their room to gather up all their belongings and throw them into their cars. The rooms and cars were 20 meters away from the dinning room. At 9.00 we put the kids to bed (ours slept under a table) and we had another roll call. Then a police man came to talk to us.

He let us know something about how much danger we were in. The closest fire was still 30 kms [?] away but with the wind the way it was, 30kms was not far. He wanted to get us all out of Forest Edge because if the fire came closer the fire fighters could not defend us. There were currently nine trees over the only road in. The police officer was clearly worried. So was John, whose house down the road no longer had windows.

Hm. Okay. Oh well. Back to the board games. Still, conditions did look much better outside and I didn't think we'd actually be evacuated. We were to stay put until the police came to get us. We were given a 11pm bedtime.

Jo turned on her wireless internet to read about the fires. They didn't even make the top story! But we comforted ourselves that everything was probably being managed really well. There were no reports of anyone dying.

Most of us were asleep soon after 11pm. Naomi and Choi (the bride and groom) were still there of course. That felt wrong.

At about midnight, maybe after, I woke up hearing people talk. We had to be out in half an hour. They had cleared the road and things were okay at the moment. But they were expecting a wind change in the early hours of the morning that would send the fire directly to us. We put the kids in the car and drove in convoy to an evacuation center in Warrugul.

Warragul is a lovely place. They have electricity and a nice basketball court that can be slept on. They also have lots of helpful people handing out matresses, food and water bottles.

We slept there for the night feeling safe and well.

Joel woke up at 4am and started vomiting. He kept vomiting for the next 36 hours. Apparently, this is quite a normal stress reaction. We were horrified to hear the ever worsening reports about the fires. And felt and still feel that our experience was nothing.

We drove to Melbourne on Sunday and spent the day with the family. We flew out to the Gold Coast that evening and drove back to Brisbane on Monday morning.

When we got home Andrew and I fell apart a bit. We found it very hard to settle down and do anything. But a good cry has helped.

We are praying for others who have lost everything. May God comfort them and give them strength.

UPDATE: John has some stuff up on his blog.