Pacific closely watching Victorian fires

[Stacey King]

ABC Radio Australia InterviewUpdated 8 hours 11 minutes ago
10 Feb 2009


There's been a strong response in the Pacific to the natural disaster unfolding in Australia. Since Saturday the state of Victoria has been hit by bushfires which have destroyed lives and homes. Across the region there have been expressions of sorrow and hope, including prayer vigils for those affected. And while there's no sign at this stage the fires are under total control, Australian bushfire officials have declined a New Zealand offer of assistance.

presenter: Campbell Cooney
speaker: NZ Prime Minister, John Key; Ali; Marissa; Murray Dudfield, NZ Rural Fire Officer; Graeme Wilson, RAMSI Special Coordinator; Christopher Hardy from Kinglake; Stephen Frantenfurter

Listen: Windows Media

COONEY: Since Saturday 12 bushfires in the southern Australian state of Victoria have killed over 100 people, destroyed over 700 homes and left at least two communities in complete ruin. One of those communities is King Lake located north of Melbourne, and resident Christopher Harvey has described what's left.

HARVEY: Everybody's gone, everybody's gone, they're all dead in their houses, everybody's dead.

COONEY: Another fire refugee Ali's described what was left at her home.

ALI: Our pony is in the backyard, she's gone, little Jenny, all that's standing of our house is the chimney and a bedhead.

COONEY: Someone else who escaped was Stephen Frantenfurter. Mr Franterfurter and his family had been shopping in a nearby village and he told the ABC's Jon Faine what happened after they arrived home.

STEPHEN: We came home stacked the freezer, it was really a hot day so we drew the curtains to sit down and watch a video. When the video finished my wife got up and came back from the bathroom and said you should see the sky outside, we're in for a big thunderstorm, it's black. So she said come and have a look, so I went out to the veranda and looked and I said it's not a cloud, it's smoke, so we had a few minutes to pick up some things that we wanted and we drove out the driveway and the road opposite us was on fire, the houses were burning. And we've got three and a half kilometres from our place to the main road and it was on fire, the paddocks were on fire on the way down there.

FAINE: Have you been back?

STEPHEN: We're not allowed to go back yet, we're waiting to go back, but we've been told there are 200 houses on our road and the roads branch off it, and there's only three left, and ours won't be one of them. Our neighbour lost two kids, it's just a terrible place. I consider ourselves as really privileged refugees.

COONEY: The tragedy unfolding in southern Australia has grabbed the attention of people around the world, and the Pacific is no different. In particular in Solomon Islands where the RAMSI intervention mission is led and largely staffed by Australians, and newly arrived Special Coordinator Graham Wilson says many there are worried about what's happening at home.

WILSON: I have family in Victoria and there are many people here who are from Victoria and I know that a number of them have been urgently contacting relatives to check their safety.

COONEY: New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has offered a helping hand to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

KEY: And what I said to Kevin is look we'd like to help out as much as we can, indicated we could probably mobilise about 100 firefighters within the next 24 to 48 hours.

COONEY: The last time New Zealand firefighters were in Victoria was 2007 when 11 were injured. Before the New Zealanders are mobilised the Victorian state government has to make a formal request, and at this stage it's told New Zealand it won't be doing so as emergency officials believe currently they do have enough resources, including fire crews.

New Zealand's Rural Fire Officer Murray Dudfield says if a request is made his men have the skills needed.

DUDFIELD: We have a good skill base here for the environment over there in respect of tall forests. We operate the same incident management system so we can fit our people into the command and control structure very easily, the chainsaw skills, the management of bulldozers, management of aircraft.

COONEY: While the death toll currently stands at 108 people emergency officials say they expect that number to go up. But amongst all the bad news has come the occasional bit of relief for family and friends expecting to hear the worse. One of those was Marissa:

MARISSA: My husband's just flown in with the helicopter onto our property and a friend of ours who's been living for four days was there, and he's found her well, she's fine.