In the evening of 24 January, 2021, our home in Bradbury, S.A. was in the path of a big fire, now known as the Cherry Gardens Fire, which had been set in the Scott Creek Conservation Park by an arsonist. Our house is equipped with roof-top impact sprinklers, supplied by 38mm copper pipes, from a 100,000-litre tank and powered by an electric-start diesel pump. The fire impacted our site just after 9.00 p.m.; local emergency services had withdrawn because it was deemed too dangerous to be here, and water-bombing aircraft don’t fly at night. Moreover, the approaching fire had caused a large tree to fall across our driveway, so access was really impossible. I was the only person here – that’s our fire plan: I’m CFS-trained, so I stay and defend the site, everybody else leaves early – upon the issuing of a “severe” or “catastrophic” fire-danger warning for the day. This day was barely either – a day of temperatures in the mid-thirties with a light southerly breeze, but, of course, a big fire can start at any time.
I took the picture above of the approaching fire at 9.09 p.m.; I was still outside. The sprinklers had been working for about an hour at this stage – you can see them wetting down the roof, but also the huge quantity of embers rising above the fire. After this snap, I hurriedly took refuge inside the house.
This is the fire on the slope west of the house at 9.10 p.m.; the timber decking and pergola in the foreground were thoroughly wet, and suffered no damage. The house has a tiled roof; we had previously had the tiles removed to seal the roof with fire-proof aluminium foil sarking, with the tiles put back in place afterwards. I had a ladder inside to be able to check the roof space for possible ember ingress.
This view, taken at 9.11 p.m., shows the ember attack against the west wall; the radiant heat coming through the glass was so high, I had to withdraw and hide behind an internal wall. The fire’s noise was very loud, but I could still hear the sprinklers chugging away on the roof.
This was at 9.12 p.m.; the main front had passed – and was busy roaring through the garden behind, before burning out our neighbours. You can see the wet decking in this picture. I checked the roof space for embers, but there were none. ( I had, however left the toilet window partly open, and the inside of the house was a bit smoke-logged.)
6.30 a.m. the next morning; some stumps still alight. My woodshed burned all day! You can see the unburnt grass area which the sprinklers had protected; we used about 30,000 litres of water in the hour and a half that the sprinklers were operating. The power had stayed on throughout the whole drama; it was a certain comfort to have the lights on inside!
Our neighbours’ house the next day: an elderly couple, they had left the house at about 4.30 p.m., after the fire had started in Cherry Gardens. They had sprinklers which they’d activated before they left, but they had run out of water by the time the fire reached them, and embers got into their roof. I had the appalling spectacle of watching their house burn all night.