Former CFA volunteers attend CFA District 5 Ash Wednesday memorial service

Former Country Fire Authority region five regional officer Bruce Furnell had a tear in his eye as he recalled the horrors of February 16, 1983, during a 40^th anniversary commemorative event at Panmure on Sunday.

He said it was an emotional event for those who witnessed the "absolutely traumatic day" that was Ash Wednesday.

"We had people coming into the Panmure hall here with only the clothes they put on that morning," Mr Furnell told The Standard.

"Their houses were gone. Their hay sheds and some dairies were gone. The loss of cattle was enormous.

"It is still very sad to this day."

Mr Furnell said a lot of those who were affected were also CFA volunteers.

"In a community like Panmure, 80 to 90 per cent of farmers and those who lived there were in the fire brigade and were there fighting the fires," he said.

"They were out on the ground and then came home to find all their assets were burned."

Mr Furnell said emergency services coordinated from the Panmure hall on the day of the fires, as well as in the weeks that followed.

"The group officers thought it would be a good place to base the recovery effort here and after two days we had to move from the hall into the kitchen because the place was over flowing," he said.

"The hall was filled up with donated items, food, clothing, everything. The hall became a base for people who lost their homes and their loved ones."

Mr Furnell said the coordinating group officers on the day of the fires - Bruce Jones, Ian Askew and Robert Hood - were "brilliant".

"They worked very hard to coordinate all of the brigades, it was not only an inter-group activity but a multi-region one."

And while the landscape has since recovered, Mr Furnell said the "scars on the people involved have always been here".

"My voice still cracks when I talk about it. It's hard but it's lovely to come back here today to catch up with some of those who went through it all," he said.

Mr Furnell's wife Dawne recalled the stress of knowing her husband would be out on the ground until the early hours of the morning.

"There wasn't much we could do but wait,' she said.

"There were a lot of wives at home on that day who didn't know if their husbands were coming home.

"Then in the aftermath, I remember seeing the men come back here and just breaking down, crying."

John Mahony was the Ash Wednesday incident controller in 1983.

On Sunday he said he could still feel the dry and dusty wind that surrounded the region, 40 years on.

"That wind, it was just howling," he said.

"It was getting hotter and hotter and I was at home when I heard what was happening over the radio so I headed straight to the fire.

Out in the field, Mr Mahony directed trucks with the help of his mate Mick Finnigan.

"I remember going to open a gate and it was that hot I had three goes at it to get it open and let the trucks into the paddock," he said.

In the days that followed, Mr Mahony helped re-build fences and clean up the properties of those who had lost everything.

He would have put in thousands of fence posts for his community.

"You just did what you had to do," he said.

IN OTHER NEWS

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: