still healing from the bushfire and attended the memorial with mixed feelings. Among people who had been in the fire who spoke with reporters from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was Lorna Harding, aged 91, who was among those who took refuge in the sea off North Shields. She had watched as the house she was born in and had lived in all her life was destroyed. "It just came so fast. Before we knew where we were, we were covered in smoke. But we had the sea to go into so we were right." Coronial inquest Between 5 October 2005 and 8 May 2007, South Australia's Deputy State Coroner conducted a coronial inquest that examined a large range of factors connected with the bushfire, taking evidence from 140 witnesses. In his 703-page report released on 18 December 2007, the coroner made 34 wide-ranging recommendations for minimising future bushfire risks, to which the South Australian Government subsequently responded. The report also listed other investigations into the bushfire. An Australian Broadcasting Corporation television program broadcast on the day on which the coronial findings were released stated that "The report details a series of miscalculations and miscommunications among firefighters on the ground and their CFS senior officers in Adelaide that resulted in resources being denied until the fire was out of control. According to the Deputy Coroner, miscommunications between senior CFS officers left them unaware how seriously the fire was growing. As a result, critical decisions were delayed. ... There are those critical of the coronial process, arguing it does little to prevent a future bushfire ... civil action is likely to be launched immediately against the CFS and the owner of the vehicle which started the fire by 70 litigants, mostly farmers." A great deal of evidence was given to the inquest about the crucial question of the firefighting and fire suppression strategies that could and/or should have been adopted on the Monday night and the Tuesday morning, but were not. The main focus of activity overnight, attracting much of the available resources, had been on an area of sugar gum trees. The coroner considered it was an unwanted distraction to CFS appliances that might otherwise have been available to work elsewhere. Only a very limited amount of suppression work was undertaken on the eastern or western sides of a paperbark swamp, or in the swamp, where there was significant fire activity.