After the blaze: A year on from devastating Wanneroo bushfire we’re yet to learn preparedness lesson
Standing at the end of his driveway, Rod Chapman could see he’d lost everything.
The fire was still blazing around him as he sneaked back to his property against advice because he “couldn’t wait a second longer” to see if he could salvage anything from the wreck of the house that had been his family’s home for 29 years.
His home in Mariginiup , about 35km north-east of the CBD, was one of 18 lost in the devastating bushfire that hit Perth’s northern suburbs last November. It’s a day neither he — nor those who fought the blaze — will ever forget.
“I was at work when we got the call,“ he said of the fire’s genesis. “I was monitoring it on the computer with my daughter — who was still at home — and watching it. And although it hadn’t turned red on the screen, you could quickly see that the orange was getting bigger.
“So we locked up the business and left to go.”
But by the time the Chapmans reached their suburb it was already too late for them to get on to their property, and within minutes their daughter had been forced to leave, carrying with her nothing but her pet bird and cat and a few small personal items.
Her parents had nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Camera IconRod Chapman. Credit: Laura Newell
Of the items lost in the blaze, it is the videos and photos of their daughter Lauren, who died in a horseriding accident on the property when she was just nine, that Rod and his wife Di mourn the most.
“We lost everything that we had associated with our daughter,” Rod said.
“Unfortunately, most of the photos and videos we had were not digital. So pretty much, from the point of view of memorabilia, we lost everything. And I think that was probably the hardest thing for us to get through.”
First reported about 1pm on November 22, the fire was later found to have been sparked by a lightning strike which ignited underground peat — partially decayed vegetation.
It would go on to burn through 1900ha within four days with a perimeter of more than 64km — destroying 15 commercial properties and 18 homes, and damaging 75 structures on 46 properties as it went. It took more than three months to fully extinguish.
But it all started out as a column of smoke, as Department of Fire and Emergency Services district officer Shaun Champ, one of the first on the scene, remembers well.
“We got a report of a fire just after one o’clock . . . myself and the Wanneroo chief bush fire control officer happened to just be finishing a meeting and noticed a large column of smoke,” he said.
Camera IconThe remains of the Chapman family’s Mariginiup home, as of October 24, 2024. Credit: Laura Newell/Laura Newell
“The conditions of that day were not ideal. They were quite extreme. It was close to 40 degrees with easterly winds — we get our worst fire behaviour from generally the east.”
The fierce winds — gusting at up to 70km/h — and an unusually hot and dry start to summer saw that column of smoke from the Gnangara pine plantation rapidly turn into a beast, with walls of flames up to 30m high.
Spot fires were breaking out up to 1km ahead of the front, until by dusk it was bearing directly down on thousands of suburban homes in Tapping and Banksia Grove.
DFES superintendent Metro North Coastal Clint Kuchel was the incident controller for the blaze. Even he was surprised by the speed with which it travelled.
“The weather conditions were terrible,” he told The Sunday Times.
“And not only that, that was exacerbated by the lack of rainfall through the preceding winter and the hot summer before that — it hadn’t rained . . . which really dried the soil, dried the fuels, and made the conditions really ripe for a spark or an ignition source of some type, and then those hot easterly winds to whip up the ignition and push the fire at a rate of knots.
Camera IconDa Vinci Park after the fire swept through. Credit: Daniel and Laura Newell/The Sunday Times
“For me, having many years in the industry and seen a lot of fires, this one was different — the speed of movement through the wind and the dry fuels. It was a high, high rate of spread.
“(But while) the fire was moving very quickly, it was also moving through land use that would normally have an impact in slowing it down.
“So coming out of the remnant State forest, the remnant pine trees . . . moving through horse paddocks with grasses that would normally slow it down. It didn’t slow it down. Moving into market gardens, which you would expect are green and irrigated, we were expecting that to slow it down. It didn’t slow down.
“The radiant heat, the flame and the spotting meant that the fire had generated its own momentum . . . was moving much quicker and moving through all of those areas very quickly that we would expect might slow it down or change its behaviour in some way.”
It’s gut-wrenching to go back and see what’s left of the place.
But there was an unusual saviour on the horizon — Pinjar Road lay between the fire and more densely packed city suburbs.
“That was a significant break for us,” Mr Kuchel said. “It’s a double lane, with a median strip and then it goes to built-up areas.
“As the fuel profile changes from bush to built up, so do our strategies, and so some opportunity does come with that because that discontinuous fuels means there’s less immediate fuel to burn, and it gives us an opportunity to put some control around it.”
While firefighters were focused on bringing the monster under control, thousands of residents were heeding DFES’ call and rapidly evacuating the area, with the red “emergency warning” zone covering Mariginiup, half of the suburbs of Banksia Grove, Tapping and Ashby, and vast swathes of Sinagra, Carramar, Melaleuca and Wanneroo.
Camera IconThe Mariginiup/Wanneroo bushfire in November 2023. Credit: DFES/DFES
And the end was far from sight, with twists and turns to follow over the next five days which kept residents as far away as Hocking on their toes.
The fire was, Mr Kuchel said, an incident “up there” with some of the worst he had fought — including the Yarloop-Waroona blaze of 2016.
“The bushfire behaviour through here was extreme,” Mr Kuchel said. “Twenty to 30-metre flame heights. It had already progressed nearly 10km in about six hours by the time it got to (Pinjar Road).
“It’s something you can’t (understand) until you’ve experienced it: the wall of flame, the speed of movement. Our crews were in it, living it, trying to do the best they could to protect the community.
“This was (also) unusual in that it moved in and really came up hard against that built-up area in Tapping around Pinjar Road, which, again, as I mentioned before, changed the fire behaviour.
“There’s an opportunity that comes with that, but there’s also risk . . . And as incident controllers and as firefighters, we need to understand what that means for us to to get ahead of the operational tempo.”
True to Mr Kuchel’s word, they worked to get ahead of it, with an estimated 1500 career fireys, volunteers, community organisations and government agencies all coming together to aid the efforts.
“Some of the night shifts alone, early on, there were over 250 people on the fireground,” Mr Kuchel said.
“It’s an incredible thing to think that 1500 people can come together in two to three days, with a common purpose. it’s an incredible commitment by community members, by volunteers and by the people we serve, together, to make sure that the best outcome for the community in what were extreme and trying conditions.”
He was joined in his praise of the community response by city of Wanneroo mayor Linda Aitken.
“Clint (Kuchel) said he has never known a community in a situation like this to be so respectful and work together,” she said. “Normally, they get very angry and because they feel threatened.
“But the whole time, my focus was on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which is a safe place to put your head and food for your tummy, and then we will look after the rest.
Camera IconThe Mariginiup/Wanneroo bushfire in November 2023. Credit: DFES/DFES
“And then, as the community was secure in that they will have a safe place to sleep and for their families to sleep, and that their animals would be looked after, and they would have food . . . they were better resourced to be able to deal with the trauma or the response to what they’ve been through from being evacuated.”
Ms Aitken said it was obvious how tough the conditions were for firefighters, who came to support the Wanneroo crews from all parts of WA, when they would come into the evacuation centre for meal breaks.
“It was big for them. It was huge,” she said. “But I suppose the biggest thing is there’s none of this bravo stuff. They’re the silent, strong achievers. They come in filthy, they sat down and got their meals.
“They were from Gnowangerup, they were from the hills, they were from down south, they were from up north, country areas, regional firefighters — and they all came to Wanneroo to help us in our situation. It was really, really amazing.”
By November 25, the wind had eased in what Ms Aitken called “a miracle”, and the picture of the devastation left behind by the blaze became clearer. She was invited to take to the skies in a DFES chopper to assess the damage.
“That was quite shocking to see what had been burnt . . . it was quite hard. Horrific to see what had been lost around the lakes, and it was just black,” she said.
Camera IconClint Kuchel in Marginiup in October 2024. Credit: Laura Newell
She also felt the loss more personally, watching as friends were told they, too, had lost their home.
“I’ve got some personal friends of mine that we’ve known for about 30 years, and they have four children, the youngest graduated Year 12, just after the fires — and they lost everything, absolutely everything,” Ms Aitken said.
“When you hear the story and you grieve for them and you empathise with what’s happened, and then you support them, and you just watch as people walk through this and they grow from it.”
A year on, the Chapmans are also looking to the future. But it won’t be back at their Mariginiup property, which Mrs Chapman still can’t bring herself to visit.
“It was an amazing place to live,” Mr Chapman said. “You are only 30 minutes from the heart of the city, and yet you could have been anywhere, you know, and wake up every morning, walk outside, see the birds. Listen to the birds chirping.
“This time of the year that’s coming up in the warmer weather, you see the reptiles slithering around the place and . . . you felt that you were in your own little paradise.
“(Now) every time you go there, you just feel your guts drop, you know. It’s gut-wrenching to go back and see what’s left of the place.
“I’m fortunate in the sense that I had a level of insurance that wasn’t as high as it should have been, but was certainly enough for us to be able to move forward with our life.
“We had really, really great years out there, but, you know, the fires sort of brought us back to the situation where we’ve got to be positive and look at what lays ahead as a new beginning.
“I have another little property up the coast so we’re going to actually start our next stage up there.
Although we think it may never happen, I assure you, it can.
“I feel for those that didn’t have enough insurance, and I know that there are a number of them, but we’re very lucky that we did have enough, that we’ve been able to get ourselves organised and move forward.”
So what have the lessons been from this blaze? Have we learnt to take the risk of bushfire in our inner suburbs more seriously? And what are we expecting this year?
According to the Bureau of Meteorology, our weather conditions remain extremely dry, so the threat of fire in our suburbs is still very high, yet many are still lagging behind on preparedness.
Camera IconThe Mariginiup/Wanneroo bushfire in November 2023. Credit: DFES/DFES
“People think bushfire only occurs in the hills,” Mr Kuchel said.
“But last year, our first lot of bushfires for the high-threat period happened in Bold Park, in Kings Park. We then had fires in Star Swamp, The Spectacles.
“So just because you’re not in a perceived bushfire-prone area doesn’t mean you’re not exposed to bushfire in WA.
“I think those that experienced the (Wanneroo) fire have a greater appreciation of what it’s like to have lived through an experience like that. Unfortunately, from a broader community point of view, I’m not sure it shifted the dial.
“Our research has identified that very few people have actually done the work and spent that 15 minutes to build that bushfire plan. That’s unfortunate, but because we know we’re in a bushfire-prone area.
“I don’t think we can be complacent. I think we need to understand the alerts. I think we need to understand what it means to actually be prepared, not to wait until the fire is on your doorstep.
“That’s not the time to start thinking about what you might do.”
He’s joined in that message by Mr Chapman, who speaks from bitter experience.
“Don’t underestimate the likelihood that a fire could impact you,” he said.
“Be very conscious of the environment that you’re in and how much native vegetation there is around you, and be sure to take the necessary precautions to protect your property.
“Because although we think it may never happen, I assure you, it can.”
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