Bush nurse tells Senate hearing of stigma facing those unable to flee deadly Black Summer fires

AUSTRALIA – A bush nurse who supported her north-east Victorian community as deadly bushfires raged nearby says people who were unable to evacuate were deprived of essential help.

Sandi Grieve, the CEO and nurse practitioner at the Walwa Bush Nursing Centre, gave evidence today to a Senate committee hearing into the 2019-2020 bushfires.

She said emergency services failed to understand the complexities involved in evacuating some areas.

“Many people had no choice,” she said.

Ms Grieve said people needed enough fuel in their vehicles to ensure they could travel for “180 kilometres in order to evacuate safely” and some members of the “socio-economically disadvantaged area” could not afford that much fuel at short notice.

She said those people should not be further disadvantaged because of the perception they chose to remain.

“When I spoke to the Incident Control Centre 24 hours after that initial fire came through our town and our district, and I described the situation in town and at the Bush Nursing Centre, I very clearly received a message that help would not be forthcoming for people who have ignored the order to leave,” Ms Grieve told the hearing.

She also told the hearing local nurses who had left the area were unable to return to provide support in the aftermath as they were not deemed “essential workers”, despite other workers such as media being able to pass through the roadblocks.

Village relied on ‘luck’

Ms Grieve herself was unable to evacuate as bushfires threatened the local area while she was busy treating firefighters who had sustained burns.

But being trapped ultimately provided her community with a lifeline.

She was able to crank up the generator at the Bush Nursing Centre when power and communications to the village were cut, and residents who had been unable to evacuate gravitated to its relative safety.

The Senate committee was told that the facility became somewhat of a lifeline for the stranded residents, who used the centre as a place to eat, shower, sleep and charge their devices in the hope of regaining communication with loved ones and other support.

It also morphed into a relief and recovery centre.

Ms Grieve said it was only “luck” that she missed her opportunity to escape and instead decided to open the centre as a refuge for other trapped residents.

But it is that element of luck in a disaster zone that worries her.

“If our nursing centre had not been open at that period of time, none of these services would have been available, none of these services would have been provided, and yet it was only a matter of luck that the bush nursing centre was open and able to provide that care,” she told the Senate committee.

“Remote services like ours need to be involved in future disaster planning because people can’t always evacuate, and potentially the role of refuge and relief will ultimately fall to services like ours.”