Tales of survival

By Kath Gannaway
A WEEK on, and it’s devastating to drive down Steels Creek Road and see the landscape reduced to ashes.
There’s astonishment at a house here that’s survived while another just next door is razed; but overwhelmingly there is the wonder that anyone escaped alive.
Victor and Raelene Gill and daughter Kylie lived off Old Kinglake Road, looking out over mountain ranges.
Driving out in three cars, including Victor’s ’69 Monaro and a HG ute, they are certain they would have perished had they stayed.
“We had cleared for 100 metres all around the house and we turned on 12,000 gallons of water, before we left, but nothing could have stopped it,” Victor said. “The intensity of the heat has cracked huge rocks.”
Kylie was one of the last to make it out along Steels Creek Road, driving through flames, but Raelene and Victor had to head out to Melba Highway along Hunts Lane.
It wasn’t until late on Saturday night that they were able to make contact again.
A water tanker had jackknifed on one of the bends creating a horrendous obstacle but for Raelene the real test came when she turned around and – hard up against an embankment – found she couldn’t get the reverse gear in the manual ute.
“A man stopped and put it into reverse for me,” she said, convinced she would have died if he hadn’t been brave enough to stop.
Organic farm owner Judy Anderson threw buckets of water over her house for 16 hours.
“It came from every direction, like a hurricane,” she said. “I had the ute at the verge of the property with the dogs on it, but I wouldn’t have gotten out.”
Her son ran through burnt-out paddocks to get to her after being stopped at the road blocks.
“He arrived about 6pm. I was so glad to see him,” she said.
Former Healesville Shire councillor Joanne Spears said she and husband Brian were exhausted when their son-in-law came through and saved them. “We were totally spent,” she said.
“To sit in that cauldron, like in a moonscape, and not knowing as every house went boom whether there was anyone in it, was horrendous.”
Erin-Marie O’Neill and John Brand had acted on their fire plan but said they didn’t have any warning when the fire came through.
They drove through the fire-front to get to Yarra Glen. “We were driving through thick smoke, doing 40km/h when trees on the corner of Steels Creek and Gulf roads erupted into flames and we could see where we needed to turn,” Erin-Marie said.
Karen Mitchell owes her life and those of her children to police who overtook her as she headed towards her home along Steels Creek Road.
“He overtook me and two other cars at about 4.30pm and wouldn’t let us through,” she said.
Her house exploded half an hour later.
“We would have been in the house,” she said.