‘We just hugged each other and cried’: South West mum tells of losing family home in bushfire

When the Milne family went to sleep on Friday night, they had no idea it would be their last in the Yabberup house they had called home for the past 10 years. In a tragic turn of events, the raging bushfire — which had residents in the tight-knit South West farming community on tenterhooks for days after a lightning strike on Tuesday — escaped containment lines on Saturday. With little time to prepare and sirens blaring overhead, mother-of-three Kristy Milne grabbed her children and fled. It was the last time they would see their home standing. They had already spent two anxious nights at the evacuation centre set up at Donnybrook Recreation Centre earlier in the week, when the blaze, which razed almost 6000ha, was burning at emergency level. After the Department of Fire and Emergency Services downgraded the alert to advice on Friday, Ms Milne and her children, Alexis, 16, Beau, 16, and Zac, 14, were happy to finally be returning home. Unfortunately, a wind change on Saturday saw the blaze flare up again and despite the efforts of more than 200 firefighters and aerial support, it quickly escalated in their home’s direction. “We had just started to relax, then we heard the sirens again,” Ms Milne recalled. “I headed outside to see what was going on, drove up the hill and had a look. “We could see the first fire that had restarted and another one that was even closer to us.” In that moment, she made the call to evacuate. “We knew it was getting too close,” she said “I rang my daughter and got her to pack everything up and by the time I got back to the house, we were packed and gone within 10 minutes. “We just drove off away from it and got to safety and didn’t really think back. “Then we got the news ... we’d lost the house.” Having seen the blaze approaching, she said she and her family had “prepared mentally” for the loss of the home, but the devastating news still came as a “shock”. Ms Milne described it as “a lot” to take in. “We had discussed the fact that there was a possibility that it would go,” she said. “We knew that the fire was jumping the road not far from us ... it was an old house and is right on the corner on the main road. “That didn’t mean that it didn’t really shock us and hurt a lot when we had that confirmation. “We just hugged each other and cried and tried to process it.” Having already partially packed their belongings for their first evacuation, the family were able to quickly grab their “comfort” items and flee to safety. While others decided to stay and fight the blaze, Ms Milne said the idea never once crossed her mind, saying it was something she was simply “incapable” of doing with a young family. “I had young children in there that I had to get out, my job was to get them out — that was it,” she said. “We didn’t see the fire hit the house or even come close, so that trauma isn’t there. “We had a lucky escape compared to what it could have been.” Returning to the home three days later to check on their farm animals that were unable to be evacuated, she was lost for words at the sight of her blackened home. “It was really hard .... it was unrecognisable. It didn’t feel like it was our house we were looking at,” Ms Milne said. “We had seen photos, we had seen the news footage. So we had tried our hardest to really prepare ourselves for what we were to see.” In the following days, Ms Milne said she was coming to terms with it and they were trying “really hard” to look forward. A silver lining to the ordeal, the family were filled with “overwhelming excitement” after discovering their two sheep and a duck had miraculously survived. Ms Milne calling it a “small bit of happy among the horrific.” Nearly a week on, the family have been residing with the children’s father in Collie, “amazed” at the community’s generosity in rallying around them. Supportive community members have donated a week’s worth of food and first aid supplies for their animals, and another kind local is cooking them meals for the next two weeks. A My Cause donation page has also been set up for the family — having raised more than $13,000 at the time of print. “I am very grateful,” Ms Milne said. “Everyone has just been phenomenal.” With some of the financial pressure taken off, Ms Milne said it had given them the opportunity to start thinking about the possibility of rebuilding. “It’s amazing,” she said. “It would have been our biggest struggle if we had to do it on our own .... I’m a very stubborn woman, so it was hard to start accepting (support). “To know that and to feel that I don’t have to worry about all of those things on the sidelines has made it a lot easier. I’m just focusing on me and the kids and just making small plans for the future.” Despite the disaster and long road that lies ahead for the family, Ms Milne and her children want the community to know they are all safe and well, and thankful for the support. “I just want everyone to know we’re doing OK,” she said. “We’re very, very lucky, we have an excessively amazing support system ... I am very grateful.”