The sky in Mallacoota turned red and black. Finally, the navy came to rescue 'lost souls' on the beach amid one of the worst Australian bushfire seasons on record.
The week after Christmas 2019, was predictably quiet in Mallacoota — only the sound of family and friends and the usual cicadas and birdsong were memorable, according to Mary O'Malley and Larry Gray. The bush looked overgrown and dry but otherwise normal. Mary and Larry’s adult son had invited friends to camp on their property in the small coastal township in East Gippsland, expecting to relax and swim away the hot days as December ticked over into January.
The CFA had been about as prepared as possible, Alen says, because of lessons they'd learned in Victoria's 2009 Black Summer fires, which killed 173 people. "After 2009, we enacted a significant program of changes to training, our systems and public warnings," he says. "In 2019-20, we were utilising things we learned a decade earlier, and we've since been looking at what we can do to improve in that space".
Black Summer Bushfires Bushfires Australia
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