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On January 6, the day before Yarloop was gutted by fire, resident Julie-Ann McMiles had come back to her home on Clifton Road after her second day at work following the Christmas break.
Around six o’clock at night, she was working one of her horses when she realised something was wrong.
Despite being the evening it was scorching hot and, as the wind was swirling, big burnt leaves were landing on her as she was working.
In that moment she knew she had to leave Yarloop.
By midnight, less than 24 hours before Yarloop burned to ashes, Ms McMiles hedged up her horse float and started evacuating the horses.
Two of her children sought shelter in Harvey, and her older son and her drove down to Coolup.
However, by dawn Ms McMiles, who was in charge of the Yarloop resource centre, couldn't hold back the need to drive back to Yarloop and try to help other people evacuate their homes.
“I couldn’t get along the highway because the smoke was so thick and there were police cars heading down the highway, there was no way we could get back that way,” she said.
“So my oldest son and I went back to Coolup and we stayed there thinking that the whole town had been evacuated.”
But shortly after, Ms McMiles learnt through a news report on TV that there were still several people stranded in town.
“I assumed that everyone would have left town by that stage,” she said.
“Then we had four messages from different people saying that my property was gone.
“I got sent a photo of it [the fire] jumping the highway into my property.
“I started thinking of a plan of where we were going to move to.”
But on January 9, two days after the fires, Ms McMiles managed to sneak back into ravaged Yarloop.
To her amazement, her house was standing untouched among destroyed properties.
“It was amazing, we were really happy to see the house there, but then there was a bit of guilt that my house was still there,” she said, moved.
As soon as she was back, Ms McMiles started tirelessly trying to track everybody down and assist in all she could.
Together with a group of residents, she started cooking for those left in town and assisted others setting up shower facilities at the town’s pavilion.
“It was quite hectic, trying to contact people and people trying to contact us when we didn’t have a landline anymore,” she said.
“We mainly did emergency relief.
“Because we had no office we were working from my place and people were coming there from six in the morning to ten at night getting vouchers for fuel, because everybody was running on generators.”
A few weeks after, Ms McMiles organised a meeting with mining magnate Andrew Forrest to request assistance.
Mr Forrest offered to set up a provisional caravan park to allow locals to come back to town, but following the asbestos scare the state government stepped in and opposed the project.
“It was very hard,” Ms McMiles said.
“We thought it was the light at the end of the tunnel to get people back and the town going again but because of the asbestos scare they wouldn’t let us bring people back in.”
However, since the town reopened Ms McMiles is excited with the prospect of Yarloop’s recovery.
“I get phone calls all the time from people wanting to know if the town is going ahead,” she said.
“It’s really exciting, especially seeing people that had lived here before and they finally got back into their house.”
Ms McMiles celebrated the state government’s commitment to funding a new community resource centre.
She said works to rebuild the fire shed would start early next year, and there’s plans to get a similar centre to the old workshops, which were destroyed by the blaze.
“We are so blessed the whole of Australia helped out so much, it is unbelievable the generosity of people,” she said.
“I think we need to thank Australia from the Yarloop community.”