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00:00There's simply no way of underestimating the fire threat Victoria is facing over the next
00:0824 hours or so.
00:10And you think it's coming, but what's coming and how big it is, you don't know.
00:16By a long way, the worst day ever in the history of the state.
00:21It was like a tidal wave of fire, how fast it was coming.
00:24I thought I'd be gone for sure.
00:26Marysville and King Lake in particular have borne the brunt.
00:29I've got what ifs for not only my family, but everybody else's too.
00:35173 people are confirmed dead.
00:37Nearly 4,000 people are homeless.
00:40Surely Victoria's blackest time.
00:43Like I walked into the day thinking I had a reasonable amount of knowledge and walked out of the day thinking I know nothing about fire.
00:59It was going to be a total fire band day and we'd received information as early as Thursday that it was going to be a very bad total fire band day.
01:20I'm pretty sure it was high 20s to low 30s.
01:23In the first thing in the morning, it was predicted to get up to 48.
01:26We'd had such a long drought.
01:28Everything was so dry.
01:29The winds were like gale for us.
01:31One of the windiest days I'd known and very hot.
01:34It was the sort of day where you felt your nose hairs burning when you breathe through your nose.
01:39That was just like getting the combination rider on a safe for the worst possible scenario, I think.
01:45Yeah.
01:46I was captain of the Marysville CFA.
01:50Early in the morning, I'd chuffed off up to the station, check the radios on each of the trucks and make sure all that's working.
01:57Callan, my elder son, was in the crew.
01:59My daughter, Bronte, she was at her girlfriend's place in Alexandra and my youngest son, Dalton, was with my wife, Liz, at home.
02:08So my partner, who is also a firefighter, he and I went to the King Lake West station at about 10 o'clock.
02:13The King Lake Brigade, it's a fair way away, but it's in our general area.
02:17We manned the station, which we do on virtually every total fire band day and we were there and we were ready.
02:23At that stage, it's only the weather.
02:26You need an ignition source to start fire.
02:29But sometimes in those bad days, you know, we sit around and go, phew, you know, nothing happened.
02:37We decided to live in Marysville because we love the trees.
02:40In King Lake West, we were sort of like right on the ridge.
02:43All that area, the mountains, it's just beautiful up there, you know.
02:46I had 45 acres of land.
02:49The views were just phenomenal.
02:50It was a very idyllic place to live, really.
02:53It was a dream.
02:55We had two businesses, guest cottages.
02:57The message was to stay and defend or leave early, and we decided to stay and defend.
03:03I went in to open our restaurant as normal at 11.
03:07I was running Caporossi's Pizza Bar with my brother, Ross.
03:11I was a country copper.
03:12I loved it.
03:13I was home with the family, keeping cool, watching telly, getting ready to start work at
03:176 o'clock that night.
03:18We had no air conditioning, so I was just like sitting around.
03:22I just want to make it through the day.
03:23We had no intentions of closing shop at the time.
03:27My exact words were, there's a service station next door.
03:30There's a police station on the other side.
03:32We're safe in town.
03:33There was rumours that there was a fire in Kilmore East, but Kilmore East is a long way.
03:41If we had to drive there, it's like maybe half an hour.
03:45So it's just like another fire somewhere else.
03:47Don't worry about it.
03:48For that fire to reach us that same day, it wasn't conceivable.
03:53Normally that would take several days to travel that distance.
03:56I really can't remember the time, but we saw smoke in the distance.
04:01I posted something on Facebook to let people know that there might be a problem, but you
04:08don't want to be histrionic either, although I'm quite good at that.
04:11And then I got a phone call from a guy I work for from Whittlesea.
04:15He could see the fire heading our way, and he rang me and told me that it was coming,
04:19and it was coming fast.
04:21He said, this thing is an animal.
04:24And then I remember ringing the acting sergeant at the time during the day, and he said, oh,
04:29it's turned a bit proverbial.
04:31Kilmore's alive, but there's a fire that's just started in Murrindindy.
04:35And Murrindindy, King Lake's here, Murrindindy's to the north.
04:38And with the northerly winds, I'm thinking, yeah, this could be the worry.
04:42This radio started to crackle.
04:44We got the call for our tanker to go around to Murrindindy.
04:47You start to get concerned imminently.
04:49Things could get very, very pear-shaped.
04:52So they always recommend that you don't stay unless you're well prepared.
04:55If you're well prepared, you can stay.
04:57I had a sprinkler system on the roof of the house, which I only just recently, before the
05:03fires, turned on to make sure it worked.
05:06I had like a ring main that ran around the house with fire hydrants with 36-metre hose reels.
05:12I thought I was prepared.
05:13At home, there was my sister-in-law, their children, and my father.
05:24My sister-in-law had actually rung and said she could actually see from where we live flames
05:28coming from the distance.
05:30My brother Ross, he sort of panicked a little.
05:33He said, look, I'll bring the family and dad here so we're all together.
05:36It wasn't long after that that the fire broke out at King Lake West.
05:41We didn't think that that was anything to do with the Kilmore Fire.
05:43As far as we're concerned, the Kilmore Fire was still miles away.
05:46My wife was very panicked.
05:48And she had, I remember my daughter, under one arm.
05:51All she had on was like a nappy.
05:53She put her in the car and me son and she sort of pleaded with me to go.
05:59I said, well, if you want to go, go now.
06:01Because then she went to get some things, like photos, albums and stuff.
06:05I said, if you're going to go, just go now.
06:07So she went with nothing except for the kids.
06:09I remember saying to her, well, don't worry, everything will be right.
06:12I'm here.
06:13One of our firefighters yelled out that he could see smoke one ridge away from where the fire station is.
06:19I was actually thinking, oh, my God, have we got a fire bug running down the road,
06:23lighting these fires?
06:24And I heard this noise and I thought, that's like a jet plane.
06:28And then I realised it was the fire, the noise of the fire.
06:32Two elderly people that lived in Humevale had come and said, look, Isabella,
06:37we just escaped our burning house.
06:39My house is burnt.
06:40And I looked at her and I thought, are you sure?
06:43And she goes, yeah, yeah, the fire is here.
06:45It's already here.
06:46And at that moment, I saw this huge fireball on a na, trees vaporising into these like towers of flames.
06:54We got called out to a fire in King Lake and we responded both trucks.
06:59We put it out, we suppressed it.
07:00So that was manageable.
07:01So we were patting ourselves on the back, but I was so focused on that one fire.
07:05I didn't see that there was another fire and another fire and another fire until I looked up and I went, we're in trouble.
07:13It was so mad at how quick everything evolved.
07:18Everything was on fire.
07:19And it was around us and it was behind us.
07:21It was everywhere.
07:23I was in the Victoria Police Air Wing in the search and rescue helicopter.
07:27So my task was to go down the wire and do the rescues.
07:31My heart just bashed about inside my ribcage.
07:37I just thought, that's it, we're going to die now.
07:40Got a call from the Channel 9 helicopter and they said, there's people, about four of them trapped.
07:47Do you reckon you come out and rescue them?
07:48And I have to admit, when I saw the police helicopter, and I don't know about you, but I'm the same with police cars.
07:53I thought, oh shit, we're in trouble because we didn't leave.
07:56Like, why didn't you leave?
07:57When you get winched down, doing an assessment of the area, I could see the flames.
08:03I thought the house was going to catch on fire very quickly.
08:06A lady came up to me and she just had this, what we call a thousand yard stare.
08:10He was a bit like a character out of Terminator.
08:14So he had the helmet with all the built-in everything.
08:18So there wasn't much of him you could actually see.
08:20So I just said to her, hi honey, I'm home.
08:23You've burnt the toast.
08:25You'd normally say something to someone in a situation that breaks them out of that trance.
08:29And I can't remember what was said between he and I, but we laughed about something.
08:34And you think about it now, you think, how did we laugh?
08:38I read four-wheel drive, stopped on my front yard where I was standing, and it was the CFA.
08:44There was a guy in the passenger seat, and he said to me, you know, there's a fire coming.
08:53And I said, how far away is he going to hit?
08:55And he said to me, minutes.
08:59He said, are you staying?
09:00And I said, yes.
09:01And he just looked at me.
09:06Just never forget that look.
09:09The radio traffic was hectic.
09:10There was so much fire activity starting to pop up in different areas, and so many different
09:16brigades trying to get onto the radio at the same time.
09:20You just couldn't get through.
09:21We then got a call that there was actual fire, 5Ks, south of Marysville.
09:29We did go out, but as this fire front got going, we realised that we weren't going to
09:36be able to achieve anything, so we fell back to Marysville.
09:40And then one last thing, as he drove off, he said, have you got a coat to put on?
09:44I said, yeah.
09:45He goes, we'll put it on now.
09:47And as they drove out, the fire hit.
09:50He put the strap around my back.
09:53I could feel the wire going slack.
09:56And when I looked up, the helicopter was bucking up and down.
09:58Because the fire had consumed so much oxygen from around where we were, both of us, being
10:04winched up, may have pulled the helicopter down.
10:07And I said, I'm not going without my dog.
10:10I ordered people, and he said, everyone's coming.
10:13I looked up at the helicopter, and I was getting the signal to disconnect from the wire.
10:17My first thought was, oh, bugger.
10:19And then I disconnected, and they said, if you stay there, you're going to perish.
10:25I heard the noise first, the smashing and crashing sort of sound.
10:29It's like something coming through the bush, like a monster.
10:32And then all these leaves blew off the troops, and then it was fire.
10:37And I felt just weak when I saw it.
10:42We were going through the, well, what do we do now?
10:45The best we can try and do at the moment is return to the station, save the shed, so
10:50that we can remain operational, sort of defensive mode as opposed to, you know, an attack mode.
10:59I remember walking outside to go to work, and the clouds were bubbling, like upside-down
11:05milk curdling.
11:07When I drove up over the top of the hill, down into King Lake, there was nothing untoward.
11:12It was just a normal hot day, what I could see.
11:15Yeah, a bit of smoke around.
11:16Our second truck had gone to a particular house that they thought they could save.
11:22My partner was on the other truck.
11:24The driveway was fully involved with fire, and they couldn't get out, even if they had
11:28wanted to.
11:28As I'm pulling into the King Lake West CFA, the police car comes out and does a U-turn
11:33and starts heading back to King Lake.
11:34I yelled out the window, where are you going?
11:36And he goes, there's a fatality on top of the hill.
11:39I'm like, nah, I've only just gone through there three minutes to go.
11:42There is nothing on the hill.
11:43He goes, nah, we've got to go.
11:45So I did a U-turn, and there was a wall of smoke.
11:49And I'm thinking, where did that come from?
11:51To drive away from that crew and my partner and leave them to fend for themselves, that
11:57was really, really tough.
11:58And then all of a sudden, these headlights just start rushing through the smoke.
12:03And I'm thinking, we can't go any further.
12:05Like, we can't see.
12:07I'm looking out the window of the restaurant, and I'm actually quite petrified.
12:11I had one staff with me who had gone home, set up the house with her kids and husband.
12:17She said to me, come to my place.
12:19I'm all set up, and we'll be fine.
12:22Suddenly, it just starts getting dark.
12:24It was pitch black.
12:27The actual sky had flame in it.
12:30The smoke itself was igniting in the air.
12:32We thought, we've got to get out of here.
12:34There would have been 30 cars.
12:37And as loud as I could yell, King Lake West CFA, get to King Lake West CFA now.
12:42And as we were driving, the side of the roads were igniting.
12:46And I thought, that was that close.
12:49I've got everybody corralled.
12:50Is there any way that we can drive out?
12:53I said to him, there is a four-wheel drive track in this direction.
12:57I said, right, this is probably our only chance.
13:00Let's go.
13:01The driveway was on fire.
13:04That was pretty scary, driving into flames.
13:07Chopper was continually saying, yeah, keep going, keep going.
13:10But what was amazing was the amount of animals that were coming with us.
13:13There were deers, a koala.
13:16Echidnas, birds.
13:18And they all dropped into line next to us.
13:22They probably said, yes, they're heading into safety.
13:25We'll follow them.
13:26The house was a western red cedar house.
13:32It may as well be made out of matchsticks.
13:34The fires.
13:36Sometimes licking it and I'm just hosing it.
13:38There's steam coming off it.
13:39And then a lot of embers started coming and big branches just dropping out of the sky on fire.
13:44I'm stuck at my staff's home.
13:48Her husband's on the roof trying to border down something.
13:52There's fireballs flying through the air.
13:54Four small children in the house, all petrified.
13:57There was one baby screaming.
13:59I heard the dogs.
14:00I could hear them all howling.
14:02And I could see the gate.
14:03I just kicked it and it just fell apart because it was all on fire.
14:06And two of them ran out and one was still howling in the box.
14:12The police helicopter was guiding us to get out into some open area.
14:16We were okay because we could see that we were, you know, the other side of this wall of fire and flames.
14:22And at that point, Terminator, as we're calling him, he got out of the car.
14:27He ran into a field and the police chopper landed and scooped him up and off they went.
14:32And I was looking at the house, hosing the house.
14:35And as I'm hosing it, the water stops.
14:38I could hear the windows in the house breaking.
14:41And then I heard this screaming type sound.
14:44The house, like, screamed.
14:46It was like the air coming out or going in or whatever.
14:50I was so surprised how quick it went.
14:52All the cedar boards burnt off.
14:53And it was a frame.
14:54It looked like when you build a house.
14:56And there was one particularly young boy, Nicholas.
14:59He kept saying to me, Isabella, we're going to die.
15:01And I go, no, we're not.
15:02We're going to be fine.
15:03I'm sort of looking out the window, looking at the flames getting closer to the house.
15:08And I thought, we're gone.
15:09We're trapped.
15:10I started moving backwards.
15:11And the shed then exploded.
15:13I remember the flash of, like, that white sort of flash.
15:18My eyelids were, like, stuck shut.
15:21I think they call it welded shut.
15:23They were stuck shut.
15:24And I ran into a fence.
15:25And I fell forward over it.
15:28And it's like barbed wire on it as well.
15:30I was stuck.
15:32I just thought this is it.
15:35And I can remember in desperation going, you know, God, Buddha, Jesus, angels, anyone out there.
15:42If I'm going to go make a click.
15:45Then the fence, like, collapsed.
15:46And I just pulled myself out of the fence, like, wiggled.
15:49And just started crawling towards the dam.
15:52I pulled my coat over my head and just laid there.
15:56The voice in my head did say, no, it's not your time.
15:59And miraculously, the winds changed.
16:02And the flames went away from the house.
16:05We got a red flag warning to tell us that the wind change was coming at 6 o'clock.
16:15And it was bang on.
16:16It was right on 6 o'clock.
16:17The whole day, nothing had happened.
16:19Marysville was cooling off.
16:20I look up and there's a pyrolytic cloud forming above the town.
16:25It was huge.
16:27It really did happen very quickly.
16:28Five minutes of being normal.
16:30We got away with it to we haven't got away with it.
16:33This is really serious.
16:34The last time that I went back to home, Liz was on the phone.
16:40Dalton was at the door and I knew I only had time for a quick hello.
16:45I said, just make good decisions, mate.
16:48You'll be right.
16:51When I went up the back to say to my husband, we've got to go, he wouldn't come.
16:55Like a lot of stubborn men, they were going to stay and defend.
16:59And I remember screaming at him and literally screaming, I just want you.
17:03I just want you, you know.
17:05And he just said, no, go.
17:07We came back to the station and there were people starting to turn up.
17:12Within a couple of minutes, it was like someone had turned the lights out.
17:15Well, I jumped in my car and got around the corner and there's a great big tree across the road.
17:21So I can't get out of town.
17:23And then I went back to my house.
17:25At the time, the danger was winds.
17:27We're going to be killed by a tree.
17:29Somewhere in those minutes of it turning black, we lost water.
17:33So we retreated inside.
17:35When I got back to the house, Terry's not there.
17:38So I rang my sons and told them that I love them and I don't think I'm going to make it.
17:44And a sea of embers comes down the street.
17:48It was like water flowing and it would have been a metre or so deep.
17:54And then everything, everything was on fire.
17:58My son rang my husband.
18:01So Terry came back.
18:03We ran out to the car.
18:04By this stage, it was very hard to breathe.
18:07We went down to the roundabout near the crossways and watched the town burn around us, really.
18:18We went back to King Lake and the helicopter.
18:23Still houses burning.
18:24It just looked like an apocalypse.
18:27By this stage, I think you just want to escape.
18:31It's a little bit like anything to get out of this environment.
18:35Ended up heading towards the CFA shed.
18:38There were over 200 residents in our shed.
18:41Husbands, wives, children, dogs, cats.
18:45There was a cockatoo.
18:46You name it, they were there.
18:48Oh my God, it was just like a war zone.
18:50There were people burnt, people crying.
18:53I mean, I've never lived through a war, but I could imagine that's what it was like.
18:58It was just horrible.
18:59They'd come to the station saying, where do I go?
19:02And the only thing we could say to them was, well, park your car and get inside.
19:05Because it wasn't safe to be on the roads.
19:07Then over the radio came a welfare check, which is a check on someone.
19:10And there was a car accident, and that's the one that we were going to earlier on, the fatality.
19:18And as we pulled up, there was Ross, who owns the Italian restaurant, Caporossi's.
19:24And I got out, I said, what's going on?
19:26He said, oh, I've lost Papa.
19:28The car had hit the back seat and he couldn't get out and perished in the fire.
19:34I still had no idea what happened to my family.
19:37I kept ringing Dad's number. He wouldn't pick up.
19:40And so I'm really getting quite edgy about this.
19:44We had fires breaking out, like spot fires breaking out all around the station.
19:48We were trying to suppress.
19:49And there was a moment in that evening, I looked up at the sky,
19:52thinking I still don't know if my other half's alive.
19:55And I started to get really overwhelmed.
19:57And then I looked back at the door, and there was a lady standing there with her two daughters.
20:01And I looked at them and I realised I can't cry.
20:03If they see me cry, they're going to cry.
20:06People see the uniform on and you are an emblem of help.
20:13But I've got no control of this.
20:16And the hard part was everyone was coming for help.
20:21It's still all very dark.
20:23You know, all of the buildings were just piles of rubble.
20:25We put the radio on in our ute and it said,
20:30Erissel Buxton and Narberthonga are under threat.
20:32And I remember saying, well, it's more than under threat.
20:35You know, it was gone, really.
20:37I was a little bit frantic about Liz.
20:39So I wanted to call round to the house.
20:42There was nothing left at all of our house or anything.
20:48It was very obvious that the house had gone.
20:51And that's when we actually found Liz and Dalton in that space.
21:01I can remember just staggering back after we found Liz and Dalton, like my legs wouldn't hold me.
21:09That was, yeah, realising what you've lost in that instant just drains everything from you.
21:21I can, I remember that feeling.
21:23I'm living that feeling while we're talking right now.
21:27Two police officers had come to the CFA shed.
21:30I thought, I'll find out some information.
21:32Surely they can tell me something.
21:33We ran into Isabella and we had to tell her that her father had perished.
21:38It was just really surreal.
21:41It's like, can it possibly be happening, all this happening in just one normal day?
21:53One of the firefighters had managed to get through to my partner.
21:57And he said, I've just spoken to him and he's safe.
22:00It was very emotional.
22:01And I remember when they got back to the station, just walking up and just giving him the biggest hug.
22:07And then he pushed me away and he said, we've got work to do.
22:10I always remember this feeling of those leather gloves that the firefighters wear.
22:15I remember that on my face, like touching me.
22:18He said, can you squeeze my hand for me?
22:20And I squeezed his hand and he said to me, he goes, well, if you can do that, you'll be right.
22:26You'll make it.
22:27There were some friends in town and that's where I went that night.
22:30They took me to the Northern Hospital.
22:33I can hear him talking, doctors and stuff.
22:35They go, he doesn't know where his wife and kids are.
22:36He's all stressed.
22:38I don't remember a lot.
22:39I remember the family being really kind to me and then just wanting to just close my eyes.
22:45I had to go and tell Callum, found him straight away and told him that his mum and brother were gone.
22:55It was a very emotional time.
22:59When my mum came in, she just said, oh, Jason, and I just remember her touching me.
23:03And then she told me that she'd spoken to my wife.
23:09She said, it wasn't your time.
23:11I was a pretty young buck reporter at Channel 9.
23:24The night before, we've been told 14 people have lost their lives.
23:27And I don't know, it's this helpless feeling of bad stuff's happening and you're just watching it.
23:33On a day like that, you've got information coming from a trillion different directions.
23:36It was impossible, impossible to keep up with the number of fires in every corner of the state.
23:42I just turned up to the newsroom at 5.45 and the chief of staff was just like, something might have happened in Marysville, go check it out.
23:51Jump in the car with the cameraman, Dean.
23:54And so we start driving out there and all of a sudden the greeny browny trees stop and everything's black.
24:00And there's big tree trunks that have fallen across the road.
24:04That means no one else is driven in here.
24:06We're the first people coming in here.
24:08And the further we got in, the worse it got.
24:10It looked like the end of the world.
24:13And eventually, we started rolling into Marysville.
24:18Literally, not a building standing.
24:21Just the complete destruction of this town.
24:25And no one knows what's happened here.
24:28I was still working.
24:29Everywhere you went, there was visions of disbelief.
24:35Like, you go past the mud brick homes and they had exploded.
24:41And then you've got the brick homes with steel beams that were like twisties.
24:46Like, it has to have been that hot.
24:48We spoke to a lady there, Sharon, who rocked up.
24:51And I just remember she had a blanket over her shoulders.
24:54We all had fire plants, but then the trees went over the road and our fire plants, we just, it was just too fast.
25:02He was quite young then at the time.
25:05And he was very kind and I couldn't really talk to him actually.
25:09It's such a small community.
25:10You could just feel that they'd just witnessed help.
25:19In nearby King Lake, the mood was equally grim.
25:22My dad was involved in a four-car collision there and I couldn't get him out and he was still dead in the car there.
25:28When I saw my brother for the first time, the morning after, we hugged one another and we felt so guilty that we hadn't been able to save Dad.
25:44It was just something horrible.
25:47We started looking for welfare checks.
25:50In the first hour and a half, I located 11 bodies.
25:55News of the deaths themselves started to trickle through.
25:57Someone would arrive at the station and say, oh, another person's died and another person, then another person, this whole family's gone.
26:04I couldn't fathom the scale of disaster within 12 hours.
26:10You've lost everything, yeah.
26:12We've lost our community, our friends, our town.
26:16It's all gone.
26:18I mean, we lost 22 friends.
26:20So, you know, to go to 22 funerals was pretty tough.
26:23I think for me, the moment of the fire itself is not the one that haunts me.
26:29It's the days and weeks after.
26:32Living through trauma is like quicksand.
26:36You try and crawl out and you go further down.
26:38I could not get out of fight or flight mode.
26:42I couldn't.
26:43It just wore me out inside.
26:46I did not want to live.
26:48No.
26:49I mean, I just, it was too hard.
26:51I kept saying, well, if I just disappear, nobody will know anyway.
26:54Nobody's going to miss me.
26:55I had survivor guilt for a long time.
26:58Probably to some extent I still do.
27:00People perished and you didn't.
27:02And, you know, I've got my family.
27:04So glad that they survived.
27:06And it dawns on you that other people haven't.
27:08I used to do Pilates on the mountain.
27:11It was a young girl whose family had all been lost.
27:16She had Burns bandages on, you know, the suit.
27:21And I just thought, shit.
27:23And she just started laughing to herself.
27:27I lost it.
27:29I had to leave.
27:31Because how could someone who'd been through so much
27:34laugh?
27:39It was upsetting.
27:40But there was also that community feeling of support.
27:44I can talk to somebody and they'll understand.
27:46Whereas if I go somewhere else, they won't understand.
27:50You were part of that.
27:51If you weren't there, you're not part of that.
27:55There's no way that you can have a glimpse into it, really.
28:00We didn't want to leave because there was too much of my dad and the property.
28:04There's a lot of memories there that you want to hold on to.
28:07When I was well enough, someone loaned us a caravan and that was it.
28:12We were back there.
28:13It was literally living in ash, the kids running around in it.
28:15I was going to rebuild.
28:17There was no second thoughts about that.
28:19Marysville's home.
28:20Every time you go to do something, it was like, there's so much to do and just that you feel
28:26like you're not really getting anywhere.
28:27And so then you get to the point where it's like, you don't even want to get up.
28:30I did cry when our foundation slab was poured.
28:34And that was on the first year anniversary of the fire.
28:37In the end, we did get there.
28:39A lot of people help you out as well.
28:41Like, you don't know how many good people there are out there until something like this
28:44happens.
28:45When we reopened the restaurant, it was probably mixed emotions.
28:49It was like loss of something and the rebirth of something else.
28:54As the world turns, it always turns in different ways.
28:59I'd struck up a relationship with Kerry, my now wife, within those couple of years.
29:06Kerry and the two kids, we all moved into the house.
29:10There was a mighty feeling to be home.
29:14And our town's back and beautiful now.
29:16You wouldn't even know there was a fire.
29:18Great place to visit.
29:20I'm very proud of the brigade.
29:21I'm very proud of having been part of that day.
29:23I just wish I could wind the clock back and tell people, get the hell out of here.
29:28I miss me.
29:30I miss the old me.
29:32I'm proud to say I'm from King Lake.
29:34But it took a toll.
29:36I don't fear death at all now.
29:39I don't think I even fear fire because I really know in my heart of hearts, what's going to
29:44happen will happen.
29:45Sometimes at the front of the property, like late in the afternoon when the sun is like
29:50really bad and it makes the sky sort of red.
29:51And there's a strong westerly wind and a lot of leaves are blowing.
29:55That can trigger those memories of that day.
30:01And yeah, the best thing to do is just walk away.
30:04I think that you walk alongside grief.
30:06I don't think it's a hill to be climbed or something to get over.
30:10You just cope by putting one foot in front of it each day and shuffle along and you'll get
30:17there.
30:18Hey.
30:18Hey.
30:18Hey.
30:23Hey.
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