by Ramon Williams and Jeremy Halcrow

When the firestorm hit Canberra on Saturday, January 18, over 400 buildings were destroyed, including the New Creative Ministries church centre in Dixon Drive, Holder.

On the Saturday afternoon the church centre, associated with the Apostolic Church of Australia, was burnt to the ground, but that did not stop Senior Pastor John McNamara from conducting their Sunday morning service in a nearby park.

The fires that have gutted a third of the nation’s capital, Canberra, located in the Australian Capital Territory, was thought to have started when lightning flashes struck forest areas ten days before, on January 8.

On Saturday, January 18, the fires quickly spread from a front 5km wide to an onslaught 30km wide, within an hour.

By Sunday night, reports from the local ABC radio station and the Emergency Services Bureau described a scene of utter devastation.

Over 368 houses had been destroyed.  Four people were dead: a 61-year-old man, a 73-year-old man and a 37-year-old lady in the suburb of Duffy, and an 83-year-old lady in the Mt Stromlo settlement.

Anglican Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn, George Browning, told AAP the fires were the worst crisis to hit the national capital ever.

Bishop Browning spent the day of the fires at St Peter’s, Weston, one of the worst-affected areas in Canberra’s west, where about 13 Anglican parishioners had lost their homes.

“This undoubtedly is the biggest crisis that Canberra has faced in its history, and yet we see great generosity and courage and we see human beings who themselves have lost a great deal but are still thinking of others,” Bishop Browning told AAP. “I have been talking to people who’ve lost their homes and it’s just astonishing, really, how they can be up this morning and thinking of other people and just thankful that they have their lives.”

Mr Brian Norris, personal assistant to Bishop Browning, said they were planning an open air ecumenical service to be held the next weekend, so that victims, their friends and the Canberra community as a whole were able to share in prayer for those who had suffered loss and show them their compassion and support.

Anglicare Disaster Emergency officials from the Sydney Diocese contacted the Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn with offers of help where appropriate. They asked Sydney Anglicans to donate money to the Archbishop of Sydney’s bushfire appeal rather than sending food, clothing and furniture which is too difficult to handle logistically.

Over 2,300 evacuees were cared for in four Evacuation centres, where Red Cross, The Salvation Army and ADRAcare helped them with food, clothing and temporary accommodation.  At one stage it was requested that people offering clothing and food take them to welfare centres as the Evacuation centres could not cope with the deluge of gifts.

Other buildings destroyed in Canberra included the Mt Stromlo Observatory, a High School and a Rural Fire Service building.

Two hospitals had 600 patients attend their Emergency Wards, with three critical cases being flown to Sydney Hospitals with burns units.

Peter Ellis, chairman of the Christian Media Association ACT, issued regular updates and described the situation as far as churches were concerned.

“The siting of Canberra’s churches is planned like the city as a whole. They are dispersed among the suburbs, usually near suburban or suburb-group nodes that also have small shopping centres and petrol stations,” he said.

“It also means that Canberra’s congregations are broadly dispersed. For instance, in the Belconnen area of approximately 80,000 inhabitants, there are two Uniting Churches.

“The Anglican, Catholic and other churches are similarly distributed.  Their people come from an area well beyond what churches in other cities would consider to be ‘local’.”

The Station Manager of Radio 1 Way FM, Sue Mitchell, stated that the sudden and catastrophic situation had “pulled the community together but we know the worst is yet to come.”

Mobile phones cannot be used, so as to free the channels for emergency services.  The sewerage plants have been affected and within a day or so, all water will have to be boiled.  Wild life has come out of the forests and is scampering across busy suburban roads.  Horses and cows are being cared for in people’s backyards, as the owners do not even have closed-in properties any more.

People are ‘rampaging’, buying up take away meals, as they can no longer cook their own.  There is a rush on electric batteries for portable radios so as to keep in touch.  One report claimed some shop keepers had tripled the prices!  There is no local TV station, so people are dependent on local radio stations, such as 1 Way FM for the latest information, but there is no organised flow of news and information to the radio stations.  Ms Mitchell has had to phone various offices and contacts for the latest road closures and instructions from Emergency services.

In an interview on the TCN9 Today Show, Steve Liebmann asked The Prime Minister, The Hon John Howard MP the question: “Ever seen anything like this?”.

The Prime Minister answered: “Not in what you would describe as an ordinary suburban scene in Australia. This damage is by far the worst bushfire damage I have seen. The fact that up to 400 homes may have been lost or seriously damaged, the speed with which it occurred, the reality that it invaded a normal, peaceful, suburban part of Australia brings home to all of us, because we are very much an urban population as far as where people live, just how devastating an event it has been in the lives of many of our fellow Australians.”

Qantas Airways offered to fly anyone who has lost their properties, free of charge, if they wish to leave the area.

Charities and mainstream denominations are preparing to receive designated donations to assist the less fortunate in Canberra, the “bush capital” of Australia, in a spirit of mateship, which again has become very evident at this time.