KATIE Peters and Steven Kadar had been retreating from their fire control duties at the time a tree fell and crushed their vehicle during last year’s Harrietville blaze.
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An inquest in Wodonga into their deaths on February 13, 2013, heard yesterday a change in wind direction had significantly increased the danger to ground crews and back-burning efforts had become futile.
Owen Lord, a planned burning preparation supervisor with the Department of Sustainability and Environment, spoke with Mr Kadar and Miss Peters just after a call had been made at 3.25pm to get everyone out of the area.
Miss Peters and Mr Kadar had been in a firefighting utility, known as a slip on.
Mr Lord and Mr Kadar had a discussion about which route to take to safety.
“We were side by side on the track and Katie was in the driver’s seat,” Mr Lord said.
Mr Kadar said to Mr Lord: “We will go the way we are pointing (which was east) and I will follow you Lordy.”
They drove east before Mr Lord got out of his vehicle to speak to another crew member.
Miss Peters had driven around him and continued on.
Moments later, Mr Lord heard what he described as a very loud pop.
“I looked at the slip on Katie and Steven were in and saw a dead ash bounce off the slip-on, and the slip-on bounce and jolt forward,” he said.
“I was hoping they were just trapped but, even before I got to the cabin, I knew it would be bad news.”
Mr Lord said he had not deferred a decision on which route to take to Mr Kadar, but had an “open communication” with him about it.
“I didn’t ask him,” Mr Lord told the coroner John Olle yesterday.
“We discussed it. I liked Steven and I respected his opinion.”
Mr Lord said Mr Kadar was not anxious at all, saying “we were just doing it in an orderly fashion”.
Mr Lord said he had checked on Mr Kadar’s welfare at least three times on February 13.
“I asked him on at least three occasions, ‘are you happy where you are standing, get out if you want to’,” Mr Lord said.
Mr Lord denied earlier suggestions at the inquest that firefighters’ concerns for safety had fallen on deaf ears.
“Even though I may not have communicated it with the crew, I was taking the concerns back to the ICC (incident control centre),” he said.
“It was brought up at the briefings every morning. I understood their concerns.”
