Black day

By Kath Gannaway
RETELLING the story of Black Saturday was a daunting task for Lilydale’s Glenvale School community, but they achieved it beyond all expectations with FireStorm.
The 240 page hard-cover book was released in November as a fund-raiser for CFA brigades in the fire-affected areas.
Glenvale spokesman Anthony Arkcoll said the book was originally planned as a fund-raiser for the school but the parents and friends group very quickly decided to make the CFA brigades the beneficiaries of the project.
Twenty-five thousand books were printed in the first run and the book has gone into a second print run.
The original concept was as a memento book covering Australia’s greatest natural disaster.
“This was an extraordinary event and we wanted to create an extraordinary book,” publisher Mr Arkcoll said.
He said with thousands of incredible stories, many reported briefly in the press, they decided the book would be made up of real stories from real people that would help readers understand, empathise and share the awful tragedy.
An approach to people they knew in the affected areas and emergency organisations involved in the fire fight brought stories flooding in.
Mr Arkcoll said they were flooded with people who wanted to share their stories and images to let Australia know of the intensity and drama of the event.
“The book came together very quickly, very spontaneously, capturing genuinely the real inside story about Black Saturday,” he said.
The book contains 240 colour pages and stories covering all the Black Saturday fires with gripping stories and first-hand accounts as well as statistics and before, during and after photos.
The book recommended price is $49.95 and is available through some CFA brigades and at book stores.
“One hundred per cent of the profits from sales of FireStorm will be donated to needy CFA stations in the fire-affected areas,” Mr Arkcoll said.