4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 28 July 2020
⏱️ 10 minutes
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The forest fires of 2019-2020 in Australia were the worst the country had ever experienced - but ten years earlier Australia had a foretaste of that disaster when 400 separate bushfires burnt their way across the state of Victoria. At the time they were the worst fires Australia had ever seen. Rachael Gillman has been speaking to one of the firefighters who battled to bring the fires under control.
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0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less searching |
0:25.7 | and a lot more auction. Listen on BBC Sounds. You're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Rachel Gilman. |
0:39.2 | The Forest Fires of 2019 to 2020 in Australia were the worst the country had ever experienced. |
0:47.0 | But 10 years earlier, the country had had a foretaste of that, when 400 separate bushfires burnt their way across the state of Victoria in 2009. |
0:57.0 | At the time they were the worst bushfires Australia had ever experienced. |
1:02.0 | It's been called Australia's worst ever natural disaster. |
1:06.0 | Fires that swept through Victoria's bushland communities so fast and with such fury |
1:11.0 | warnings couldn't always keep pace with the blaze. |
1:15.0 | Thousands had to flee in desperation, abandoning homes to be engulfed by flames. |
1:20.0 | The ferocious fires burned for weeks, but it was on the 7th of February 2009 that Australians saw the worst devastation, a day that became known as Black Saturday. |
1:32.0 | Helplessness, not being able to do anything, |
1:35.0 | not being able to help anybody. |
1:37.0 | Just the magnitude of those fires, |
1:40.0 | there was nothing anybody could have done. |
1:43.0 | Nicki Lund is a volunteer firefighter based in rural Victoria, north of Melbourne, an area that faces the threat of bushfires every year. |
1:58.0 | The combination of the area's dry-hot climates and a heavily forested landscape with fallen bark and leaves on the ground |
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