Fires a nightmare

By Melissa Meehan
A YEAR after the Bunyip State Park bushfire, Labertouche resident Michelle Butine’s young daughter cannot sleep through the night and struggles to put on weight, the Bushfire Royal Commission has heard.
Speaking at the inquiry into the Black Saturday bushfires, Ms Butine said her daughter Savannah was 13 months old at the time of the fires.
“Since the fires she relies heavily on milk during the night,” she said. “We’ve had her to the maternal child health nurse, we’ve had her to local GPs, and I’ve had her back to her paediatrician. What we try to do is maintain a routine in the shed for her sake, we try to keep everything as routine as we can.”
On top of the constant stress of the effect of the fires on her daughter, Ms Butine and her husband Brett have set up their shed as a home.
But just weeks ago in the heavy rains they endured a flood and were up to their ankles in water.
“It was quite an ordeal,” she said.
Despite the constant battle, Ms Butine attended the Royal Commission to tell her story.
“We never had a formal written plan,” she said. “We had a firefighting pump, we had a lay flat hose, we had enough hose to reach from the dam and physically wrap around the house, and we kept the property relatively clear of debris.”
She said she became aware of the fire burning in Bunyip State Park on Tuesday 3 February after searching for information on the DSE and CFA websites.
“But where we live you couldn’t see it, smell it or hear it,” she said. “We had people from Morrisons Road and Labertouche North Road, which are west of us, state that they knew by Wednesday it was going to be quite bad. Whether they could smell it or not, I’m not sure, but they certainly could see it.”
Ms Butine told the inquiry that by the Friday, after attending a community meeting her intention was to go, but she didn’t want to leave until the next morning.
She said that CFA representatives spoke at the meeting about potential impact zones but she wasn’t really “tuned-in” as Savannah was disrupting the whole meeting and spent a lot of time outside the hall.
It was not until she received a knock on the door at 3pm on the Friday from police asking who was staying and going, that something was “triggered” in her.
“I can only describe it (evacuating) as chaotic,” she said. “We had people there, trying to load horses on, I had a screaming baby, I had Brett putting pressure on me to leave. It was late. It was hot. It was chaotic.”
Her husband Brett decided to stay behind and attempt to defend the property from fire.
When it became too dangerous he sought refuge at the Labertouche Hall.
“I think he felt like it was the only safe place to go,” she said. “I mean both sides of the road were burning, he was driving through flames – that’s what he described to me.
“He said there was a truck and there was a crew there and they looked exhausted, he said you could see the fear in their eyes and they looked like they were vomiting.”
She said more early warnings should have been given to residents about the potential of the fires reaching Labertouche and surrounds.
“If I had the information on Thursday night I would have spent Friday packing anything that was of value to me,” she said.
Now, Ms Butine and her husband are rebuilding their home, from non-flammable materials.