‘It’s gone’: With a home destroyed, fire evacuees can do nothing but hope
Those evacuated from the path of the Longwood bushfire huddled in caravans and vans, sheltering from the extreme heat, as they waited for news about their homes.
As fires raged on the outskirts of the Victorian town of Longwood, Mark Jenkin could do nothing but watch helplessly as his neighbour’s home burnt to the ground.
“All his paddock and house there was untouched when we came up this morning, but another fire started in behind here and raged up through the pine trees … Eventually it got to his house, and it’s gone,” he said.
Mark Jenkin watched his neighbour’s house burn to the ground. Credit: The Age
Jenkin said that at first the gate caught fire. Soon, the roof started to sag.
“You could hear his LPG gas making a weird, sort of high-pressure, squirting sound,” he said. “It went on for ages.”
The gas seeping out of the bottles was still burning on Thursday night.
Jenkin had to break the news to his neighbour over the phone that his house, along with the antique clocks inside, had burnt to the ground in about an hour around 4pm. The westerly wind kept the flames from lapping at Jenkin’s own door.
“I was a bit worried,” he said.
Jenkin and his wife had tried to leave their home for a motel in Euroa but were unable to drive down the forested track out of the hills of Longwood East, about 150 kilometres north of Melbourne, on Thursday morning.
The couple had heeded the advice from emergency services and spent Wednesday night at the motel but returned home on Thursday to finish packing up their belongings, anticipating they would stay away until the weekend.
“I mucked around a bit around here watering things down and by the time we went to leave the end of the track was an inferno,” Jenkin said. “We thought we’d better go back, and we’ve been here ever since.”
Blackened ground surrounded their property on Thursday, just metres from their front door. A water tank in the backyard had melted into the ground. Most of it had burnt down on Wednesday night, Jenkin said.
Wyatt Moncrieff at his Panorama Road property after the bushfires near Longwood East.Credit: Jason South
