Alpine Bushfires
Quentin Addison · 51 min
When Black Saturday tore through St Andrews, Quentin Addison was on a fire truck with no idea if his wife was alive — and what he learned in the ashes drove twenty years of community fire safety work.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
On 7 February 2009, Quentin Addison was on a fire truck somewhere north of St Andrews when Black Saturday tore through Victoria. He had no idea if his wife Ros was alive. She was at home with three German backpackers they'd invited to stay, a fire pump that had stopped working, and a house filling with smoke.
Ros, a theatre nurse trained to work calmly in emergencies, moved through the fire with deliberate steps. She kept the girls upstairs until the kitchen skylight melted, then walked them downstairs past a burning branch to the dam, where they sheltered behind the berm while the house burned to the ground. When Quentin finally reached the fire station that night, a police officer had to tell him his house was gone. He was standing in it.
What came next was slower and harder to see. Twelve months later, Quentin woke on a Monday morning unable to go to work. He called his GP and learned he had depression, possibly PTSD. Seeing a psychologist turned out to be one of the smartest things he ever did. That same year, he also learned to accept help when friends offered it, understanding that people genuinely do not know how else to care.
For the next twenty years, Quentin served the CFA as a community safety coordinator, returning to fire-affected regions during the 2019-20 fires to help people evacuate and check their fire plans. He carried his own experience into that work. His message was simple: listen when emergency services warn you, have a water supply and a plan, and do not count on the trucks arriving in time.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses grief & loss, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au • GriefLine: 1300 845 745 · griefline.org.au
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