The summers in Australia where I grew up were hot, often
reaching into the 40’sC (over 100 F for those in the US) on a regular
basis. I always laugh when someone ask
me if it was clear heat? Like that
makes it any cooler…always infinitely better than humidity I suppose (certainly
more bearable than living in Toronto in the summer) at least in Australia it
was pretty consistent. Summers were long
and hot, but as we got older there was an ominous coming of age responsibility
that we all had to accept.
Growing up in rural Australia we each had an unwritten
obligation that as soon as we reached the ripe old age of 16 you became a
volunteer fire fighter. In those days,
yes the mid 70’s (no sniggering now!) the rules were fairly lenient and the
training was pretty sparse although we did congregate at the local fire station
every Sunday morning for an hour or two to practice coupling and uncoupling the
canvas hoses, hooking them up to the pump on the fire truck and generally
hanging out with the other 16 year olds.
To say it was relaxed would be somewhat of an understatement.
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| Bushfire - Bunyip State Forest Victoria - Australia - 2009 |
Well, this was all well and good until the actual fire siren
started to wail that Saturday afternoon, now normally I would have been working
on the farm but as luck would have it, I had taken the day off as the harvest
was done, I was two weeks from getting my acceptance letter to University -
February 12th - just another hot, dry and dusty Saturday in the "bush".
It’s strange, when I first heard that siren I had to stop
and listen more carefully – was that the fire siren? We lived about a mile or so up the valley from
the fire station, the distance between was heavily treed and so depending on
the way the wind was blowing it was sometimes hard to hear. That afternoon was accompanied by a strong
and gusty, hot north wind. Not just any
windy day, the wind was really howling that afternoon and the countryside was
tinder dry from a prolonged drought – the perfect recipe for a bushfire.
A mix of excitement and danger made my senses come alive as
I jumped on my bike and headed off at full pace down the hill toward the old
government bridge and the fire station.
In fact, like every small town in Australia not only me but also pretty
much every able-bodied man over the age of 16 would generally respond and
congregate at the station before setting off toward the fire. Not a lot of planning really – “whose on the
truck?” “Whose got the knapsacks?” (the
old metal ones with canvas straps no less – seriously they felt like a 50 kgs
when filled with water) “What trucks
are available?” “How many guys do we
have?”
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| Fire truck - Australia - circa 1960's |
The captain had gotten the call that the fire was North West
of town about 10 miles out but moving fast in the tinder dry paddocks. So the convoy set off, I was fortunate enough
to be on the back of the tanker as we headed out of town toward the billowing
gray-black clouds looming in the distance.
It was an old truck (1960’s vintage), so it top speed fully loaded with
water was not much more than 50 mph, and it laboured as we got on the main
road.
Lots of excitement on the back of the truck as we began to
close in on the fire front, it was moving at a menacing speed toward us taking
everything in its path – hayshed’s, livestock (sheep mostly but a few
cattle). I’d never experienced anything
like it, the heat was tremendous almost like a blast furnace in a steel mill it
was so hot. The smoke was thick and
choking as the ash, sparks and debris began to fall all around us setting off
smaller fires ahead of the major front, linking up with the wind gusts. The wind was fanning the huge flames as they leapt
and danced high into the air (sometimes even as high as 30+ feet). Fires like this were unpredictable at the best
of times, but in this gusty wind they were downright dangerous.
One of the guys on the back was trying to jump off the truck
to open a gate so that we wouldn’t be caught on the road and incinerated, but
the truck was moving too fast and he face planted onto the road with a
sickening thud, gouging large chunks of flesh and skin from his face and
virtually skinning his hands to the bone, he lay in a pool of blood on the road
as the truck tried to stop. A couple of
other guys jumped off to go help him, but the fire in all its fury was baring
down on us at an unbelievable speed.
Fortunately there were a large set of bolt cutters under the front seat
of the fire truck (thank god someone had the foresight to put a set there), and
we quickly cut the fence and roared off across the paddock at top speed to
evade the closing front. Luckily we
were able to out run the front as we sped across the face of the fire making it to the edge just in time
as it barreled over the farmland taking everything in its path. The fire seemed to accelerate as it jumped and cut the roads on its way forward continually pushed ever faster by the gusty, hot north wind.
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| Bushfires - Incredibly dangerous and powerful |
Now that we were behind the fire we could follow it and
attack it from the rear, but keeping up was going to be difficult as the fire
made its way toward heavily treed state park and with limited water we
continually had to find dams to refill.
Even with a heavy duty pump on the truck it still took 10 – 12 minutes
to fill the tanker, and clearly time was of the essence in a situation like
this. Fire trucks began to appear out
of the smoke and haze from other nearby towns, so we weren’t alone now but the
fire was growing exponentially and headed directly toward a town of about 3000
people some 15 miles distant through a pine forest.
It was about this time that three of us were reassigned to
moping up duties along the perimeter of the fire and to ensure other fires
didn’t restart. This was the least
dangerous place to be – we each were allocated a pump action knapsack and left
to make sure that there were no flare-ups in this sector.
Fairly quickly the fire and the trucks moved on to continue
the fight and we were left alone in a blacken landscape. As we walked the length of the sector the devastation
was complete – 100’s of sheep had been badly burned and were either dead or
dying a very painful death. There
blackened coats and blistered faces said it all – such a horrible sight and
their mournful cries haunted me for sometime afterwards.
About 9:30 that night the wind changed and the fire flipped and
back-burned onto itself, but not before four people died and over 400 houses
and out buildings were lost. Just
another day in the country…
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| The Kinglake fires devastation Victoria - Australia - 2009 |
I’d like to tell you that I was incredibly brave that day
and did something exceptionally heroic, but to be honest I was frightened by
the size, magnitude and ferocity of the fire.
It made me wary and respectful of the fury and unpredictability of the
bushfire. This was the real deal (life
and death so to speak) and each subsequent time I rode the truck to a fire I
had to steel myself against my fears and hold it inside so that no one else
could see that I was scared shitless, but I’m guessing I wasn’t the only one.
Brave faces one and all…
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