The Argus. Saturday, January 14, 1939. 100 HOUSES LOST AT WARRANDYTE HALF TOWNSHIP RAZED RESIDENTS FLEE TO RIVER Two converging bush fires swept down on Warrandyte about 2 p.m. yesterday, and within an hour razed nearly half the houses in the district. It is believed that approximately 100 were destroyed. So sudden was the onslaught of the fire that few people had an opportunity to save more than the clothes they wore. Women and children were hurried to the safety of the river shallows, where they waited fearfully throughout the afternoon. Every able-bodied man in the district was engaged in the vain fight against the flames. Believed to have started near Eltham, the fires raced through tinder-dry grass and forest almost as fast as the wind itself, demolishing every habitation in their path. The first warning that Warrandyte had was a billow of smoke which rose sud-people had barely time to realise the warning significance of the smoke when the red glow of flames was seen. The experience of the head master of the local school, Mr. M. Isaac and his family, was typical of the experiences of scores of other families in the town. Mr Isaac was resting on his bed, when a tradesman warned his wife. She rushed in and roused him. They began to gather clothes together in suitcases. Suddenly a shout was heard “Run for your lives!” Hurrying out they saw fire racing toward the house. In a moment the flames were licking at the walls of the house. With their few hastily packed cases Mr. and Mrs. Isaac, either daughter and a grandchild, groped their way though the smoke to their car. “I can’t see to drive.” Mr. Isaac exclaimed. Some shouted: “It doesn’t matter whether you can see or not, drive!” The car was driven into the smoke, crashed into something—a horse drawn vehicle, Mrs. Isaac thought it was—she heard a horse whinny in panic—but the car went on, and presently the party emerged from the smoke. Mrs. Isaac and the children fled to the river with their few possessions, while her husband went to join the firefighters. The fire raced round the slope of the hill behind the main street of the township, burning house after house as it sped. Meanwhile the second fire, on the other side of the river, wiped out Pound Bend, and swept up the gullies behind the river cliffs to Kangaroo road, and Artist’s Hill, which is dotted with homes all surrounded by thick bush. Here the fire displayed wanton freakishness, razing a brick house here and leaving a wooden building a few yards away unscathed. Scores of such freaks of fortune occurred, aided, as the day wore on, by strange changes of wind. It blew first from the north, then from the west, from the south-west, from the west again, then switched round to the east. Burning this way and that before the vagaries of the wind, the fire several times threatened to destroy whole groups of dwellings only to sweep back onto its tracks and leave intact buildings it was thought impossible to save. One after the other, three wooden churches, Presbyterian, Anglican and Roman Catholic, went in flames and collapsed. All the houses on the western side of Pigtail Hill were burned. At South Warrandyte only a few were left standing. Both the school and the hall, and at least 20 dwellings were lost. Of Warrandyte itself only the cluster of a dozen or so buildings round the post-office and the hotel—a few stores, guest houses, a garage; and another group about the bridge across the Yarra, are left standing. The fire fighters were insuperably hampered by the absence of water. There is no reticulation system in the township. Most of the residents depend on rain water collected in tanks for their supplies. Only the hotel, and a few of the more pretentious home in the district, have pumping plants to draw water from the river. These, for the most part, are electrically driven, and early in the afternoon the fire severed the towns electricity supply. Only at the hotel was there any considerable storage of water, and this was used to have the post-office. The townspeople had to watch helplessly while building after building disappeared in smoke and flame.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 12:29:04 +0000