The Canberra fires of 2003: a pine planataion on the edge of the Brindebella Ranges ignites

Credit: SMH

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By midday on that hot, summer Saturday in Canberra, smoke from the largest bushfires in the history of the surrounding Australian Capital Territory had eclipsed the Sun. Firefighters were battling flames along a 35 km front.

It was 18 January 2003, and few people were overly concerned. Summer is, after all, fire season in the bush, and Canberra, in the southeastern inland of the country, is often called the bush capital. Bushfires are as much a part of Australia's summer as barbecues and Christmas holidays on the beach.

Although low-intensity fires fed by grass and scrub had been steadily advancing on Canberra's sprawling outer suburbs over the years, they seemed to pose little danger to life, limb or property.

But a two-year drought had primed the region around the nation's capital for something bigger. At about 1.30 in the afternoon, wind-fanned flames leapt to the tops of the native eucalypts and imported pines, igniting them. From there, the fires virtually exploded.

Modest ground fires became high-intensity blazes with temperatures exceeding 1,000°C - almost hot enough to melt copper. Eyewitnesses described plasma-like balls of fire detaching from the fire front and blowing forward to ignite everything in their paths. Flames towered 30 metres above the trees, and the wildfire grew so hot that it generated a wind that reached 240 km/h. Cars and trailers were blown around. Trees more than a metre in diameter were uprooted and hurled atop houses, and full-grown pines were snapped in half.

Fire crews had no time to evacuate. The firefighters huddled beneath their vehicles while fire-induced winds blew in windshields and tore off doors. John Ryan, a commander of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, later told Adelaide's The Advertiser newspaper: "There were birds falling out of the sky as we were overrun by the firestorm." Some firefighters reported that wild animals whose fur was smouldering also hid beneath the trucks, their fear of the fire outweighing their fear of humans.

Describing the scene later, Peter Roth, Ryan's deputy, told reporters, "It was more like a fire hurricane than a firestorm". He added, "I said to the chief, 'If we don't see you again, it's been nice knowing you' ".

Roth and Ryan survived, but others were not so lucky. The fires ultimately killed four people, destroyed more than 500 homes, and reduced nearly two-thirds of the Australian Capital Territory to ash. The losses included the Australian National University's giant optical telescopes at the Mount Stromlo Observatory, just west of Canberra - completely destroyed, their metal domes and telescope mountings melted.

As with many natural disasters, the fires were capricious. Farther outside town than Mount Stromlo, flames stopped just metres from the radio dishes of NASA's Deep Space Communications Complex at nearby Tidbinbilla, vital for maintaining contact with dozens of spacecraft, including the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

Losing the complex would have been a serious setback for the U.S. space agency, potentially causing a communications blackout for eight hours a day. Yet even as they spared the NASA site, the fires burned more than 99 per cent of the 55 km² Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, just 5 km away. The reserve was also home to dozens of koalas, only one of which, although horribly burned, survived.