 Hawking officer in charge of CFA's district 24. My role on the night was supporting the rostered duty officer but in fact as the officer in charge I take an interest in all operations that go on in the district and particularly significant ones so I had a role at the district command centre. Adrian Gucci and for the fire at Beechworth IGA was the rostered duty officer at the time and then eventually the incident controller when arriving on scene. On David Box, member of the Beechworth Urban Fire Brigade, I'm actually one of the initial responders at the Beechworth IGA supermarket fire on that Saturday evening. So when the page went off we responded to the station. Even from the station you could see smoke issuing from the main street. The pumper left the station, actually responded in a private vehicle. Upon arrival there was certainly smoke issuing from most corners of the roof, the supermarket. They had already heard across big fire that staff and customers had exited the building. The customers, I mean the staff, upon arrival as we're getting into the IGA and running hose lines confirmed that everyone was out of the building, they said the access was available through the rear door of the building. So we donned our IGA and partnered up, grabbed the hose line and we went in. Upon arrival there was smoke well issuing so we made our entry through the rear of the building, through the roller doors. I know that it's a tilt slope construction so there wasn't a big chance of it getting out, of the fire getting out and we certainly had our IGA covered. So we made our entry through the quickest way that I thought that we could get to the seat of the fire which they had already nominated was in oil too which is well into the supermarket. We took our hose line through the liquor department, through that liquor cool room, through the liquor department and down through the checkouts, down through the front of the supermarket as far as we could get. It was very smoky, it was impossible to see. It was getting hotter and hotter as the deeper we got into the supermarket, closer to what we thought might be the seat of the fire but we could not see any flame. I certainly showed some water and tried a lot of water in that general direction but I didn't think I was achieving much so things were happening very quickly so we turned around and we actually followed our hose line back out because you could not see a thing and it was very hot. We went back out through the liquor department, through the cool room, we decided then myself and my partner that we would actually go around through the store room, punch back in through the shop, through the traditional rear entrance I suppose you call through the flaps which a lot of supermarkets have and then push down through the across the back of the deli department. Once again it was just impossible to see where you were going. I didn't think we were achieving much. The line, the trying to drag the hose was so heavy we pulled back out, went back outside. We decided that the gaining access from the rear wasn't producing much results so we decided to open the front door. The smoke was getting even more intense by now. We forced that front door open and we made an effort back through the checkouts, back through the front of the shop that we were on the first attempt. We did get a little bit deeper in the supermarket then but it was getting hotter and hotter. At least we decided this was of no benefit as well and as we turned around we noticed that one of the speakers had fallen out of the ceiling on the floor and I was a bit concerned about the possible ceiling collapse and being caught so we decided to retreat out of there. We had a bit of a one minute discussion at the front of the store if there's something else we could do. We knew that other appliances were on route so it would be only a matter of time and the reinforcements would arrive. Certainly I know the incident controllers had called for other resources from local brigades. So we decided to go back in through the restore room and then go up to what was a plant room which was a mezzanine floor. As I went up the stairs it was just goldenly hot so the rails on that ladder as we went up were hotter and hotter. I put a bit of water on the door and it was just so hot I thought this was, if I had opened that door I would have made a mistake. So that's where we retreated back out and by the time we came back out and had a look around the other resources from Wodonga and Wangarata were starting to arrive. New South Wales RFS were starting to arrive and with their expertise it just seemed to make sense that they take the lead on it from here on in because it was limited to what we could do. I guess initially the fire was being run by the INSA controller. Initially it was Beechworth Urban Captain in Jeremy Nicholas. When I arrived on scene as a roster duty officer I quickly found him and discussed having an appropriate command and control structure for the fire that was happening. It was at that stage then that between the two of us we decided that myself as the operations officer in District 24 would take on the incident control, part of the incident and that Jamie as a Beechworth Urban Brigade Captain would take on operations and work with the two sector commanders. So I guess looking at the emergency management team early in the piece we looked at establishing an emergency management team. So ordered a health commander very early, also got an ambulance on standby giving the amount of personnel involved and the amount of breathing apparatus work to be done. We also got North East Water who were on scene providing us with intelligence in regards to the water supplies. We also requested the representatives from the council, from the Shire and not only did we get the Miro and eventually the Merck from Big Pole to Turnup but we also had the Shire Mayor and the CEO. During those initial emergency management team meetings we'd already made a tactical decision that we're going to be unable to fight the fire within the supermarket. So I guess as a community what they meant is that the supermarket was going to be lost completely so a complete loss of the supermarket. Speaking with the emergency management team members I made that quite clear as to how the community would deal with that coming the following morning and both the Mayor and the CEO of the Shire took that on in regards to relief and recovery efforts from the Shire side of things the following morning. Some of the initial issues that we had in that type of facility was water supplies, water supplies were few and far between as far as the main systems go. The local North East Water representative was on scene when I arrived. I quickly spoke with him and after we'd worked out what strategies and tactics were going to be employed for the fire we discussed the ability to supply water to suit that strategy and tactic. As it was we could only use up to 8,000 litres a minute on the actual firefighting. The two area appliances one from New South Wales Fire Brigade and one from Shepardon were both going to utilise that amount of water. To get around some of the water issues the Beechworth water supply would last for eight hours at that and then take a couple of days to refill. We ordered a number of Bok water carriers to support us in that whilst it took some time for additional resources to get there we ended up using five Bok water carriers to support the two area appliances and other pumping appliances in and around the supermarket. What also was established during the course of the firefight we looked at establishing a water relay from Lake Samble. It's a small community lake or a medium-sized community lake area within the township of Beechworth. Early in the firefight yakking down the pumping tanker was positioned in their location and they were able to run hoses from the lake out onto the main road. This made it easier not only for the Bok water carriers to fill up but also other additional tanker appliances and during the firefight we also ordered the Army Fire Service major pumper from B&N to attend with 90mm hose. One of the issues that we encountered with that is that they carried just enough 90mm hose to make it to the main street but not quite it was a few hundred meters short of the actual firefighting that was going on. During the firefight the structure itself showed signs that it was going to fail. The construction was a tilt slab with a metal roofing material. We had several of the tilt slabs starting to bow out at the top of the structure. However as the firefight went on we found that the structural collapse wasn't going to happen. This then made it very hard to get to the seat of the fire. Both the area appliances were unable to penetrate the roof structure it had been over engineered from what the original designs were therefore holding the structural integrity together. What that meant along with not having enough water to undertake an internal attack was more or less waiting for the fire to burn itself out or burn down to a level where we were able to shut down some of the aerial appliances and relocate some of our attack crews to then go inside and extinguish the fire. The tactics used were defensive. Both the supermarket adjoins onto a mall so it had common roof space however there was a firewall in between. Initially that was seen as a priority to stop the extension of fire into the older part of the small shopping mall and then onto the shops at front the main street and beach with. Also with possible structural integrity and the tilt slabs possibly falling to the north there was a row of shops and professional officers that were under three. One of the aspects of this fire that seemed to be reasonably successful that was that from the start of the fire from the start of the response phase we certainly considered the recovery phase straight away so from the outset we were thinking about what are the consequences to the Beechworth community and certainly it seemed that the the consequences would be great and it's turned out in fact to be right. So whilst the fire was still at its height of burning the CEO of the Indigo Shire had been contacted and he attended the fire scene. The Mayor of the Indigo Shire attended the fire scene so that allowed them to think about what next for the Beechworth community when the fire was out. That led to a meeting of some key stakeholders the following day people from the supermarket industry, people from tourism industries, people from the local retailers along with the municipality so that from the start they could think about what's next so we looked at the more immediate aspect of things. We looked at how people would get their staple supplies from the start in that day and then the next few days so that that certainly started the ball rolling and then that that committee continued on to think about how we can provide supermarket services to the community from the start. What actually come from that was in the shuring days was a community bus run to some other local community IGA stores or supermarket stores close by and since then also that the Shire has established a pop-up supermarket in another premises within the township of Beechworth. So that will give them the next couple of years basically to allow the community to continue to shop locally and get on with life whilst the supermarket is rebuilt. Probably the most problematic issue that we encountered throughout the evening was lack of water supply so given the age of the mains infrastructure, the age of the town itself and the infrastructure that supports that we were only able to hold the fire more so than provide internal attack crews and it wasn't until late in the night that we were able to shut down the aerial appliances which provided enough water then to undertake an internal attack and extinguish the fire. By that stage most of the consumables within the supermarket have been consumed by fire. The value of a pre-plan was that the brigade does have pre-plans for all commercial premises in Beechworth so they're quite proud of that. They had discussed fortunately many weeks earlier about their pre-plans and commercial properties in Beechworth and they quickly acknowledged that if we do need to we do have a commercial fire it's a rare event but if it does we will probably need some assistance by aerial appliances so the incident controller at the time made that call early so I think that was a definite advantage. Having prior knowledge of the building was certainly an advantage but I would imagine that if you're a frequent customer of that business as supermarkets tend to be a bit of a public place that would be an advantage to most persons if they get a fairly basic knowledge of it but certainly that smoke was very intense. You could not see where I thought that I was at one stage I certainly was not. I was meters from where I thought I was because I know where stock lives on the shelves and when I bumped into some stock I was in a totally little bit of a different area to where I thought it was before so it's certainly a challenge and your mind is going in a hundred miles an hour or you're on then into the hose and there's just yourself and a partner in that building and working out whether it's safe to stay or better to retreat and given that all the customers were out we weren't doing a search and rescue we're just attempting to put the floor.