Black Saturday at Steels Creek by Peter Stanley

Author:Peter Stanley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NAT023000, SOC040000, HIS004000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2013-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

SOUTH-WESTERLY

‘And then the wind changed’ — again: the third movement in the three-point turn shown by Kevin Tolhurst’s model.

The change of wind in a bushfire is a decisive moment. Sometimes it represents salvation. A change of one hundred and eighty degrees, or something like it, can blow a fire back on itself. It dies, and those who were previously threatened live. But a change of direction of about ninety degrees — from, say, north-westerly to south-westerly — does not merely change the direction of the danger: it multiplies it. What had been the flank of the fire becomes a new front. Now the entire downwind body of fire moves across country, increasing in size and destructive power. Picking up and propelling any spot fires, the fire strikes everywhere at once. This is exactly what occurred around Yarra Ridge, at about 6.00 p.m. on the afternoon of Black Saturday.

This is clear enough on a diagram. The reality is, inevitably, much messier. What happens on the ground is complicated by the terrain and vegetation, by the vagaries of temperature and air pressure. The fire creates and powers its own winds, many times more powerful than those generated by the changes in pressure calculated by meteorologists.

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