00:00Hi everyone, Chris Udman, Chief Fire Officer.
00:04It has been an extraordinarily challenging campaign bushfire season for 2026 for many Victorians
00:12and I'm deeply grateful for the fact that so many Victorians followed the directions of emergency services.
00:21What I wanted to show you is some of the fire behaviour that we have seen occurring in many different fires across the state.
00:32The fire that you're looking at now occurred on the Walworth Fire in the northeast of Victoria
00:37and we can see that this fire behaviour was extreme conditions
00:43and we see that the fire created vortexes, what we call the fire tornado
00:49and it does create its own weather patterns and wind direction.
00:56So even if the wind is blowing from the north, we can see as these fires twist and turn,
01:03they can become erratic and unpredictable and we never really know what they're going to do.
01:10Our goal is to save as many lives as possible.
01:13So when we say leave early, that's because we don't want anybody to get killed during a bushfire.
01:21We've had one tragic loss of life this year and we want to make sure that over the next four weeks
01:27we don't see other tragic losses of life.
01:31So the best possible place to be is nowhere close to bushfires under these terrible conditions
01:38that we've been seeing this year and we'll still see in the weeks ahead.
01:42On the worst of days, when we get that extreme and catastrophic fire behaviour,
01:47it can be really confronting experience for people.
01:50All of a sudden, you have a blue sky that turns black.
01:54If a fire is crowning, it can sound like a heavy goods train coming right past your house.
02:01The energy that is being released, quite often under those conditions, is not survivable.
02:09The radiant heat will kill you before a fire ever gets to you if you're caught in the open
02:15in front of a fire being driven by 60 or 80 or 100 kilometre an hour winds.
02:23It is frightening.
02:25I have seen those conditions firsthand.
02:27Even as an experienced forest firefighter, I have actually felt that the pretension,
02:36tension and fear, because what we do see as Mother Nature, is very, very powerful indeed
02:42and it can be terrifying.
02:45Please don't put yourself in harm's way if it is catastrophic or extreme conditions.
02:51And when we say leave early, that's because many of us have had those experiences.
02:58We know how devastating the fire behaviour can be and how terrifying it can be.
03:02And for a normal human being, it's not unreasonable to think that your decision making
03:08and how you may carry yourself under those circumstances will be challenged by the noise
03:15and the experience that you might be having facing those catastrophic and extreme fire conditions.
03:23We know that many people choose to stay in defence.
03:26We know that if you do that, it's a lot of hard work.
03:29So you've actually got to be prepared.
03:31You've got to be committed and dedicated.
03:33You cannot be infirm or unfit to be able to do this work.
03:39It's extraordinarily physically and emotionally challenging.
03:43We have this heat dome effect over Victoria at the moment.
03:48If the wind does continue to pick up as we go through Sunday all the way through to Tuesday,
03:54the conditions that you saw in this video can and will be replicated
04:00if we get ignitions in the days ahead.
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