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Helicopter bombing houses under threat with water were ”worth their weight in gold”. Picture: Nicole Garmston
Source: Herald Sun

Fire warnings for Hayfield in Victoria and surrounding areas are very extreme.

DEAN Fiddler is “over the moon”.

Flames shredded the gums surrounding his 4ha property in Seaton yesterday and when the fire descended upon his side of the road he wondered about his decision to save $100 a month on insurance.

Yet his sprinkler system held out. Everything that mattered was unscarred.

“Them choppers are worth their weight in gold,” he said, nodding to the drones in the sky.

Four helicopters operated all day, bombing houses under threat with water.

Fiddler, like others, said they saved many properties: by extension, perhaps, they saved lives.

“They just kept going and going and going.”

Yet the choppers couldn’t save every house.

Fire, after all, is Australia’s oldest terrorist: it’s not just what it does, but what it threatens to do.

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Yesterday, once again, it was out of control.

Towns, such as Licola, swapped labels, from “under threat” and “out of danger” every hour or so.

In Glenmaggie, the wind whistled. There were no people, pets, birds or signs of life. Flames had tickled the caravan park. The cemetery was scorched.

It was unclear last night if the fires would die, flare or burn for weeks. Yet it was clear they could have been much worse.

The big plus, say locals, were the warning systems: text messages kept them updated every 15 minutes on Thursday night.

Many were elsewhere when the fires arrived.

The problem for them, as always, was trying to find out afterwards what had happened. If police didn’t block roads, fallen (and often smoking) gums tended to.

The returning residents included Alf Stinten and wife Sissy, the parents-in-law of Dean Fiddler. They explained why Fiddler’s joy at saving his property was tempered.

Sadly the Stintens’ Seaton property, they discovered after returning home, was no longer there.

 

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