Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Fourteen years ago we woke to a very hot day. It was 46 degrees, with 100-plus kilometre per hour winds. The Premier of the day, John Brumby, said that it was going to be a day of danger. He was scoffed at by his opponents. It turned out that he was dead right. No-one was to know what was going to happen. In the course of the next 24 hours, 173 people lost their lives, 4,000 homes were taken, and some 440,000 hectares of land were lost.

We stood there and watched this roaring sea of flame come across the hills towards our home. Knowing that we couldn't do anything else, we just tried our best. My wife did the right thing: she left. Me being me, I was a bit more obstinate and I decided to stay. But we weren't to know what was going to happen as we saw the might of the Black Saturday fires, which remain the most devastating fires in the nation's history. As I said, 173 people across all our communities in McEwen lost their lives. And it's not just those that lost their lives on the day; it's the many hundreds that lost their lives afterwards. The pain and suffering never left. The scars on the landscape are still there and they are still in the hearts and the minds of the people who were there and lived through it.

Even today, there are people there who still can't countenance the sound of a helicopter or a hot northerly wind on a day like today, when it's hot and blowy and you just don't know what is going to happen. We should never forget what they went through and what they continue to go through. (Time expired)

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