Elderly couple survives fire at the bottom of a well
Published: January 29, 2006
AN elderly Pomonal couple survived the Grampians fire for more than half an hour at the bottom of a well.
Beverley and Kevin Grace took heed from previous owners of their house who had also saved themselves by hiding down the 12-foot well during the 1939 Black Friday bushfire.
“If it worked for them in 1939 I thought it will certainly do us. We were snug as a bug,” Mrs Grace said.
“We’ve been expecting the fire, although not this bad, for 30 years and since the old owners visited and told us about it, we’ve been ready to go.”
While the current bushfire, which residents have described as `volcanic’, destroyed a 12-square house, six small sheds, Mrs Grace’s native gardens, 9000 videos Mr Grace made and collected and a shed housing old film reels collected by the couple’s son Phillip
- it spared their house.
And the well, they said, saved their lives.
After putting out spot fires the Graces evacuated down the well when the fire, whipped up by strong northerlies, came at them from both the Mt William Range and from Moyston in the south-east.
“We saw it come roaring over the mountain then it came roaring also from the east and Kevin said to me `I think it’s time we go down the well’,” Mr Grace said.
“We had sandwiches, water, fruit, lights, a change of clothes and a radio that I put down there beforehand. I put a wet blanket over the roof, it was cool and damp and we just sat there listening to the radio while the fire passed over.”
Mrs Grace said she had `peeked’ from the well in time to see the video shed go up in flames.
“You should have seen it, the fire in that shed burnt for more than two days. We only got it out on Wednesday,” she said.
When they emerged from the well, the Graces said they doubted they would find their house still standing.
“I asked Kevin if we still had a house and we couldn’t believe it was still there,” Mrs Grace said.
But native gardens Mrs Grace used for a small cut-flowers business are gone.
“I’m obsessed with gardening but I’m not young any more and we’d minimalised the business in the last 10 years. People have been telling me to slow down - I guess this is voluntary redundancy,” she said.
“Yes we’ve lost an awful lot but I’m looking at it the other way, at what we’ve been able to save.”
Mr Grace, a Stawell cinema projectionist who makes and collects `all sorts of videos’, said the videos were unimportant in the scheme of events.
“I guess it’s just like a collection of books, except they burn better,” he said.
The Graces, who had a fire plan, attributed their losses to a failed water supply system.
“We spent more than $20,000 on a new bore but there must have been a split in the pipe because the pressure just stopped,” Mrs Grace said.
“And I tell you one thing though, country people should not buy plastic water tanks. We had one and you should have seen it go.”
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: