Buchan’s CFA captain, Peter White, remembers the afternoon the fires were menacing the township.

Captain White was the sector commander for Buchan and Gelantipy and had just a CFA strike team and a DELWP taskforce under his command.

The odds were stacked against Buchan and its surrounding communities from the outset.

“We had three ultra planes and two tankers, that’s all we had,” Cpt White said.

Cpt White dropped by his Buchan home, where he runs a log cabin accommodation business, at about 3pm on December 30, to make sure everything was okay.

“I looked to the north and said to my wife, “where did that come from?”

Cpt White said while observing the Windarra fire, which had broken containment lines, the fire was racing towards Buchan.

Windarra is situated six kilometres north-west of Buchan.

Earlier that day he had met with fire crews stationed at Buchan South and Gelantipty and agreed on three trigger points that would warrant the crews returning to protect the Buchan township.

“When the fires started to impact those areas, unfortunately we had to bring those appliances slowly back to Buchan,” he said.

“I felt sorry for pulling the teams out but we initially set up the day with those trigger points. We had a whole town to defend,” Cpt White said.

“We had to look at the bigger picture in the end for community recovery. At least if you’ve got a community, you can recover from that. If we had lost the whole town then it would have been a lot worse.”

Like many others firefighters the Advertiser has spoken to, most mention the unpredictable nature of the inferno.

Cpt White reinforced the firestorm’s unusual trajectory.

“We had 60 kilometre winds, it was just ridiculous, we had no idea where it was going,” he said.

Staying up most of the night to put out fire spots, Cpt White eventually went to bed at 5am but was up at 6.30am to check on the town’s residents.

* GASPING FOR AIR *

“The hardest part for me the next morning was driving down to the recreational reserve to see the community,” Cpt White said.

“Seeing all the elderly and the townspeople sitting outside the rec reserve, in 48 degree heat, because we had no power, no air conditioning. I’ve never seen so many people in Buchan, there were about 60 cars, there were people everywhere.

“The smoke was that thick, it was terrible, we could hardly see for 20 metres in front of us at one stage, people were just gasping for air.

“Just seeing those people... I had to pause for a minute, turn around the other way to regain my composure before facing them again to give them a spiel.

“That was the hardest part, but after I finished talking to them, they actually stood up and gave me a round of applause.”

The entire group then made their way to the pub with the fire crews, where the community enjoyed breakfast as one.

Later that day, on New Year’s Eve, Cpt White put on his civilian hat and, as the town’s electrician, started installing generators to get Buchan up and running.

For the next week people slept at the recreational reserve in their cars and caravans, bonding over a night that will likely be etched in their minds forever.

* FIREMAN LOSES HOUSE *

Buchan CFA First Lieutenant, Bob Carney, and his wife, Linda, have lived on their farming property on the outskirts of the township for 42 years.

They’ve seen a few fires over the years, but not one that has so directly impacted their community.

They were at their property on the afternoon the fires were closing in on Buchan.

The fire raced along the roadside near their property, fuelled by a combination of trees, vegetation and mulch on the nature strip.

Mr Carney was attempting to coax the 50 odd sheep and three horses to a safer area in the paddock.

The horses obediently followed and all the sheep survived, with just a few being singed.

“We couldn’t save the house, it came up the nature strip so quickly and tore through everything,” Mr Carney said.

“The nature strips are a wick, it’s as simple as that.”

“I looked around and we had fires coming from three directions,” Mrs Carney said.

Spot fires were igniting in the paddocks and despite Mr Carney and a friend valiantly trying to quell the mini blazes, it was over in seconds.

“As he turned around (from putting out spot fires) the house was gone,” Mrs Carney said.

“The house was elevated off the ground a little bit and it just went under there and the house exploded.”

Mrs Carney said the priority was always on saving the animals.

“The animals were the focus, the house was insured,” she said.

A dog breeder, Mrs Carney said at one stage the fire went within a metre of the dog sheds, which were housing 24 adult dogs and their 20 puppies.

The cavalier and cavoodle dogs were reportedly terrified but were safe once herded into the shed.

“They were totally stressed because they could hear all the noise outside,” Mrs Carney said.

“The mothers with the pups were beside themselves. They’ve been losing hair by the ton because of the stress,” she said.

Mr Carney said he was well prepared with three firefighting pumps and four hoses connected to a generator.

“We also had three 3000 litre water tanks,” he said.

Remarkably, after demolishing their house, the fire stopped just up the road.

“The humidity put it out,” Mrs Carney said.

The Carneys are expecting a visit from insurance representatives this week.

“They’re still to assess the damage, our priority is to get the power back on,” Mrs Carney said as generators whirred noisily in the background.

For now, the couple is living in their horse gooseneck van and are keen to maintain a sense of normality and routine for the animals who still seemed perplexed the main house is no longer standing.

“The dogs keep running up to the house and seem very confused it’s not there,” Mrs Carney said.

Like most Buchan residents, the Carneys are stoic people.

“The bush always burns but Buchan has never burnt before, not like this,” Mr Carney said.

“It just went around the boundary of the property, cooking all those little animals.

“We lost two kilometres of fencing.”

The Carneys said the amount of smoke in the air killed a lot of the birds.

“They were just dying. The cockatoos are coming back at night now though,” Mr Carney said.

The couple plan to rebuild their three-bedroom house with its wrap around verandah.

“We lost a lot of memorabilia, CFA medal and horse trophies, but it’s all materialistic what’s in a house, you can replace it all,” Mrs Carney said.

“Our daughter and her husband, who live in East Buchan, they lost everything.”

“They really copped it out there,” Mr Carney said.

The Buchan community is in unison in the necessity to bring tourists back to the town if they are to survive.

PICTURED: Buchan CFA captain, Peter White, at the front fence of his colleague, First Lieutenant Bob Carney’s house, which exploded in the fires on December 30. K32-3830