Lucky late dash

By Monique Ebrington
EXPLODING houses is what 70-year-old James Thomas remembers the most of his last-minute dash from his Kinglake home on Saturday.
Mr Thomas and his friend Peter had been driving towards the Kinglake Hotel when they noticed that the grass and trees on the side of the road were on fire.
They quickly turned back and made a dash for Mr Thomas’s home, driving past houses on fire.
“He (Peter) dropped me off at home and yelled out, ‘I’m going to get the cat and go’,” Mr Thomas said.
“Everything was smoky. I ran inside and closed all the windows. The trees in my front yard were on fire.
“It was all okay and then the smoke came. Then everything was on fire.”
With a torch and his garden hose Mr Thomas was prepared to stay and defend his home, fitted with electric water pumps.
But the fire caused a power outage to the area, rendering the pumps useless.
He realised that the fire, now coming from all directions, was too much for him to battle.
“It was black inside the house. You couldn’t see anything. I just thought, ‘You’re bloody mad if you go back in there’.”
Overcome by smoke and with just the clothes on his back, Mr Thomas panicked and ran for his car.
“If I had just packed my car half an hour earlier … it all happened that fast. I didn’t start my fire plan quite as quickly as I should have.”
He jumped into his Falcon ute and drove down Glenburn Road.
“It was quite hard to get out. It was so smoky I couldn’t see in front of me. There were branches blocking the road. It was a real fire storm,” he said.
“I couldn’t see anyone else or hear anyone calling out for help.
“All you could hear were houses exploding.”
He had thought about heading for the emergency area, but by that stage it and the fire were behind him.
He was stopped at a Melba Highway roadblock but allowed to keep driving to reach his son’s house in Lilydale.
As he collected clothes and toiletries from The Mustard Tree Op Shop in Lilydale on Sunday afternoon he recalled just how fortunate he was.
“I was lucky to get out of my driveway, to be honest,” he said.
Like many of those who managed to escape Kinglake he understands that he probably doesn’t have a home to return to.
All he is concerned about, though, is his mate Peter.
“My main concern is that I haven’t had any contact with my friend,” he said. “Everyone I ring – there’s no answer.”