The Hobart Chronicles XXXVI: Recoiling from the fire

"Through the dust and ashes
While the building crashes"
Peter Gabriel, Walk Through The Fire, 1984

"Reach for the night which recoils from the fire."
MC 900ft Jesus, The City Sleeps, 1992

This is the SMS that arrived on my phone on Sunday:

"So why did you leave your kettle at Myer?"

Hahahaha. Thanks, Cole Man. Or should that be Coal Man?

The Myer Fire on Saturday night took everyone by surprise. I say night, because although it started at about 3 in the afternoon, even the firies thought it was under control until after 6pm.

I was having a pleasant Saturday afternoon. That is, woke from a little afternoon kip on the couch, felt hungry, and took about half an hour to decide to go out foraging. I got up, looked out the loungeroom window and thought, "What's that enormous column of smoke coming from town?"

In town, a small group of curious onlookers stood behind police tape half a block away oohing and ahhing and taking pictures on their mobile phones of the billowing smoke. Myer's interior upper stories were evidently alight but no-one seemed very concerned. Firies and police milled around. After about 15 minutes one of them cranked up a hose and sprayed some water. Not much else appeared to be happening.

No doubt it was like ducks on a pond - all serenity on the surface, furious paddling below. I couldn't raise anyone of any use on the phone to find out what was going on, so after watching for another 15 minutes, I went shopping. I was hungry, after all. Typically, it got interesting after I left.

I was in the queue paying for groceries when a colleague rang and asked casually, "What the fuck's going on?" The smoke I saw earlier had become a full-blown inferno. As dusk fell, she and her family could see the flames and embers at home several kilometres away. There was only the semi-finals on the radio. She doesn't have a telly.

So I packed my organic chook, vegies and cat food into the boot and went to work. Just another Saturday night at the pickle factory.

In retrospect it's a bloody miracle the whole CBD didn't burn down. I had the good judgement to roster myself on for live crosses on Monday morning, when the façade was being demolished. The rest of the building had clearly already collapsed into the basement.

I stood with the firies at the barrier and watched a giant excavator, brontosaurus- like, reach up to bite pieces out of the façade and drop the masonry to the street. The crash made lovely background fx, but I was less sure about the clouds of dust. Why was everyone inside the barrier, mere metres away, dressed in full biohazard suits including air masks? Sure enough, the firies were concerned about asbestos. Mmmm, time to move away.

And the irony? Just a day earlier, the international Bushfire CRC Annual Conference, staged just a few blocks away, had concluded. 900 men in uniform, and most of them missed all the action.