Three missing, including child, as fire rips through Victorian town
Updated ,first published
An out-of-control bushfire destroyed a central Victorian town, leaving three people dead, besieging the popular tourist town of Alexandra and prompting evacuation warnings in Marysville Friday night, where hundreds of firefighters battled two large blazes and dozens of smaller fires across the state.
This week authorities have repeatedly warned of harsh conditions across Victoria, the worst since the 2019-20 Black Summer, and by midday on Friday conditions had become worse than expected; At least 60 new fires have burned across the state due to extremely hot and dry conditions. Dozens of houses were lost.
Fire areas scorching in extreme heat, bushfires producing their own lightning, strong winds threatening to keep firefighting planes on the ground and the most dangerous part of bushfire fighting – the weather change at 8pm – have created further danger in central Victoria.
Senior meteorologist Angus Hines said temperatures had dropped 15 degrees with the change, but the few hours following the wind change in the fire areas would be “crucial”.
“These fires are starting to blow in a new direction and can also lead to really pretty erratic fire behavior because these wind changes can be pretty drastic and drastic and not really consistent,” Hines said.
“The first half of the day tomorrow will be a pretty important time to see if these fires are going to flare up again or if they can be a little bit more contained than they are today.”
The wind is expected to decrease at night, with gusts reaching up to 100 kilometers per hour.
“Overall this will tamp down the fire danger in the state tonight into the weekend, but in the short term – over the next couple of hours, as the wind changes and the wind fluctuates quite strongly for a couple of hours – it remains really challenging,” Hines said.
Winds will be calmer in Victoria’s north on Saturday, but will still be gusty in the state’s south, dropping to between 30km/h and 50km/h (60km/h to 80km/h on Friday). Hines said Sunday will be even quieter.
Crews will begin assessing damage in Victoria at first light on Saturday, after state response controller Alistair Drayton was faced with the most emergency warnings he has seen in years on Friday.
“On a catastrophic day, it would be really negligent to do what we would normally do in a normal fire, which is to take immediate action with impact assessment teams to understand the losses,” Drayton said.
Firefighters spent most of Friday battling two large fires in the state’s central and northeast regions; Strong winds and high temperatures in the afternoon ignited grass fires that were rapidly moving across the state.
By 8pm, the state’s online bushfire dashboard had turned into a sea of red alerts, with evacuation orders issued for towns including Harcourt south of Bendigo, Skipton in western Victoria, as well as Kinglake and Marysville, which were devastated during the 2009 Black Saturday fires. The fires have also affected buildings in Harcourt, but the full extent of the damage will not be known until the fire is brought under control.
Footage from a drive through the small town revealed a pile of twisted metal and charred debris, along with some fires still actively burning behind businesses.
Of the two major fires, the massive Longwood blaze on Thursday was at the center of firefighters’ concerns. By Friday night, the Longwood fire had covered 145,249 hectares and a 182-kilometre margin was moving steadily south-east towards larger centers including Yea and Alexandra. Fires engulfed Alexandra on Friday night, with crews fighting desperately to save the town.
Prime Minister Jacinta Allan’s troupe was among those evacuated.
On Friday morning, reports came in from the small village of Ruffy, which is directly in the fire’s path. At least 10 houses were destroyed here, as well as the community center and telephone switchboard. One firefighter was taken to the hospital with third-degree burns. The true death toll here will only be known when it is safe enough for firefighters to enter the town.
“It looks like an atomic bomb went off,” local CFA captain George Noye told ABC Radio.
“[I’m] now it’s just down the main street, we’ve lost the old school, the old Ruffy’s food store is no more, there are three houses on the main street. We lost countless homes in the region. Ten firefighters I know lost their homes.” The demolished old school had been converted into a community centre; Ruffy has no school.
Authorities were preparing to search for three people — two adults and a child — who had been asked to leave earlier in Longwood East, just north of Ruffy. When firefighters later returned to the same address, the house was completely unusable. In nearby Tarcombe, an unconfirmed story emerged that a zookeeper was housed in a dam with six animals while his property was destroyed by fire.
In the Yarra Valley town of Marysville, the air was thick with smoke and the streets were covered in ash. By Friday night, most people had left the area, which usually attracts tourists heading to Lake Mountain Alpine Resort. But local Duck Inn bar owner Hong Yoo and a few of his regulars remained there.
An emergency alert was issued around 5.15pm on Friday, urging residents to leave the area immediately.
“I can’t see anyone in town, but there are two people at the bar checking the news with me,” Hong said as regulars chatted in the background. “There’s just smoke. We’re very lucky; there’s no wind, the temperature has dropped a little bit. Honestly, if something happens, I can go to the community center.”
Elsewhere, survivors brought back stories of scorched moonscapes, razed houses and dead sheep.
As the Longwood fire progresses, updated modeling has suggested strong winds could push the fire towards the towns of Yea and Alexandra, which attract summer holidaymakers and campers.
By 2pm on Friday, locals were told to stop using water “until absolutely necessary” as firefighters needed pressure for their hoses. Maps published by authorities by 5pm suggested the fire had engulfed the edges of Yea and invaded the nearby hamlets of Molesworth (pop. 91) and Yarck (pop. 194).
At Yea, just west of Alexandra, the only sound was the roar of fire trucks under orange skies choked with thick, gray smoke. All shops were closed except for service stations and a supermarket, which remained open for fire crews fighting fires in the areas surrounding the historic city.
Most residents had left the town, but Paul Heyen remained in town to maintain the home he had lived in for over 40 years. Heyen, who was training as a volunteer firefighter in Tasmania, filled his garden with buckets of water and kept a battery-powered hose ready to douse any embers that might fall on his home.
Dozens of people sought shelter from the fires in the Seymour regional center on the fire’s eastern edge. “There are people sleeping in the basketball stadium. There are pets everywhere,” Strathbogie Shire Deputy Mayor Claire Ewart-Kennedy said. “It’s pretty confronting.”
As he spoke, the area’s mayor was battling fires on his property. “This is a disaster. Three people are missing. We lost a significant amount of livestock, property and god knows what else at Ruffy and Longwood,” Ewart-Kennedy said. “This is beyond serious. I’ve never felt so helpless and scared of what’s going to happen.”
Further north, the second major fire engulfed 100,721 hectares near Walwa, near Albury-Wodonga.
The fire broke out on Friday and moved south-east towards Corryong, after destroying bush and pine plantations on Thursday.
Firefighters were fearful of a weather change forecast for Friday night, when the fire was expected to spread eastward into the town. By Friday afternoon, firefighters were urging locals to leave immediately.
Cheryl Winter, owner of the Corryong Courthouse Hotel, said she planned to stay and had recently bought a generator from Albury to keep the town’s best pub running. “We will keep the air conditioners and beer taps on for anyone looking to escape the heat,” he said.
Weather changes are one of the most dangerous parts of firefighting because they can turn the flank of a fire into a long fire front. The cool change that swept through Melbourne around 5pm was not expected to affect fire-affected areas until late at night.
Longwood said temperatures reached 41.3 degrees, with winds forecast to reach 60 km/h in the afternoon. Near Walwa, the temperature reached 37.3 degrees and wind speed approached 40 km/h.
At least five homes were destroyed in a fire in Natimuk, in Victoria’s west.
More than 75,000 homes across Victoria are without power as major electricity supply companies continue to grapple with dynamic fire conditions. The State Emergency Service has fielded 539 calls for help across Victoria since midnight Friday; 420 of these were for fallen trees.
Harmful winds are expected to worsen this evening following a wind change, but a gust of 112 kilometers per hour was recorded on Mount Gellibrand in the state’s southwest at around 1.20pm.
In the afternoon heat, people in Skipton and Horsham, just east of Ballarat, faced flash emergency alerts after fast-moving grass fires broke out and raced towards the towns.
Dozens of roads remain closed across the state. CFA will work for weeks to extinguish the fires and make them safe, with months of work ahead of us to fully recover from the fires.
Be the first to know when important news happens. Sign up for breaking news alerts Turn on notifications in email or in the app.
Broede Carmody is The Age’s health correspondent. He was previously the state political correspondent for The Age and national news blogger for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect with: excitement or email.
