Thread by @QuollTracks

I joined my local Fire Brigade when I was 12, I still have a certificate for completing “Junior Fire School” around here somewhere and there may be the “dogtag” I was later issued so I could be identified should I got myself roasted

(number 51 from memory), mind you I doubt an aluminium tag would last long in a fire but I was pretty proud to have it.

Back then equipment was pretty rudimentary, fifth hand ex army trucks, white overalls, elastic sided boots and a lovely range of torture implements

known as knapsacks, McLeod Tools, brush hooks, axes and beaters (with the exception of the beaters those hand tools are still in use, though given current water shortages beaters could be making a comeback). Our truck had seating for three

but had steps and grabrails for the slower members getting to the shed to hold onto while trundling off to the nearest smoke plume. One neighbouring brigade had an ex army six wheel drive Studebaker, no roof, a wooden bench seat in the back for the crew to sit on and a

length of railway track welded to the front to belt it’s way through the scrub, and it did, often parting the trees like Moses parting the waters with fire chasing behind them. All sorts of vehicles were put into action, early on we had an FE Holden ute with a tank

and waterpump as a back up unit, it was later traded in on a similar vintage short wheel base Landrover.

At the ripe old age of twelve the more senior members (including my father who’d been a member for a few years) were, quite wisely, a little reluctant to let me loose at the big fires so it was lots of hazard reductions and small fires till I grew a bit in age,

knowledge and skills. I learnt a lot from the hazard reduction burns picking up skills from the older blokes who’d learnt from even older blokes (there were very few women on the fireline back then, a situation I’m happy to say has changed markedly since then),

by my late teens early twenties I was as good as anyone on the drip torch, hot burns, cool burns, fast burns, slow burns were not a problem, apart from the torch work I did my fair share of hose dragging, knapsack carrying and McLeod tool use.

Equipment improved a lot over the ‘80’s, second and third hand rather than fifth and less scrounging or “acquiring” was needed to make sure we had the gear we needed.

We were a fairly busy brigade with dozens of call outs a year with me getting to as many as I could,

I thought I had it all figured. Till January 1994 came around.

Christmas 1993 and New Years 1994 was hot, hot and dry, temperatures in the mid to high 30’s, humidity very low, it was ripe for a fire and that didn’t take long.

I was on one of the first trucks out to the Port Stephens fire, as was common in the area it started along the side of Richardson Road probably by a discarded cigarette. The site had been hazard reduction burnt that winter with burnt undergrowth still obvious.

It didn’t take long to realise we needed help and lots of it. Being near the RAAF base the Military Police came over for a look and asked if we’d like some help from their mob. No discussion was needed the answer was “yes”.

The fire soon jumped the road and with erratic winds it kept growing in ever increasing circles over the next few days with crews going around the clock trying to stop it.

Being on my summer break from Uni I didn’t have to worry about losing work so would do an eight hour shift, go home for an eight hour break, try to get a couple of hours sleep then back out again. A lot of the rest of the brigade would go to work, do a shift at the fire,

try to get some sleep then back to work the following day.

It was tiring. About 4 days in we got the weather forecast for the following day, 40+ degree temperatures, high winds from the west and humidity in the low single figures.

I’m pretty sure there was a collective “oh shit” in the truck I was in at the time.

The following morning started off ok, lots of blacking out around the edges, locking it all away so it hopefully wouldn’t go anywhere

(and saw my first water drop from a helicopter onto a burning stump we were trying to put out). The edges were blacked out, the fire was contained, it all looked good.

Then the westerly hit, it didn’t take long to jump the containment lines. Our unit was parked on the road

doing asset protection (a house which at one stage had belonged to one of our deputies and our original fire shed) another unit was parked in the paddock next to us. The paddock had been grazed to dirt so was regarded as safe. We thought we could hold it,

then we heard the roar of the fire as it came through the bush straight for us, flame and sparks everywhere, we shielded ourselves as best we could and pointed the hoses in the direction of the fire. It went through us like a dose of salts.

Our crew leader, Mick, got a burn on the back of his neck which I put some water on to cool it down. We went and mopped up around the house we had been defending.

Of the truck in the paddock next to us we found it’s hose, they dropped it and got out of there,

the fire had raced across the apparently bare ground and there was nothing they could do but get out.

The fire had gotten past us and through some more well grazed paddocks behind us heading to more houses where the RAAF (who’d been with us from the start)

and other Bushfire Brigade units were stationed. The airport big crash trucks really are marvellous things, between them and ours no houses were lost.

The weather gradually improved and units from Victoria arrived to take some of the pressure off and after nine days

I could have a break.

Weather conditions on that day would now be classified as Catastrophic and despite the apparent bare ground and the previous hazard reductions it was only a change in the weather (and in some places running up against the Big Blue Firebreak)

that stopped the fire.

The work we did that week undoubtedly saved houses and lives and also taught a few of us some big lessons, while hazard reduction is good under normal fire conditions when it gets into the extremes as we have been seeing more and more of

unless we keep one hundred percent of the landscape blackened one hundred percent of the time (or close enough to it) the we will get big fires and they will be difficult to stop.

I’ve had a few years off in the “naughties”, my last call out with my original brigade on

the same day as Lady Diana Spencer came to a sad end in a Paris tunnel but have been an active member and now Senior Deputy of my local brigade for a little under a decade giving me around thirty years experience at chasing fires.

I’ve also worked in the ecological field for around 25 years, which I suppose makes me a professional greenie and out on the fire line that doesn’t matter.

Things have improved a lot since then, much better equipment, better training, better communications, better weather

forecasting, easier access to earthmoving equipment and aerial support. I love aerial support.

In 1994 I studied climatology as part of my degree and have kept an interest in it ever since as it has a big impact on both my paid and unpaid work.

I have no doubt our planet is warming and have no doubt it is human activities which are causing it, just as I have no doubt fire seasons are getting longer and more severe, which I think most donning the yellows will agree with.

What we are seeing now, the huge fires, the droughts and the inevitable floods to follow are not the future, they are now. The future is yet to arrive.