BLACK Saturday may have faded from the headlines, but the trauma for those affected remains beyond imagination, says FRAN CLELAND
John Landy resigned last week from his position as the Bushfire Appeal panel chairman.
He said no one realises how much trauma is still out there.
He is so right.
I am glad he says that, because it means someone does understand.
The sad thing is that, so far as the public is concerned, the fires are old news now the devastation and graphic photos are not all over the media.
Speaking on behalf of a family who experienced Ash Wednesday, I can say that many people will never recover.
My "other job" is as a part-time checkout chick (mature-age checkout chook, in my case) at Coles in Kilmore, the town where the major Black Saturday fire started. This is really a very personal account of what I have seen in the past seven months.
Kilmore's main claim to historical fame is that it was the first inland town to be settled in Victoria.
It now has another historical claim, one that locals would much rather not think about - it was the place where the holocaust fires of February 7, 2009, began.
In Kilmore, Coles has about 130 people on staff and is one of the biggest employers in the area.
Because we are a supermarket, we are very close to the people of the area, as we see many of them several times a week when they shop.
They come from Broadford, Clonbinane, Wandong, Lancefield, Willowmavin and all around the district. Customers tell us it takes more than an hour to do a full shop.
In a town of 5000 people, everyone knows everyone and it's impossible to come into the store without seeing someone and stopping to chat.
They all know us as well, because we wear name tags.
We know about the district's births, deaths and marriages, the scandals and the successes.
We spend a little time chatting to some older people, conscious we may be the only ones they get to talk to that day.
Early on during Black Saturday, our storeman, looking east as he was taking a delivery, saw a single column of smoke.
His instant thought was, "gee, I hope they get on to that quick", but when he went outside again 15 minutes later, the big triangle of smoke and flames was already huge and running.
His wife was to spend the next fortnight doing 12-hour days in the Kilmore CFA control centre and their kids spent most of that time in day care.
Everyone knows the history of that week and some of our workmates suffered.
One, on duty when it began, went home to find everything gone. She was left with just her work uniform as her only possession. Several others lost houses, livestock, neighbours and friends.
During the fire, one read a text message from a daughter to say she loved her parents, as she thought she wouldn't get out of the situation she was in (they got to her two days later).
A fellow worker said her son kept trying to phone his best mate every half-hour for days.
His friend was OK, but 19 of his mates were gone.
Another lost her home, stock and her neighbour. Even now, when things are quiet, she gets that faraway look and I know what she is seeing.
The company offered counselling and some took up that option.
Terrifying though the fires were, the weeks and months following have placed a heavy strain on everyone in our store.
Straight after the fire, people would come to the register smelling so strongly of smoke you didn't have to ask if they had been affected.
Our storeman saw a lady just standing still, looking at the clothing section.
When she was still there, as he was going back the other way, he asked if he could help.
She just looked at him and said, "I have lost everything." He went and got the boss, who made sure she was given everything possible to assist.
A sweet-faced tot peeped around from behind her mum and said to me, "our house burned down".
How do you reply to that? I just said, "I know, sweetheart", and gave her a Chupa Chup.
The store, and Coles as a company, deserves credit for what it did: no one in need left empty-handed and the CFA only had to ask and it received.
The order came right from the top to do whatever was necessary and our sister stores at Wallan, Seymour and Bendigo pitched in.
There are 38 of us who work on the registers in shifts and we are the faces customers see most.
During the weeks that followed, I think we were about the only constant in a lot of lives.
When we said, "hello, how are you?" we would get the full tale and, to be truthful, it was impossible not to cry at some of the stories we were told.
We hugged people, held hands with them and grieved.
These were people we saw every week, people we normally laughed and chatted to.
So many were missing.
We got a new supervisor about then, who has said to me that she could feel the sadness, both from us and the customers.
A lovely lady I see often and like a lot told me during the first week that she and her husband had lost their house. She seemed strong enough.
Two weeks later, she came to tell me her husband had coped with being told he had prostate cancer ... and that he had coped with losing the house and all their belongings in the inferno, but when he was told by the people from whom they finally got a house to rent that he couldn't have his little dog, he broke down and cried.
I was so angry! Such a small mercy to be denied. I said if they couldn't find someone to take the THREE of them, they could come and stay with us. And I meant it.
Even so, living with someone else is only a temporary fix.
It's not your house, it's not your life, there's no sense of self and a feeling you're imposing.
A single dad shamefacedly asked me if it was OK to buy marked-down meat, as he did not have enough money to feed his three boys. He didn't want to go to the Salvos.
I lectured him at not being so proud, that many people saving for overseas trips lived solely on markdowns and pointed him in the direction of someone I knew who would help.
Then came the funerals. Long columns of cars with headlights and people in dark clothes coming into the shop to grab something they needed.
My son came in to the store after he'd been to a mate's funeral. Jeff doesn't usually come to the shop and, when I saw him, he was just standing over near the flower display.
I hopped off the register and went over to him. He just looked at me and said that the mate he had just buried had been in the army where, if you know you will die, you stick your dog tags in your mouth so when you are found the body can be identified.
His mate had been found with his driver's licence in his mouth.
He just hung his head and took one of those really deep breaths men do when they don't want to break down.
I put my arms around him and we cried. The girls on the other registers did too, when I told them after he left.
The Salvos have corporations and individuals who donate directly to them and they hand out vouchers for things such as petrol and supermarket things.
The Lions Clubs gave tools, kitchenware, recipe books, socks, warm shirts and jackets, toys and large storage boxes.
There are community redevelopment schemes happening and our shire has appointed two girls as community development bushfire recovery officers, which is excellent.
But, mostly, people need someone to just listen.
There's no quick fix, but the help must go on and needs to for a very long time. The trauma from a fire doesn't stop when the flames die down.
They come through the checkout, they know us, we say, "hello, how are you?", and they tell us. They tell us the worst thing people can say to them is, "well, it's time to move on" or "get over it".
Even worse, some of the men have been told by workmates that the fire's done them a favour, because of "all that money" they have to build a new home.
Men are notorious at not coping in cases like this and they find it impossible to explain how they feel.
We hear what it's like to try to live in a caravan with small kids on a cold, muddy hillside, or to cope with the paper trail, where they fill in a form that allows them to fill in another form for permits to build.
We are told about the new bushfire-area regulations, where people are required to build a brick house, instead of wood, and of windows, supposedly of greater assistance in a big fire, which will cost $30,000, or triple the price of ordinary ones.
Even insured people won't be able to afford to rebuild.
We hear how some greenies are working to re-establish scrub piles and roadsides for small creatures. They aren't popular.
Last week, green groups were claiming that increasing fuel reduction burns would not stop catastrophic bushfires spreading in extreme weather.
This was despite experts in the field, such as Melbourne University bushfire behaviour analyst Dr Kevin Tolhurst, telling us prescribed burning was still necessary because it reduced the intensity of bushfires for most of the fire season.
The debate certainly hasn't made the greenies any more liked in the area.
In some fire-affected areas, some marriages have already broken up.
From what we are told, because all the sorting out is taking so long and the mental state of those who have been through the hell of Black Saturday is so misunderstood, the depression and trauma is worse now than it was three months after the fire.
These people have been in a war zone and no amount of money can replace what's lost.
They need their lives back.
God bless Blaze Aid, which is doing so much for those in need.
The couple who started it, Kevin and Rhonda Butler, should be nominated for sainthood. Same goes for Heather Knight, whose work for the fire victims' spiritual welfare is so inspiring.
I told our human relations boss I intended to write this, mainly as a tribute to the contribution the store and its staff had made just by being here.
I began trying to explain, but she just said to me "Yes, we are the ears and we are still listening".
She's right.
- Fran Cleland is The Weekly Times horse writer.
