It is not yet known how many properties were lost during Friday’s bushfire emergency on Kangaroo Island.  

What is known is that two respected locals lost their lives after spending the day fighting the fire; that more than 155 000 hectares has been burnt out; there has been significant damage to SA Water, Telstra and SA Power Networks infrastructure’ and there have been heavy stock, farming and community losses across the western end of the island.  

The Department of the Environment and Water has reportied that all buildings within the Finders Chase National Park have been lost, apart from the Cape du Couedic and Cape Borda lighthouses. 

The luxury Southern Ocean Lodge at Hanson Bay has been significantly damaged and it is unknown when it could reopen.  

All visitors at the Lodge were evacuated early on Friday but six remaining staff members managed to survive by sheltering in a bunker.

The Mayor of Kangaroo Island, Michael Pengilly, describes Friday’s fire as being, “the most devastating, shattering day in my lifetime,” echoing the comments of many locals who say they have never seen fires on this scale before.

A relief centre has been set up at the Kingscote Football Club for affected residents and visitors.   

Sealink ferry services continue to operate, with extra services moving 700 cars and their occupants off the Island on Saturday, emergency service vehicles and personnel receive priority.  

It is advised that non-essential travel to the island be deferred.

The Ravine fire in the Flinders Chase Park on Kangaroo Island has been burning since a lightning strike on 20 December.

Once it was confirmed that Friday would be a day of extreme fire danger weather the CFS repeatedly warned that if the fire jumped containment lines there would be no way to control it.   

Visitors and residents on the western side of the island were urged to consider leaving.

The first breaches of the lines came just after 7am on Friday morning.  

As temperatures reached 39 degrees and wind 80km an hour the fires spread, with evacuations taking place progressively to the east, including Vivonne Bay, Stokes Bay and Parndana - where the CFS was forced to move its staging post.  

By 9.15pm Friday the entire island was under an emergency or watch and act warning, with the CFS advising residents and tourists to head to the safe havens of Kingscote and Penneshaw.    

A video posted on twitter by Bryce Touchstone as he fled Parndana showed the horror of the conditions, with reddened skies, howling winds and the CFS siren incessantly droning with people urging, ‘get the f*ck out of here mate’.  

Not all left though. A handful of CFS staff remained to protect the CFS station and remaining assets.  Fortunately a wind change saw only a ‘finger of fire’ approach Parndana in the end.    

David Harris, the Managing Director of KI Connect Ferry and an American River resident, was on the western side of the Island, helping a farmer move sheep early on Friday evening when he was overtaken by the fire.  

“The fire was, at about six o’clock, about 50 kilometres away but by half-past seven it had overtaken the house. 

“We stayed in the house until the roof was about to collapse; it was on fire.  Luckily it’s a brick house.   

“And there were too many embers and it was too hot to run for our lives and, just as we were about to run their workman came along and we jumped in their ute, drove through the fence and then drove out into some burnt ground, then all hid under some blankets for about an hour.

“Then at about 11 o’clock we rang the CFS and they sent a unit out to shepherd us back to Parndana, which had been abandoned.  Parndana was …. it looked like the Day of the Triffids.

I got back to American River and went to bed and thought, my God!  Did that just happen?” 

As daylight broke on Saturday the extent of the fire became slowly clearer.  A community meeting was quickly organised for 10.30am with Mayor Michael Pengilly opening the meeting. 

“This is the most devastating, shattering day in my lifetime, in my whole life on Kangaroo Island,” he told the crowd of locals and visitors who had crammed into the Kingscote Town Hall.  

“However, I could not be prouder of the local community and everybody who has assisted us.”

CFS Incident Controller Ian Tanner addressed the meeting after Mayor Pengilly, saying, “It was always going to be a long shot that we could hold it … with the forecasting weather we knew it was going to be a big ask.”       

Rumours circulatied through the early hours of the morning that lives had been lost and that was confirmed to those at the meeting. 

A minute’s silence was held after a SAPOL officer made the announcement.

Later in the day the names of the two men who had died were released.  Tour operator and aviator Dick Lang and his son Clayton Lang, a plastic surgeon at Adelaide’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital, died while returning from fighting the fires on a farm fire unit.  

Their bodies were discovered in and near their vehicle, near the centre of the island on the Playford Highway. 

Speaking on ABC Radio Adelaide on Sunday morning, after a day of assessment, Mayor Michael Pengilly urged the wider South Australian community to remember that while almost one-third of the Island had been fire affected, that two-thirds had not and that it would be important for the local economy for tourists to return once the immediate recovery action was finished.

A KI Mayoral Relief and Recovery Bushfire Fund has been established and donations can be made via bank deposit or transfer to BSB 105 094, Account number 035 680 540.  For international donations the Swift code for this account is SGBLAU2S.

The fire continues to burn at the western end of the Island, with a fire edge running between the south coast, west of Vivonne Bay, and the north coast, in the Stokes Bay area.  

It is also still actively burning in inaccessible terrain in the Flinders Chase National Park.  The CFS advises residents to remain alert as the weather warms up during the coming week.

The Emergency Relief Centre remains operational at the Kingscote Football Club, Centenary Avenue.  It is open until 10pm today, Sunday 5 January and then from 7am to 7pm daily.