Victorian bushfires in summer of 1943-44 burned over one million hectares, killed 51 people, injured 700, and destroyed over 650 buildings.
There had been deadly fires just days before Christmas in the northeast which had killed 10 firefighters from the Wangaratta fire brigade. More widespread fires across the State a month later killed 20 people and included blazes on the outskirts of Geelong and Melbourne at Beaumaris.
But the loss of a further 13 lives at Yallourn, 80 years ago today on 14 February 1944, together with the impact on the State’s electricity supplies when the critical brown coal fields caught alight, brought the summer season into sharp media and political focus.
The State Government hadn’t acted on Judge Leonard Stretton’s Royal Commission recommendations made five years earlier after the deadly 1939 Black Friday bushfires. The inertia was mainly due to the intervening war years and rival factions within rural and urban firefighting brigades in country Victoria.
The Premier Sir Albert Dunstan and Minister for Forests Sir Albert Lind, who had both delayed legislative changes in Parliament, decided there was no alternative but to ask Judge Stretton to chair a second Royal Commission.
Stretton’s report returned to his earlier themes, but this time he was even more strident about improving bushfire coordination outside the Melbourne area.
After nearly six months of debate and argy-bargy in State Parliament, legislation to establish the Country Fire Authority (CFA) was finally passed in two stages on 22 November and 6 December 1944. The Chairman and Board members were appointed on 19 December 1944. The CFA came into legal effect on 2 April 1945.
All the existing country brigades were invited to join the new organisation… most did… some reluctantly… but nobody seemed particularly happy with the new arrangements…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_Fire_Authority
Main map of the 1943/44 bushfires was probably produced for the Stretton Royal Commission. Source: State Library of Victoria. http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/119987
Victoria’s Forests & Bushfire Heritage 