A lightning bolt strikes on a ridge to the north and a town's worst nightmare begins Smoke can be seen behind the general store in Harrietville. THE tiny Alpine town of Harrietville has been under siege for 55 days. A raging fire has cost two firefighters their lives, consumed 36,000ha of bushland, destroyed stock, cut roads to the town and cost $40 million. The blaze, now controlled, is still burning south of the town near Swifts Creek. The town's water supply has been contaminated and access from the south blocked by a landslide that took out major sections of road. With an independent inquiry now under way, enraged residents are demanding answers. The Sunday Herald Sun has tracked day-by-day how the resilient Harrietville locals have continued to fight the blaze. JANUARY 21: Harrietville General Store owner Annette Norris saw a solitary bolt of lightning over the ridge line at the north-east edge of town at 2.45pm. Bright school teacher Rebecca Crawley had just put on lunch when she felt the shock of the lightning punch the ground not 200m from her family home. "We knew when we felt the vibrations it was really close," Mrs Crawley, a mother-of-two, said. Her husband, Justin, led hurried fire crews up the hill to the site of the blaze. Harrietville CFA Captain Gary Weston joined his crew at 3.30pm. By 6pm he had put a stop on more CFA crews arriving, and handed the job over to Department of Sustainability and Environment crews. Rebecca Crawley with her dog Bella sits in the spot near where the fire started. Picture: Jon Hargest. They kept battling the inferno, carving out containment lines as water-bombing aircraft joined in. They managed to contain the fire in the rocky terrain and withdrew at 9.30pm. JANUARY 22: The fire was reduced to a patch of smouldering embers by 6.30am. Mrs Crawley went to inspect it and when she returned down the hill she was met by DSE fire fighters. "They said, 'What does it look like down there?' and I said, 'It looks like it's out'," she said. But strong winds blew embers and flames across containment lines and into heavy fuel loads at 2pm. The fire quickly intensified beyond control. JANUARY 23: Players from the Gippsland South Football Club were yanked from Mt Feathertop by helicopter as the fire came within 100m of them. JANUARY 24: Residents were urged to evacuate their homes with fire authorities warning the now 1700ha blaze could threaten towns overnight. Alpine Valley Getaways operator Emma Hinchliffe fled with her family, and from that day on, kept the car packed. Captain of the Harrietville CFA Gary Weston.Picture: Jon Hargest. "The kids thought we were going on holidays," she said. JANUARY 31: Fire crews and Mt Hotham resort staff were forced to defend buildings with snow machines as the area came under ember attack from the Harrietville fire. Hotham Heights, Mt Hotham and Dinner Plain residents were told to take cover when the fire broke containment lines that night, spewing embers up to 3km ahead. A blanket of smoke became almost constant in the Harrietville township. "I'd wake up in the morning and couldn't see from one end of the house to the other because of smoke," resident Steve Taylor said. FEBRUARY 10: Mitchell Kermond was facing a 10m wall of flames roaring up the hill when he decided to flee his Sambas gold mine at 7pm. Peering down the valley on the fire front, all he could do was watch as the inferno closed in on his processing shed, where $200,000 worth of equipment was about to be turned into a pile of twisted metal. "It's ripped everything (destroyed everything) out," Mr Kermond said. David Hall after the Harrietville fire. It would not be his last run-in with the fire before the disaster was over. FEBRUARY 11: The Cool Summer music festival at Mt Hotham, scheduled for February 22-24, was cancelled. "Ever since the fire started people just stopped coming," General Store owner Mrs Norris said. Shady Brook Cottage owner John Atkins said the town's income was almost completely drained. Because the fire began here just before the Australia Day long weekend, everybody had to cancel their bookings. We lost school camps. One guy earned just $500 in two months," Mr Atkins said. We tried to continue on with normal life, we had to. You can't stay out of the town for a month. CFA Captain Weston said many of his volunteers had to take annual leave so they could continue battling the blaze. His 21 members each worked an average of 74 hours during the campaign. Annette Norris from the Harrietville General Store. "I didn't earn anything for a month," said Mr Weston, who is the town's mechanic. I was here every day for 20-something days. What are you going to do? FEBRUARY 13: Two firefighters were killed when a tree landed on their vehicle as they were travelling through fire ground on Pheasants Creek Track in Selwyn. Tallandoon teenager, Katie Peters, 19, and 29-year-old family man Steven Kadar, from Corryong, became the fire's only fatalities. In a statement, Ms Peters' family said she was "happy, caring and genuine." "Katie will always be held in the hearts of those who knew her," Ms Peters' family said. Nine days later then-Victorian premier Ted Baillieu was among 500 people who gathered to mourn the farmgirl. FEBRUARY 27: Mitchell Kermond dashed behind the cover of his compressor as he watched 4000 tonnes of rock bury his mine and his livelihood. Fire blazes in Harrietville. The first of two heavy downpours sent the fire-stripped earth pouring down the mountain, ripping the bitumen from the roads. Nothing was held back. "It was an amazing sight," Mr Kermond said. It looked like a roaring river of rocks. That avalanche, the second disaster to rock Victoria's fifth largest gold producer in weeks, would send Mr Kermond's damage bill soaring to $500,000. "I knew that when I saw the rock slide coming down it was all over," he said. With the DSE forecasting the wet weather to cause further landslides, Bushfire Response Minister Peter Ryan announced a probe would begin into the critical first 72 hours of the Harrietville bushfire. FEBRUARY 28: Drinking water was convoyed into town by large tankers as residents were forced on to boiled water restrictions after the fire contaminated their supply. North East Water operation chief John Day said: "It literally went from drinking water to thick mud." MARCH 8: Parts of the Great Alpine Rd reopened in time for the lucrative Labour Day long weekend. MARCH 13: At a heated community meeting, Harrietville residents demanded answers from the DSE over its handling of the bushfire. Officials were grilled over whether they dedicated enough resources with the urgency needed to extinguish the fire in the first two days. MARCH 17: Tourism operators feared visitors would stay away in the usually busy Easter long weekend and the ski season. "We lost a booking last night because people still get the impression you'll be looking over burnt out hills," Mr Atkins said. 55 days since a lightning strike sparked the Harrietville fire 36,000 ha of mountain country consumed $500,000 worth of damage to the Sambas gold mine, which will be closed for at least a year 10km of the Great Alpine Rd shut off by a rock slide $40m economic loss to the region $1.7m recovery money injected into the region by the Victorian Government 561 man-hours fought by the Harrietville CFA alone 19 DSE units still manning the south section of the fire 403 residents in Harrietville 400 the most number of people working on the fire at any time 807 kilometres of control line has been built. Just short of the distance taken to drive from Sydney to Melbourne