'On February 7, 2009, following 12 years of drought, and on a day when temperatures soared to 45 degrees, bushfires burned across the state of Victoria. The fires, of unprecedented ferocity, killed 173 people, injured hundreds more, and a million animals perished in the flames as well. The fires reduced 3500 buildings, 2000 of them people’s homes, to char and rubble. One of the worst-affected areas was Central Gippsland, where the fire began in a eucalypt plantation outside the town of Churchill and burned through 26,000 hectares.' (Introduction)