00:00This is somebody who is very lucky in fact to tell the tale.
00:05This is Warwick O'Donnell.
00:07Thank you so much for coming and having a chat with us.
00:10You live just a couple of kilometres down the road.
00:13Tell us what happened when the fire encroached on your home on Thursday afternoon.
00:20Well, it's hard to remember really because it happened so fast.
00:24There was smoke on the hill. We had a massive hill opposite our house.
00:30I saw smoke coming over the top. I started packing my stuff in the car.
00:36All my tools and what not.
00:37Once I realised that I had another look to see how much time I had
00:41and there wasn't much time at all.
00:44I went in my room to pack a bag, packed my bag.
00:47And again, looked out the window to see how much time I had
00:50and the fire was there. It was here.
00:52It was at the house. It was at the front, on the road.
00:56And I pretty much had to jump out the window to get to the car
00:58before the fire hit the car.
01:01And essentially, I got in the car, started it.
01:04And yeah, as I took off, the fireball just hit me.
01:08Wrapped over me for a couple of hundred metres down the road.
01:13Yeah, I wasn't sure if the car was going to make it or not,
01:14but yeah, I made it, got it out.
01:17And you'd had the windows down.
01:18What was happening?
01:19What was happening with the flames when you were driving in?
01:21Well, it just turned into like a cocoon.
01:25It was just, yeah, orange, yellow, red, and blinding,
01:30completely blinding, couldn't see a thing, couldn't see a thing.
01:33I was almost about to pull over because I didn't want to drive into someone else.
01:37I didn't know what was going to be in front of me.
01:39And luckily, it just started to clear.
01:43And yeah, it just started to clear.
01:45And I realised that I'd sort of half outrun the fire.
01:48And I just kept going, and yeah.
01:50What was going through your mind at the time when all of this was happening?
01:54I probably shouldn't repeat what was going through my mind.
01:58But I should have, yeah, essentially had got out a little bit earlier.
02:04Yeah.
02:04Yeah.
02:05And I tried to grab so many things.
02:08So I filled up my car and filled up my trailer.
02:11I didn't have time to even shut the gate on the trailer.
02:13So as I was taking off, everything fell out of the trailer and burnt anyway.
02:17And I think you were saying that the flames were even coming in through the windows.
02:24Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:25Luckily, I've got electric windows.
02:26I had them coming up automatically as I was trying to watch where I was going.
02:30And yeah, they just kept peeking in as I was driving.
02:34And then it just stopped.
02:36I didn't know if the car was going to make it.
02:38I thought one of the rubbers or the fuel would go or the tire.
02:41I actually thought the tires would go first, but yeah, I got out.
02:45You're so lucky.
02:46Yeah, yeah.
02:48And you went back later.
02:51You've suffered losses, haven't you?
02:53Tell us what ended up burning down.
02:54I lost our shed, lost our workshop, lost pretty much every tool that Dad and I have collected
03:00in our lifetime.
03:04Yeah.
03:04So it's just a fresh start.
03:06We just got it sorted.
03:07Dad's a bit of a hoarder.
03:08And so we just cleaned out the shed and got it all organised.
03:13And it's gone.
03:14It's gone.
03:14We had about three good days with it.
03:16Right near, right next door is the home.
03:20Yeah.
03:21And that escaped.
03:22But when you went back, it was still subject to ember attack.
03:26Tell us about that.
03:26Yeah, it was.
03:27Well, I had sprinklers.
03:28I put sprinklers on the roofs.
03:29And then when I realised the fire was coming too close, I just put all the sprinklers on the house.
03:34Yeah, no, I had to leave it like that.
03:38So luckily, I think luckily enough, I dampened it enough to, yeah, to save it.
03:43Because that was the only thing.
03:45And then with the fortunate thing, with the shed being burnt down, I had all the iron to put around the base of the house.
03:52To stop all the embers from getting underneath the house, because we have a fair gap.
03:55And, yeah, it was just continuous.
03:57It was just continuous.
03:58Every 15 minutes, every 20 minutes, something else was firing up and blasting.
04:03And you were saying that a tree crashed down, and that's what sent like almost a barrage of embers.
04:10Yeah, yeah, continuous, yeah.
04:12So we ended up having to cut that.
04:13We didn't have time to put it out or do anything like that.
04:15We just had to cut it and drag it and get it right out of the way from the house.
04:18Since then, has it been a pretty tense couple of days for you?
04:22Tell us about what it looks like at night with the burning still happening.
04:27Absolutely non-stop, and especially on the single road, single entry in and out.
04:31Driving up here is like a battlefield.
04:34You've got probably, there'd be probably 15, 20 logs that you're stopping to pull or cut.
04:41Luckily, someone's either done that just before you, or if you feel a bit of wind come through,
04:4710 minutes later, you know there's going to be half a dozen trees down.
04:50So you just don't get through without snatches and chainsaws and whatnot.
04:55You just get stuck.
04:56And we can see the devastation here.
04:59Just how many paddocks, we've heard sadly somebody has died as well.
05:05Yeah, we've heard that yesterday too, yeah.
05:06Just absolutely horrific news.
05:09What do you think, how do you think the community is going to cope with this situation here?
05:15I'm not sure.
05:16I'm not sure how everyone's going to cope.
05:20I don't even know how I'm going to cope, but it's not really, I didn't have a loss of
05:24life, but a lot of people have lost a lot of livestock, people have lost family members and whatnot,
05:29as you just said.
05:31Yeah, I don't know.
05:33It's really hard, isn't it?
05:34Yeah.
05:34And you've got your family in the area as well, but they got out and you got your parents out.
05:39Yeah, I did drag mum and dad out, but yeah, I got them out and yeah, my family's in the area, so it's good.
05:44Yeah, look, Warwick O'Donnell, thank you so much. That is such a harrowing experience. I can't imagine,
05:52I think you need to go and buy a lotto ticket or something after that. You are very, very, very lucky.
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