We asked Guardian readers to tell us how they’ve been affected by the fires in Australia • You can share your story here

'I had no way of leaving': readers share their encounters with the Australian bushfires

Guardian readers have been getting in contact to share their experiences of the deadly bushfires currently sweeping across Australia.

The fires have claimed 17 lives since October, with at least nine dead since Christmas Day, while gridlocked traffic has stranded tens of thousands of people fleeing evacuation zones in Victoria and NSW.

Cassandra Toohey was staying with family in Blue Haven when a blaze broke out on New Year’s Eve. By the afternoon, she says, the flames appeared to have been taken care of, and so her brother left to have dinner with friends while her partner checked in on family. This left her alone when the fire returned later that evening.

“I was in the bedroom when I heard several sirens all race down the road and I immediately started smelling smoke,” she said. “I already had my things packed from earlier so I grabbed all my stuff and ran to the front door. The wind and smoke were insane. I could see a red glow about two houses down.

“It was terrifying. I had no way of leaving because all the cars were gone. I called my brother and my partner to tell them what was going on and they both immediately left to get back to me but found the roads were blocked. When they were able to get through I was extremely relieved.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Firefighters make arrangements to secure the residential area from an approaching bushfire in Dargan, some 120 kilometres from Sydney. Photograph: Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images

In Dargan, Susan Alexander and her husband, Nic, who is also captain of the local volunteer fire service, lost their home to the fires on 22 December. She said the insurance assessor told them their street was the worst affected he had seen.

“My husband was just exhausted and shattered,” she said. “The fire was so intense. They could not fight it on the ground and 16 homes were destroyed. Our local volunteers have worked so hard and it is devastating for them to see what has happened. Six brigade members have lost their homes, three of whom were actively fighting the beast.

“Talking to my husband and many other firies and locals, the lack of resources is why we lost our home. No water-bombing was done, and if it had it would have cooled the fire enough so they could defend it on the ground level.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The family home that was built by Ashleigh Douglas’s father 35 years ago was destroyed during the Hillville fire in NSW in November. Photograph: Ashleigh Douglas/Guardian Community

Ashleigh Douglas told the Guardian that the blaze in Hillville earlier in November destroyed her family home of 35 years. Her father had built their house himself, and was in the process of renovating with the inheritance from Ashleigh’s grandfather, who lived nearby.

“After fighting off the encroaching fire front for three days, my dad had no choice but watch the home he built go up in flames,” she said. “He evacuated and returned two days later, after yet another wind shift, to discover the machinery shed and my grandfather’s house already well alight.

“In a matter of three days, my dad’s life’s work was destroyed,” she added.

Anna Mould travelled from Sydney with a group of friends to ring in the new year at a boat shed in Narooma, where firestorms rained down fine black drops of ashy water throughout the day.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Narooma on the New South Wales south coast on New Year’s Eve. Photograph: Anna Louise/Guardian Community

“We woke to an eerie yellow brown light that quickly darkened as the pyrocumulonimbus cloud thickened above the area,” she said. “It was a relatively subdued New Year’s celebration after we progressively lost power, phone reception and finally the ABC radio signal.”

Mould said that they eventually returned home to Sydney via Cooma and Canberra on 2 January.

“It was after a couple of nervous days spent poring over paper maps and comparing information about road closures gleaned from the radio and from the heavily populated evacuation centre in the middle of town,” she said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The view from a boat shed in Narooma on the NSW south coast from 31 December. Photograph: Anna Louise/Guardian Community

Linda Heald is based out of nearby North Narooma, where she says the gathering together of smaller fires to the west may see the flames sweep toward her in the next few days. She is suffering from stage-four terminal cancer and worries about losing the precious mementos she wishes to pass on if the fires should destroy her home.

“It’s just the waiting,” she said. “On Tuesday I woke to a bright orange sky unlike anything I’d ever seen. The smoke was murky and as the day progressed the sky got darker, three in the afternoon was like night. Ash was dropping and has continued and so everything is still covered in black dust and burnt leaves.

“I’m sorting photographs to pack in the car and all the time the thoughts are ‘If I have nothing after Saturday, will this photo be important to me?’ If I walk out of the house and never see any of the personal things, the sentimental things, the useful things again, what will that be like? How can I start again? Not at this stage. I have to have something for the other side of this. And so I keep on packing … and we wait.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A red and smoky sky above Parliament House in Canberra. Photograph: Coralie Rowan/Guardian Community

The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has received widespread criticism not only for his handling of the crisis, during which he “deeply regrets” taking a holiday to Hawaii, but also for a lack of funding for the region’s Rural Fire Service (RFS). On Thursday he was heckled and told to “piss off” while visiting residents in Cobargo, where on Monday a father and son were killed by the fires.

Alexander said: “I hold the PM and state government directly responsible for the loss of my family home. We didn’t need to lose it.”

After Australia’s hottest-ever decade, comments from those affected by the disaster also reflect a broader concern about the efficacy of the Coalition government’s policy on climate change.

Toohey called for the government to “declare a state of climate emergency and act now to prevent further warming and proliferation of more fires”, while Nigel Featherstone from Goulburn, NSW, said: “The ecological impacts will no doubt be devastating – will these systems be able to recover? There are still two months of summer to go.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Taken in Queenstown, New Zealand at the end of December Photograph: Ann/Guardian Community

Meanwhile, readers from as far away as Queenstown, New Zealand, submitted photographs of the smoke from the fires carried over the sea by the wind.