The Age

“You wake up and are you right for about two minutes, and then that overwhelming anxiety comes into your body and you’re just sick. Sick to your stomach.”

David Sudholz, Natimuk CFA captain and Michael’s brother, rushed out to fight the fire when it was spotted at 12.43pm, and was astounded by its speed.

“One minute [there] was nothing, and next minute we’re in the smoke, and then there was fires everywhere around us, like all the grass was suddenly catching fire,” he said.

Updated January 13, 2026 — 2:25pm,first published January 13, 2026 — 10:42am

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

Save this article for later

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime.

More than 160 homes have been burnt down in the devastating fires across the state, as the full extent of last week’s catastrophic bushfires remains to be realised.

Key posts

Latest posts

Pinned post from 9.27pm on Dec 26, 2024

Today’s coverage at a glance

That’s where we will leave today’s live coverage of the bushfires. We will have continued extensive coverage of the fires in the coming days.

To conclude, here’s a look back at what we have covered today:

The emergency warnings for the Grampians National Park fire have been coming in rapidly in recent hours, especially since winds changed from a north-westerly to westerly direction.