18 January 2003 firestorm - Mount Stromlo stories Graeme Blackman RSAA Site Officer, Mount Stromlo campus – interview, 29 January 2003

Bart Meehan – Graeme, just to get some background information. What's your job up at Mt Stromlo?

Graeme Blackburn – Site Officer. Security, maintenance, looking after the site in general.

B – Now on the Saturday 18^th January you were in Gundagai or somewhere like that?

G – I was in Tumbarumba. I took my kids home to my parents on Friday night and I came back early Saturday and I got back here about 9.30, 10 o'clock.

B – So when did you actually find out about the fire threat to Mt Stomlo?

G – That was on Friday. There was a warning. They gave us a general warning that it could be Sunday... bad weather for Sunday.

B – Sorry I'm not sure where Tumbarumba is?

G – It's up in Batlow, Tumut, Wagga area. Up in the Snowies.

B – So you weren't driving back through the fires, so you probably had no sense of what was going on.

G – No – I realised when I was coming back that it was bad. The radio said, it was 8 o'clock or something, it was 30 degrees so I knew it was going to be bad.

B – So you got back to the site about 9.30. So what was going on at the site at 9.30 when you got there?

G – Nothing… just normal run of day. I just went home and Vince rang me up and said there was a fire brigade on the mountain. 10 o'clock I think it was ... somewhere around that ... I'm not certain of exact times, I don't know.

B – That's fine.

G – And I went up there and there were two motor cycle police on site then.

B – Did you have a talk to them?

G – Yes – and there was a fire officer and a fire tanker.

B – And so the police were actually up on the main site?

G – Yeah – they were at the Visitors Centre saying they were evacuating the Red Belly. They were closing the Red Belly and the Visitors Centre down to the public.

B – OK and did they speak with you at all?

G – No. I asked them what was going on. They said that's what they were doing and they got on their bikes and left.

B – And basically you were looking to the west at that time, could you actually see the fire at all?

G – No just the smoke, it was down at McIntyre Hut.

B – Just from your own personal point of view, did you think it was a major fire coming? What were your feelings at the time?

G – Well I wasn't really worried much about that McIntyre Hut fire because the wind was blowing more north-west, more up into Belconnen. Our main concern was the one from the Brindabellas and that wind blowing from that area. So that one they were mainly concerned about.

B – Were there any people actually working on the operational site that morning, do you remember?

G – Ah, well just the Exploratory staff which was… I think there were two in the shop and two explainers and plus whatever Red Belly staff Simon had on.

B – There was nothing in the Duffield or Woolley buildings?

G – When I went through the Duffield and Woolley – because they said to me to go and, you know, just tell people to be ready …

B – This is the police?

G – The fire brigade.

B – Oh fire brigade. So this was around about 9.30?

G – Ten o'clock, 10.30, somewhere around there.

B –They asked you to go through and just… tell people?

G – Oh. They just said "look the residents are fine they'll have, you know, and just go through and just tell them to be ready. Prepared, you know, just in case but there's no danger ... no immediate danger. They just didn't want a lot of people on site in case something did happen.

B – Sure… and so you went through the Woolley and Duffield?

G – Yeah and I found there were two students in the Woolley. One of them lived on site, the other one off-site. I found Ken Freeman in his office and he said he'll be quite happy to stay because he wanted to do some more work. I said that's fine. I went to the residents just told them, you know, that no threat, no worries.

B – There were 8 residences before the fire. Is that right?

G – 12 houses.

B – 12 houses. One of which was yours. And they were all occupied, oh sorry, no, two weren't occupied, they were the new ones?

G – Yeah so we had 10 residences that were occupied.

B – Who was actually in the Director's House at that time? Was that being used by students?

G – No, it was used by a family. The wife's husband is a professor – Tokyo University.

B – OK were they at home at the time?

G – Ah, they came home later, they were at a birthday party.

B – Ok, so they weren't there in the morning but they came back during the day?

G – Yes.

B – Just the wife?

G – Her husband was in Japan, so just the wife and the two kids.

B – OK. So they were they Japanese?

G – No they're English.

B – So this is around about 10. You've got the police there asking people to ... well basically closing down Red Belly Black and the Exploratory, and telling you to make people aware that there is no immediate danger, but to get ready. So, Facilities and Services people were already up there, Florian (Stienbacher) had been up.

G – I didn't know Florian was up there then. I rang him on the phone. He said if there was any word on the fire coming to ring Jim [Pollard] and he'll get an electrician ready to come and hook the generator up. So I rang Jim and while I was talking to Jim, Florian walked in. So, he said it's fine. So I just did what our procedures were for the day. Then they sent up the electrician to start wiring in the generator.

B – What time did the electrician get up there?

G – Roughly round about 11-11.30, somewhere around that area.

B – And what was the situation like then, at 11?

G – Still calm, no panic. Fires were still burning.

B – So had the fires actually moved to the west? Could you actually see them or was it just fairly slow?

G – No, it was still just smoky.

B – So when did you get a sense that the fires were actually going to hit Mount Stromlo?

G – Ah well. I had a scanner, which Tim Borough got me and we listened.

B – This is a bushfire scanner?

G – Frequency. And we just listened to it. We had it on top of the generator and then I realised… I can't give the exact time, but then they said the fire was starting to run up into the Molonglo area. When I heard that the fire was at Molonglo treatment works, that's when I started to think it's getting more serious. It's not that far to Stromlo from the treatment works.

B – Yeah fair enough. So at what point was it decided to evacuate the rest of the site?

G – Well, we were doing the generator and just finished that work and I went down to the [MSO] water treatment works with Actew because they were putting a generator in on their pumps. So I went down there and that was when, after I got down there, I talked to the chap. He said its fine and that's when I drove back… went back and the police were behind me saying it was time to go.

B – Get everybody off site?

G – Yeah.

B – At that point, all who were left on the site besides you and our Facilities and Services people were the residents in the houses and some of the people in the Duffield, Woolley buildings?

G – All the Woolley people were gone. There was Vince O'Connor and Liam Waldron.

B – So they were up there basically just "reccying" the site.

G – Well Liam came up to have look and see if he could help and Vince came up for the same reason. He just got stuff out his house, that was about it.

B – And so you've got the police. They've told you to evacuate the site. Who went down and actually spoke with the residences?

G – I went around and told the residences it was time to go.

B – OK.

G – And I went to Agris Kalnajs, house 8, went to 11, and went to all the houses. Time was short so you didn't… then I went to 19… I went up to 21 and that was it.

B – And everybody left except Mark [Bacon] didn't he?

G – Mark Bacon, yeah. And the student who was in the whats-a-name building.

B – We will talk about that later because it's an interesting story.

G – Mark Bacon and that one... a friend of his, Dave?

B – Andrew, yeah. I'm actually going to talk with Mark just to get his experience. You went round, you spoke to Mark, you told him that he should go. And what did he say? He was going to stay?

G – Well I just said it's time to go. I said "look mate the police are here, they say it's time to evacuate", and I left it at that.

B – Fair enough.

G – because I didn't have time to argue with people so I just left. I went around. By the time I'd done all the houses I got back there ... the police were actually going by the time I go back and got my own car. The police were actually going back around the house with their sirens on to get people moving.

B – Yeah, fair enough. Now the student is an interesting one I haven't got all the details, just bits of story, but I understand he was asleep in the bachelors quarters, is that right?

G – Yeah he came in, I don't know what time but he came in some time in the morning and he went straight to sleep. He never told anyone. Well, he never told me. I didn't even know he was in there.

B – Is it right – somebody said to me that in fact your records showed that he'd actually booked out of the quarters a week before… is that right?

G – No, no, no, no I think he just came in. He was doing an observing run on the 74". I don't know much about his story.

B – Oh, Ok I'll find that out. It was just an interesting story.

G – All I know is he was woken up, he put a doona over his head, waited for the main fire, then just got out before the roof fell in and he was sitting in the middle of the playground… with a doona wrapped around him, because he didn't know what to do.

B – So he ran to the main playground and, in fact, that was probably the smartest thing he could have done in the end.

G – Yeah ... that's just across the road from where he was. Then Mark and Andrew came out of their house and found him.

B – Extraordinary. Do you know the student's name?

G – No I don't, no.

B – Oh it's alright. It'd be an interesting story to find out.

G – I think he's in Fenner Hall at the moment.

B – We'll chase him up. So you were off the site. Do you know how quickly or how soon after you evacuated the site the fire actually hit?

G – Well, when we were leaving you could see the red glow as you were going down the mountain.

B – Is that right? So probably only 15 minutes half an hour before it hit.

G – I reckon it would have been probably a lot less than that.

B – Is that right?

G – Yeah. Well it was Tim. Tim rang me on the mobile and he said "it's time to get out"! He had rung me before I'd seen the police. He said "a fireball has just gone over the top of us, and I heard it was at Mt McDonald which, if you look down from Stromlo, it's not that far" ... so it was coming.

B – When I was speaking with Florian the other day, his comments actually support yours in a sense that he was saying, more or less, right up to the point when people left, there wasn't really any sense of urgency because there wasn't any sense of impending danger.

G – Yeah… it was …

B – You know the residents had come up to have a look at what was going on and things like that and nobody really had a sense that there was going to be a fire of that sort.

G – Well. See, all the reports were that this weather we got on Saturday was supposed to come in on Sunday. So, when it just came a day early and, well, as I said we were just there with the generator fixing it, making sure the pump's working, there was no panic, no nothing ... and, it just all of a sudden hit.

B – And I guess from your point of view, like most people's point of view of Saturday, we thought we were dealing with a bushfire of normal proportions – not what happened.

G – Yeah, but when they said it was coming around Spring Valley Farm and then we knew that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time there.

B – So you got off the mountain probably just ahead of the fire. Whereabouts did you go to by the way?

G – I went down to Kambah. I had a friend down in Kambah.

B – From the frying pan into the fire (laughs)

G – Yeah, well. As we came off the mountain you could see Deeks Drive was already alight in Duffy there. So we drove through that fire at Duffy – like the fire was just behind us.

B – And how was your friend's place at Kambah?

G – Alright yeah, yeah ... well the fire was probably three blocks, four blocks away ... like, across the road.

B – So when did you actually get back to the Mt Stromlo site?

G – Sunday.

B – Sunday morning?

G – Sunday morning.

B – And of course your house is one of the houses that went… and I assume you didn't get much time to get anything out of the house?

G – No. Just what I had when I and Liam went down to the water works. Then on the way back I said look I'll just call in a grab my car and take it up to work and I just grabbed a couple of things and just fell in the car and said look… You see there was no panic. Look, I said, look I'll just come back and get some stuff later. But never had time.

B – Yeah. You'd been up to the site since and I've been up there as well. There isn't much left so I would imagine there isn't too much amongst the embers of your place.

G – No. I just couldn't get over how the place just exploded. It's just dust – there's nothing. All the houses were the same.

B – On the Sunday morning, when do you reckon you got there?

G – About 9.

B –Were there many people up there then?

G – No. I had a job to get up there but I got up there and I think Vince [O'Connor], John Norris and Agris had shown up. And, well I looked around. They went all around the buildings. I escorted them around. Then Penny, the Director, wanted to come up and she couldn't get up. But she got up later and John said if she comes up stay with her. So I just walked around with Penny in the afternoon. And Col Vest came up. He's the foreman of the workshop. And then Gay Bloxham showed up – she's the head of the optical shop.

B – You didn't have a house, so where have you been staying?

G – I'm over in John XXIII College

B – So you stayed over at John XXIII College but we're getting you over to one of those new houses on the site fairly shortly.

G – Just waiting for the power and I'm moving straight in.

B – So you'll be able to provide a little bit of security for the site as well after hours. When you went up there on the Sunday, just personally, how did you feel when you saw the site?

G – Well I felt good when I went through the boom gate with the two houses standing. But as you went up further it got very depressing, it's very depressing.

B – Yeah, I know. I said this to Tim, and Florian too, and I think it's important that people put in perspective – our fire procedures as a University are designed to do one thing and one thing only, and that's save lives. As far as I'm concerned the procedures worked 100% right. Nobody died and that is the only thing that matters in this circumstance because everything else can be rebuilt. I know you've lost your house and a lot of personal effects and things like that, but I mean literally speaking ... what you and others did on that Saturday, saved lives and that's the most important thing.

G – Well that's what I was aiming at. I was aiming to get people off the mountain.

B – That's right. But you can re-build anything as long as you've got the people to do it.

G – Well I thought that ... that Florian, Jim and Duncan Taylor ... I thought they would have gotten themselves off ... and I think Duncan got off after… before I did …

B – Just one last thing in terms of the actual sounds of the day on Saturday, just prior to leaving was the site, you said you saw the red glow. Was there wind? Was there anything? Was it calm?

G – Calm. Just calm type of thing and there was a couple of helicopters flying overhead and it was calm ... black smoke… but most of it was just …

B – Was it really dark?

G – No it wasn't, it wasn't dark. It was still reasonably light. Like more like at dusk type of… you know, late evening. But, by the time I got down into Duffy it was pitch black.

B – Well that's all I needed. So thanks very much Graeme, I appreciate it.

G – OK. Thank you.

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