The largest of the uncontained bushfires raging in Victoria has left a small township grappling with the loss of treasured family history. As residents return to survey the damage, the sheer devastation is palpable.

The ferocious Longwood fire has claimed several properties in Ruffy, including homes and a nearly 150-year-old school, leaving behind a scorched landscape and heartbroken community.

Today, some residents have managed to navigate the hazardous conditions—roads still littered with fallen branches and smouldering trees—to assess what, if anything, remains of their homes.

Among them are Jamie and Ann Laherty-Hunt, whose home of over ten years was obliterated as the fire swept through the town with alarming speed.

“It was like a freight train coming at us from over there,” Jamie recounted, capturing the sheer force and ferocity of the advancing blaze.

“When it came, it came. Everyone uses the word ferocious, and it really kind of is,” Ann said. 

The Laherty-Hunts are nurses as well as volunteer firefighters. They were on the frontline trying to save the town when they were forced to defend their own property.

“All of our family history, like from when my parents, I got all their stuff, it was all in there, and having to stand here and watch all of it go up. That was really hard,” Ann said.

“You feel numb like it’s not us, it’s happening to someone else. And then you’re sad.

“And the sadness is going to be what comes over the next few days, I’m sure, you just realise how much we’ve lost.”

“We’re having waves of the emotion, but we haven’t got time for it,” Jamie said. 

And they’re not the only ones. 

In Longwood East, Warrick O’Donnell faced similar heartbreak after he managed to save his home with sprinklers but lost sentimental items.

“Pretty shattered, because a lot of my father’s tools and his father’s tools,” he said.