At about midday it was apparent that, the number of calls would exceed the immediately available A.C.T. Emergency Service resources. An offer of assistance from the A.C.T. Rural Fire Service to provide additional chainsaw crews was readily accepted. Throughout the afternoon crews, from Hall, Rivers, Jerrabomberra, Guises Creek and Athllon Brigades worked from the two A.C.T. Emergency Service Units.
By integrating A.C.T. Rural Fire Service and A.C.T. Emergency Service crews to carry out tree removal tasks, the expertise of the A.C.T. Rural Fire Service teams in tree cutting was utilised along with the A.C.T. Emergency Service members in tree removal, assessing building damage and determining needs for furthur assistance.
This freed a number of A.C.T. Emergency Service resources to attend building damage calls.
The A.C.T. Emergency Service Operation was controlled by the Director, Greg James, from the Control Centre at Curtin. Tony Brownlie's offer of assistance in the Control Room was readily accepted, and apart from assisting in the receipt and tasking of calls, Tony acted as Liason Officer. Arthur Sayer later relieved Tony and Greg James was relieved by the Frank Pascoe the A.C.T. Emergency Service Planning Officer .
The teams worked throughout the day and into the night. The last team being stood down at 1.30am Monday morning. A total of 250 calls had been attended. With strong wind and light rains continuing all night and most of Monday, Emergency Service teams again entered the field at 6.30am on Monday and continued to work until 10.00pm that night, attending to a furthur 50 calls.
According to the Bureau of Meteorology this was the strongest continual wind storm since the 1950's and advised that the strongest gusts reached over 100 k.p.h. and were the strongest recorded in 40 years.
Interestingly the damage was wide spread but did not cause extensive or intense damage in any one area. The major problems were trees on dwellings and roof tiles and ridge cappings removed. There were the light moments of calls of garden sheds being blown along roads together with the odd 'mobile' toilet.
By national standards these storms were not big nor was the damage as bad as it could have been. It was good to know that we were able to utilise A.C.T. Rural Fire Service crews alongside the A.C.T. Emergency Service as an additional resource to combat the storm damage. A total of over 1400 person hours were spent over the 36 hour period, by members of the A.C.T. Emergency Service and the A.C.T. Rural Fire Service in assisting the Canberra community in their time of need.
Postscript
Rick McRae (A.C.T. Rural Fire Service Planning Officer), after assisting in plotting the damage, realised that the wind had been predominatly from the north west and that he could use the damage pattern to review his theory on fire weather and the likely effect on bush fire and the residential areas of Canberra.
It turned out that the damage pattern followed very closely upon the likely paths that Rick had traced out for a wind driven bushfire. There were a few areas that didn't behave as expected, but the concept appears valid.
Greg James (Director of A.C.T. Emergency Service)
20 November 1994