Actually there is a transcript too:
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2492832.htm
I've pulled out some excerpts, higgidly piggidly, they are just ones that hit home to us, watching..amongst the rest of the show and images too, but just wanted to wack these up, pretty memorable stuff:
RUSSELL REES, CHIEF OFFICER, COUNTRY FIRE AUTHORITY:
I stood in the middle of the street in the middle of Melbourne and the wind was blowing and the sun was shining and the sky was angry.
Now this angry sky, people talk about it with cloud and smoke and tumultuous wind and dust. And I walked up the corner of the street and I looked up and down the street and the street was nearly empty.
And I looked around and I felt the wind and the description that came to me afterwards was it was the only time that the wind was hotter than the sun. It was just an unbearable day.
KEN WILLIAMSON, CAPTAIN, WHITTLESEA CFA: This is the initial fire the Whittlesea Fire Brigade got called to, and it would have been probably two and a half hours after the initial fire in Kilmore started.
Probably 15 or 20 k away from here.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: So the
spot fire travelled 15 or 20 kilometres?
KEN WILLIAMSON, CAPTAIN, WHITTLESEA CFA:
Yeah unprecedented, the amount, the actual distance that it spotted. I’ve never seen a fire start so far away from a fire front.
RUSSELL REES, CHIEF OFFICER, COUNTRY FIRE AUTHORITY: The fire’s gone up the slope into Kinglake, which is on a bit of a plateau, and it would’ve spat bits of fire everywhere.
You know a splattering on a, on an enormous landscape scale, you know, like just enormous. And we knew that whatever resources we had, whatever they were, no matter what they were they could not have stopped such a fire.
DR KEVIN TOLHURST, FIRE ECOLOGY SPECIALIST, MELBOURNE UNI: To hear of the fatalities it really makes you, want to rethink and understand why it is that the, the strategy of preparing to stay and defend your house compared with evacuating early.
Why has that come unstuck in this situation. We really need to understand that.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Well is it simply the wrong policy?
DR KEVIN TOLHURST, FIRE ECOLOGY SPECIALIST, MELBOURNE UNI: No I don’t believe it’s the wrong policy. I think the alternative that we have really is an evacuation policy and we’ve seen how in America and in Europe, I guess where that creates its own problems and we probably would have greater fatalities as a result, if we had that policy alone.
KEN WILLIAMSON, CAPTAIN, WHITTLESEA CFA: I still believe it’s the right strategy at the moment. It needs to be reviewed but I think whatever strategy you put in place for this particular fire at the time nothing could have prepared anyone for what we faced.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Could anything have helped to prevent the tragedy?
KEN WILLIAMSON, CAPTAIN, WHITTLESEA CFA: I don’t believe so, not this particular tragedy. We had as many fire trucks out here and, and in fact probably if I had more fire trucks at my disposal at the time I might have put, put them lives in danger and lost more, lost firefighters, I’m sure I would have lost firefighters.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Were people warned early enough?
KEN WILLIAMSON, CAPTAIN, WHITTLESEA CFA: I think that, the situation was that the fire came that quick that the warnings and media etcetera just couldn’t keep up where the fire was, I think you just couldn’t keep up with it, it was unbelievable.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Having seen what you’ve seen, could anything have prevented this catastrophe?
JOHN BRUMBY, PREMIER OF VICTORIA: I guess that’s the question the Royal Commission will, will ask and it’ll look at all of the issues, you know whether the community was ready enough, whether individuals were ready enough, whether the warning systems were good enough, whether government policy was right, whether we should have had tougher vegetation controls.
I mean I think, all of those issues will be there for the commission to consider and I want everybody to have their say, so I don’t want to prejudge that, um I’ve made this point previously.
If you were, you know if you were going to evacuate everybody who was potentially at risk on Saturday you would have evacuated somewhere between half a million and a million people and I don’t know how you’d get them out.
I don’t know where you’d put that many people, frankly you can’t do that.
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On the show there is actually film footage of fire burning, speeding very quickly across a plain, flatish country, at a very quick rate, that is the opinion from experienced firefighters here, what the fire would have done and (acted like) here, unprecedented speed and spotting, as flat and treeless the country here, it is widely felt and been expressed nothing could have stopped the devastation, we would have run for our lives and hoped the trees wouldn't have blocked the roads out.
I like to use my 10 minute mail to claim freebie vouchers etc! Alternately gmail is pretty good for keeping out spam. (And thanks for the kudos, Pushka!)
