Remembering 2019 Black Summer Bushfires: Burnt koalas treated at Port Macquarie
Yahoo went behind the scenes with the incredible team at the Koala Hospital Port Macquarie.
They were working around the clock to help these koalas left with painful burns after the bushfires.
Video transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- OK, she's starting to skip beats.
- She's irregular as well.
- There you go.
- We anesthetize them. We clean their wounds. We cut off any dead skin and put on a burns cream to help them to heal, bandage them. And then every three days, we replace those bandages.
- Still dropping. She's down to 76.
- She's waking up.
- Hello.
- Good morning.
- Oh, and her nose.
- Hang on.
[SIDE CONVERSATIONS]
- Look at that.
- Wow.
- The whole-- the whole nose came off.
- Sorry, mate.
- I think we've just been caught. And nobody was prepared. And it's been so frightening, the ferocity of the fires and the damage that's been done. And we're trying to pick up the pieces and do what we can.
We normally would be feeding probably six to eight koalas here.
- How many do you have at the moment?
- Too many. 49, I think.
- We had 59.
- 59?
- Yeah, 59.
- About three weeks ago, we got the first burns victims come in. A member of the public brought in the first one, which was Paul, that he found sitting just in ash. Then, we started getting them about two a day. And we're continuing.
For me, personally, the toughest day was when we had to euthanize a little koala. Her name was Rue. Little Rue had come in to us badly burnt on her paws. But when we assessed her, we found that her hindquarters were actually third-degree burns. And to keep her alive would have been unfair.
To see a little koala just two or three years old that had her life ahead of her and didn't deserve to die, it was really quite tough to do that. So when he heals, he'll go into the joey yard because he's a little joey. He's an orphan. We don't know what happened to his mum. She's probably incinerated.
- What's been the best day since this catastrophe happened?
- The best day? The best day? What's been the best day? Oh, I've to think about that, Michael. Every day has just morphed into the other.
So this is where we wash all the baskets. This is our leaf room. So these are our rehabilitation yards. And this is our intensive care room. This is Peter and Paul. Paul was the very first koala we get in. That's Paul over there and Peter.
- So sweet.
- So they're doing really well, OK. They both have had quite severe bandaging. And you can see we're at the stage of taking off. So when they get a little bit more energy and they start climbing, then they'll progressed outside. And that will [INAUDIBLE].
- That'll be a good day.
- Yeah.
- To prevent this happening again, they need to do backburning. They need to do it guided by forestry and national parks. People have just got to listen. Authorities have got to listen and take notice and really step up and start to do something.
