Key lessons learnt on devastating day in 1983, says Warrnambool SES volunteer

On a stinking hot Wednesday in 1983, Gerry Billings was driving a concrete truck.

About a week before he had been inducted as the officer in charge of the Warrnambool SES.

He had been involved for about three years after responding to an ad in The Standard.

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Mr Billings said he lost a few mates in a car crash that he came across.

The ad was asking for people to join a road collision rescue unit.

Mr Billings thought it was a good idea after witnessing a farmer coming to the aid of his trapped mates with a tractor.

When he took on the top role for the SES, he never knew his biggest challenge yet was just around the corner.

Mr Billings, 77, recalls receiving a call in his truck on the afternoon of Wednesday, February 16, 1983.

"I was on top of Hopkins hill with a load of concrete when the call came through," he said.

The SES unit was asked to take its communications van to the Panmure hall.

That would be the unit's base for the next three weeks.

Fires would rage through the south-west, destroying properties and resulting in nine deaths in the Cudgee/Ballangeich fire that burnt 50,000 hectares.

The SES unit had a high-frequency radio and locally-owned CB radios.

"The HF radio was not very reliable," Mr Billings conceded.

He admits he still has flashbacks of some of the horrors he witnessed in that three-week period, including responding to a report of four people who were trapped in a car in Garvoc.

The four couldn't be saved.

Mr Billings said during that time he was surviving on very little sleep because his boss wasn't very keen about him taking time off from his day job.

In hindsight, he said it was probably a blessing in disguise because it gave him a break from witnessing the devastation for at least a few hours each day.

The SES volunteers helped with myriad tasks, including surveillance and taking essential items to properties that had been burnt in the fire.

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Mr Billings said the conditions were "suffocating" on Ash Wednesday. "There were people I knew on the trucks coming in who I couldn't recognise because of all the soot," he said.

Firefighters' lives were in danger, with fuel evaporating in their tanker engines due to the heat, causing the vehicles to break down.

Mr Billings said he was amazed at the strength of farmers, who had lost everything but stayed on their properties to look after their stock.

"There was a farmer who came into Panmure with his family," he said.

"They had no insurance and they had lost everything but they had stayed on their property to protect their stock.

"That was how big their commitment level to their stock was."

Mr Billings said he witnessed the best in people in those three weeks.

Countless people volunteered their time to help the firefighters who were working 24/7.

Mr Billings said the task of providing farmers with replacement axes, picks and shovels was one he and his fellow volunteers happily completed.

Euthanizing stock, spiking their bodies to release gases after they had died and burying them was something that was the stuff of nightmares, he said.

Mr Billings said there were a number of agencies which responded immediately, but what was lacking 40 years ago was disaster plan management.

He said many lessons had been learnt from Ash Wednesday.

Mr Billings said another key learning was volunteers needed to undergo de-briefing after witnessing traumatic events.

He counts himself as a lucky one, but says there are still parts of the south-west that trigger traumatic memories.