 Fire is a natural part of the Australian environment, particularly the bush environment. We will experience it again, perhaps not to the extent of the Black Saturday fires, but it can and it will happen again. And we will certainly experience wildfire. We believe that the mental preparedness is just as important as the physical preparedness for fires and by mental preparedness I mean having some expectation of fire behaviour. It will happen with embers and wind and the heat, the radiant heat and the size of the flames. All those sorts of things. We'd prepared well beforehand. We had overalls on, we had good leather hat, we had smoke masks, goggles, we had leather gloves. So we considered ourselves to be well prepared. We realised the seriousness of the situation when a friend who works for the CFA was able to call and she said that there was a fire heading directly towards our property and to give our fire action plan in place. Basically then it was panic because we hadn't actually worked on a specific fire plan. Like everybody were faced with a decision about leaving early or staying and we had made a decision to leave and the question is what's the definition on that day for early. And it's also quite a challenging environment in a community sense because obviously as soon as we leave we cease to be a contributor to a community fire response. I don't think we realised how serious that fire was until it had actually been thrown but at three o'clock we started to kick in our fire plans and so our sprinklers were going by three o'clock. Everything was being tested. When I sort of quickly had a look around the house before we left I thought I will be back tonight, we'll be fine and left a whole lot of stuff that I wish I had taken. We thought about going down Hurst Bridge but we thought no, it's a bit too bullshit so we went to go through Yarra Glen and then when we got almost to Yarra Glen there was a roadblock there and they made us turn around because the fires had just gone through Yarra Glen and as we were turning around at the roadblock on the left hand side as we were going back towards King Lake there was flames on the paddocks and they were going faster than our car was and we could see them really clearly, they weren't very far away. About an hour, hour and a half before we got hit with the fire it went really really black, it was as black as night. You just couldn't see. And if you're thinking about leaving at that time of the day that's when it's too late. There's potential for the road to be blocked, you just can't see it's just too dark and too dangerous to be leaving late in the day. It's a misnomer that you can fire to fire, you don't fire to fire. You take action prior to the fire to protect as much of your property as you can you then go inside your house and you wait for the fire event to pass over you and then you go back outside and you do whatever you can in a mopping up process so you need to keep in mind that radiant heat will kill you and so will smoke inhalation. To me it was like watching a chemical reaction going on behind the glass that the thick smoke was right up to the glass and all you could see was this red glow in amongst the thick smoke like there was no way you were going to survive outside. It was smoky inside the house as well. All arms were sanding which sort of adds to all the sense of urgency and panic. Our sprinkler system that we had which included sprinklers in under the eaves helped us at a significant amount because that really stopped stuff that was close to the house from continuing to burn. You need drill-out support if you're going to defend a house also our house sits amongst the old English trees. On that day the deciduous trees filtered out embers, they filtered out radiant heat and the garden basically helped save my life, my husband's life in the house. Next Saturday for us at Haven, Remlaw and Drung South we were the ones that copped it on the day. Next time it could be you. It could be your neighbour, it could be anybody. You don't have to live in the mountains with something like this to happen. It could happen to anybody, it's just a spark in the wrong spot and if you're in the lawn of it you need to be prepared for it.