Updated
Residents of Sarina Beach in north Queensland have
described the terror of being woken in the middle of the night by
authorities banging on their doors ordering them to flee their homes in
the face of a fast-moving, ferocious bushfire.
Key points:
- Several north Queensland communities have been "traumatised" by the fire emergency
- Sarina Beach residents recall a frantic early morning doorknock
- A Pioneer Valley cane farmer saved their home with just water buckets
The Queensland Fire and Emergency Service (QFES) issued an emergency alert about 2:00am (AEST) on Thursday, advising residents of Sarina Beach and Campwin Beach to leave immediately, with a bushfire expected to impact the community within 30 minutes.
Thomas Ritchie said he would have slept through the fire if authorities had not banged on his door.
"They were slamming it saying, 'Evacuate, evacuate'," he said.
"So we've got into the car, we've reversed out and all you could see was the fire from up on the hill all over the road and as we were coming down it was jumping across the road."
Residents have since been able to return to their homes and said it was a miracle none were lost.
Mackay Regional Council said it was setting up community recovery centres and providing counselling to traumatised residents as emergency services continued to battle five major fire fronts in the region and worked to restore power to some areas.
Mayor Greg Williamson said the Department of Communities was flying 20 staff into Mackay to assist, and recovery centres would be set up in Mirani, Sarina and in the Mackay CBD.
"There's a couple of very, very traumatised communities," he said.
"Sarina Beach and Campwin Beach, just imagine sleeping in your bed, knocking at your door at three o'clock in the morning and the police saying you've got five minutes to get out, get your kids and go."And they couldn't go anywhere except onto the beach and watch the fire rage.
"We have communities at Crediton, at Eungella and Dalrymple Heights, they can't get back to their homes at the moment."
Vicky Chrichton said she was sound asleep when she got the knock on her door.
"I thought I was dreaming and the next minute I realised it was someone bashing on my front door," she said.
"Some random guy — and he was just screaming at me, 'Get out, get out, evacuate'."
Ms Chrichton said it was orange outside, with trees exploding and embers flying everywhere.
"I went and grabbed my kids' portraits off the walls and that was it, they were in the car and we had no time for anything else," she said.
"We're going to come back to nothing, that's what we thought."
Buckets saved home from 'fire tornado'
Jenny Ward's cane farm at Netherdale in the Pioneer Valley, west of Mackay, was devastated by fire.But her house, shed and most of the farming equipment were saved.
"Devastation … everything's just black. And it was so quick," she said.
Ms Ward said she could not get home from work and her family called triple zero for help as "fire tornadoes" approached.
But the fire trucks did not arrive and they had to use buckets to save their home themselves.
"Looking around us, I am absolutely amazed they saved the house and the shed over here because you can see where the flames had been up the shed wall," she said.
"And all they had was buckets because by that stage the power had gone out, the power poles had been burnt down.
"We're not on town water and all they had was a little cement tank full of water and buckets."
Ms Ward said they had crop insurance and were still tallying how much they had lost.
"You look at what [the fire] has done to trees and you wonder if any of it has survived," she said.
In surrounding areas, farmers used hand tools and buckets as they desperately tried to save their properties.
Marty Bella described how he and other landholders were "hit by a firestorm" as they tried to backburn and create firebreaks at Koumala, south of Mackay.
"We had fire spirals and a couple of us got cut off on the other side of it," he said."Looked like we had to run to the creek about a kilometre away but [luckily] the wind changed."
He said the group used hand tools to create firebreaks in areas that could not be accessed by heavy machinery.
"We had a dozen people up there with rakes and shovels … that's all we had. You couldn't get anything up, it's like climbing up your wall," he said.
'I had a joey in the car'
Wildlife carer Glenda Fletcher said she only had a moment's notice to evacuate her home at Netherdale when an emergency declaration was made for the Finch Hatton fire on Tuesday afternoon."I had no idea that there was a problem because I don't have a computer, I don't have Facebook … the cop turned up and told me to get out," she said.
"I had a joey in the car and said I had creatures in the house and wanted to come back and get them and he said, 'Go now'."Ms Fletcher said she was upset at having to leave behind two possums and seven birds but understood the urgency of the situation as she could see huge flames from the house.
She was able to return home later that night to find the house still standing and just one bird missing.
"I've been through cyclones and give me a cyclone anytime because fires are just totally unpredictable and extremely scary," she said.
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