I live in Chapman, the second-worst hit of the suburbs of Canberra, with 75 homes destroyed. The fire came within about 100m of my home. I spent Saturday afternoon on the ridge which my home stands on fighting the fires with a garden hose. Fortunately, the people in the immediate vicinity had not evacuated when told to do so, and we put out the fires with not much more than garden hoses, buckets of water, wet towels, and shovels. The ridge behind Chapman is open grassland with very sparse trees, and from my experience on Saturday, a grass fire is able to be controlled by ordinary men and women with no training and few tools. With the great wisdom of hindsight, I could say that Chapman might well have lost far fewer than 75 houses if people had stayed around to fight the fire than have been forced to leave. However, one cannot blame the emergency services for putting peoples' lives before property (did I say they did a fantastic job in impossible circumstances?).
By contrast, the worst hit suburb, Duffy, sits right next to a pine plantation, and flying embers set the petrol station in the middle of the suburb alight. Only a flash flood would've made an impact - and we're in the middle of the worst drought for several decades.
We still don't have power on at our place (72 hours after it went out) and don't look like we'll have it back anytime soon. We've been "camping" in our own home, cooking on the BBQ, eating out of eskies ("coolers"), and using candles at night. We've still got cold water, tho', and it's clean (we're about 50m from the poor people connected to the reservoir whose roof was blown off).
We're fortunate. Several of my workmates lost their houses in Chapman and Duffy. There's nothing left to burn on the ridge, so the fire threat has now passed. But it's still burning near other parts of Canberra, and many people have gone home to prepare. Welcome to the Australian Summer.
Cheers, Al'Kelhar
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