Opinion
Updated
I've been a firefighter for 20 years and these fires have delivered the worst conditions I've ever faced.
We
have been responding to bushfires since the end of September and it is
fair to say that as we move further into the campaign fatigue is setting
in.But every morning you get that bit of adrenaline back again. It's a new day.
The campaign started for me up the far north coast of NSW and I was deployed to Casino, twice to Port Macquarie, and also Tamworth. I've been to Ulladulla on the south coast twice, as well as several local Sydney fires. Then two-week-long deployments to the Blue Mountains.
My role is to lead a strike team of four fire trucks and about 15 firefighters.
I was most recently based out of Lithgow in the Blue Mountains, working around Katoomba, Bilpin, Clarence Town, Dargan and the Bells Line of Road area.
The conditions we faced were the most trying I've ever experienced.
I needed to prepare the crew for what was ahead, what the day would hold for us, without going over the top. You've got to keep calm. I'm not trying to scare them.
But up in the Blue Mountains last week there was no easy way to tell the crews that some of the conditions that we were going to face that week were probably as bad as it gets. The conditions we experienced simply couldn't have been any worse.
The adrenaline kicks in
A typical day starts very early, around 6:30 in the morning. We eat breakfast together and I receive a briefing at the fire control centre. My team meets at a staging location and I explain our objectives for the day.You feel a little fresher each morning after a decent sleep and something to eat. Then a little adrenaline kicks in and probably a little fear mixed in, as well.
A lot of our work is community engagement and giving clear and consistent safety messages. We need to know if residents have a bushfire plan, what is the plan if they need to be evacuated, is their house prepared or is their plan to leave.
On Thursday morning last week weather conditions were classed as catastrophic. The temperature was estimated to reach into the low 40s. Humidity was very, very low, under 10 per cent, and we had strong westerly winds.
My crew is a mix of full-time and part-time firefighters. They are really professional in that they know what protective equipment to wear and they know how to operate as firefighters.
But when you face that situation of a fire front hitting a township where people are still living it puts a lot of pressure on the crews and particularly myself. I had to constantly check the way I communicated to make sure I wasn't too overwhelmed.
We waited, then it hit
The air that Thursday wasn't too bad at first because it was blowing away from us.
We got a call in the afternoon to say the fire had picked up.
Fire activity increased a lot right across the fire ground on top of the mountain, and as we approached in the truck you could see a plume of black smoke coming out from behind the ridge. It was huge.
When we pulled up, the fire front had reached the rear of properties in Clarence Town. We were faced with an intense and active fire front near Bells Line of Road.
As we approached we could hear it.
Fire is loud, it makes a roar like a jet and is so powerful it generates its own wind.Then all of a sudden the wind stopped and the fire seemed to take a pause. The black smoke wasn't pushing out so intensely.
We waited. Then, it hit.
From day to night
The wind picked up and all around us went black. It was like night time.There were a number of occasions on Saturday when the fire came over the top of us like that. It goes from daytime to nearly night time. It becomes very, very dark, very, very quickly.
The wind changed and was blowing in our direction and so the plumes of black smoke block out the light.
The darkness is a warning that the flames are just behind.
And so from that very black and dark atmosphere, the next thing you see are the flames. That day we faced flames up to 30 metres high. That was the sign that the fire front had burst out of the trees and was impacting the township.
The air was sucked into the fire and the wind increased, so it felt like we had been hit by a thunderstorm.It was an intense experience for the crew and for myself, to be honest.
Because there is so much smoke getting pushed through in all directions visibility remains quite low.
There are a lot of embers being blown in your direction and that adds another element of risk.
It's scary in a way and particularly for me, as I had a large crew of firefighters to look after. I knew where they were but I couldn't see them.
I had instructed our teams to wear their breathing apparatus. It was about understanding that they were in a safe refuge while the fire front moved over us and being confident that their training would kick in.
'You didn't know which way to turn'
We have full-time and volunteer firefighters. It was a very difficult situation for the team to face.We ended up with a range of spot fires around the place and it was almost like you didn't know which way to turn. You didn't know which house to protect, which fire to put out first.
The teams got to work very, very quickly.
Many houses still had local residents in their homes. It was too late for them to leave so we had to protect them as well finding places in their houses for them to shelter.
That's where our training comes in. It was important to pause and remind ourselves not to become overwhelmed.
My job was to instruct the crews where to set up.
To be honest the conditions were so bad that we couldn't protect the houses, we couldn't do much firefighting. About 50 homes were lost that day.It's hard to explain to communities that our number one priority is your life when they are quite concerned about their houses.
I understand that but when your access routes in and out are blocked, and this is what we were faced with, then we had no choice but to stay in place and protect them until the situation calmed down.
Our job was to protect the lives of the people who were there, and our own to be honest.
'We were overrun'
We had done reconnaissance in the days before the fire hit. We had door knocked and spoken to local residents. We knew a lot of them wanted to stay even though we advised them to leave if they could.
We knew what properties were defendable and which were not, because we had that situational awareness.
There were a number of times our crews got over-run and we had to find safe refuge and wait for the fire front to pass before going back in.
I was aware of where my team was, but residents were free to move around and many did.
I was very concerned that we were potentially going to lose a number of lives up there on Saturday.Thankfully that didn't happen.
'We were expecting it'
It is unusual to have the sort of consistent bad fire conditions, drying conditions, that we are facing, and it feels like every week is becoming drier and drier.To have fires with this intensity that move so quickly impacting the urban interface is a really hard thing to be confronted with and try to deal with.
We have been expecting a summer bushfire season like this for the past five or six years. It's been heading down this path for a while now.
It used to be that approximately every 10 years we would get one bad bushfire season.
I think this will go down as the worst bushfire season in history.
For it to be as intense and prolonged as it is, and there doesn't seem to be any easing of conditions, is very difficult.
When will firefighters get a break? When will the local community get a break? It just keeps on coming.The communities we've worked with in the Blue Mountains are faced with fire from one direction one week and from the other direction the next. I really feel for them. I'm not sure that they're going to be able to totally relax during this holiday period.
For me, it's surreal to be sitting at home today, but two days ago I was in a life-or-death situation.
'It is hard to deal with'
I find it quite a hard situation to deal with sometimes. When you are in that moment and the adrenaline is going is one thing, but then when your shift finishes and you say OK it's time to go back to the family it can be hard to make the switch.It doesn't feel like Christmas season this year. I haven't had that space to take all that in yet.
I know that's the lot of an emergency services person, but your family feels it the most. You are away and they know you are in situations that are dangerous. The impact is quite large.
Particularly over the time I've always been a bit cautious about how much information I share.
You don't want to disclose all the information because you don't want to scare them.
But over the past week we have had a number of conversations to say that the fire weather is going to be as bad as it gets, and I was quite concerned.But at the same time, saying I'm safe.
I knew my experience and training had prepared me well. So it was a matter of staying calm — even though the intensity went right up and we were a bit overwhelmed.
'What keeps me going'
We all signed up to make a difference. Over the past couple of weeks when I've been working in these strike teams, we've been reflecting on the fact that yes, we want to help people and do our job, but when that's happening it also means community members are having one of the worst days of their lives.So a quiet day for us is a good day.
I am back in the field tomorrow. I don't know where I'll be deployed. I wonder when it is going to slow down.We tend to say "oh, this might be it", but it seems to be coming back for another round, and another round after that.
We are out protecting these communities, and at the end of the day you just do what needs to be done.
Acting Inspector Brendan Hurley is a humanitarian team leader with Fire and Rescue NSW.
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