Victorian Bushfire Disaster - my experiences
Sorry for the delay in touching base (ok so it's been MONTHS) but, as you can imagine, much of my time is spent on firefighter forums and email lists, fire websites (checking incident reports, maps, weather observations and now starting to debate the causes of such high fatalities).
I admit I'm not a blogger but so many people have been contacting me to check that I'm ok and asking me about my experiences of the past few days (and how I'm coping) with our devastating wildfire disaster, especially being a firefighter in Victoria.
Because of my home situation, caring for my Dad with Alzheimers fulltime, I can't respond to any fires as I can't leave him alone. That ends up giving me a lot of stress at times like this where I just want to be out helping and using my trained skills in a useful way.
I started off getting very stressed as Saturday approached, with my knowledge of wildfire behaviour & suppression (I teach it at a TAFE college and to our firefighters as a senior instructor) & as an experienced Wildfire Crew Leader, I knew that Saturday would be the worst day of my firefighting life (over half my life now eeeep!). I felt sick in the gut as the day started ... I knew it would be bad and just wanted to be out there at the firestation, ready to go. I went to a briefing at the station and we all talked about the potential and emphasised to our newer members the liklihood of the extent of the day and how to prepare themselves. As the day progressed I saw the deteriorating conditions and, as I was watching all the websites and listening to the fire scanner go crazy, listened as fires erupted all around the region and state and appliances were sent in every direction.
One of the appliances from my station (a Quickfill unit) was sent to the Bunyip fires as part of a strike team (group of five takers and a strike team leader's vehicle) and were immediately deployed into asset protection as the township was under heavy ember attack. Despite not carrying any water (our vehicle is a massive pump designed to fill fire appliances rapidly if we find a good water supply) the guys set the vehicle up on a pool and then worked really hard and managed to save the caravan park with equipment not really designed for firefighting.
Mid afternoon the fire scanner was going mad - amost every fire truck in the area had been deployed and more active fires started up in the NarreWarren area to which our tanker (a fire truck carrying 3000L of water) was called. This area was much more residential with lots of houses abutting a large paddock of grass. Our tanker went to a street on the east edge of fire to find three houses fully involved and numerous others beginning to burn or threatened. They were the only firetruck on scene for a long time as there were no other appliances available. They managed to save a number of houses and were assisted by, what they describe as, "hundreds" of residents with buckets!
The tanker and quickfill finally returned to our station the following morning and many members of the brigade turned up to help wash them down, clean all the dirty hoses (lots), sort and restow all the gear and supplies. I was at least able to help with this as, had Dad needed me, I could have immediately gone home (he has a medical alert he can press the button on and the alert company can then call me letting me know he needs assistance). Dad and I also went to the firestation the following night for a BBQ and debrief. Normally I coordinate training on a Monday night however, after such a traumatic experience, I felt it was best for people to share their experiences and for the rest of us to understand how hard it had been for them.
The last few days I have been glued to the news reports and websites and gradually getting more frustrated as the death toll increases and feeling useless as I've wanted to be doing something I've been trained for. Some of my friends became aware of this and one (Evil Sarah YAY) has offered her mother to come and stay with Dad so I can respond (whoot Dad-sitting)! Just after she made the offer yesterday our brigade was asked to provide a crew to go up to the Kinglake complex of fires for night shift tonight. I'll be heading up to the staging point for the crews at Cranbourne fire station at 4pm where we'll be briefed, fed and then taken by bus up to the fires. We'll be on the appliances all night then fed, debriefed and sent home probably mid to late morning. So a light shift compared to what many are experiencing. Night shift, due to the cooler conditions and lesser fire behaviour, is where you work really hard with backburning and blacking out, trying to consolidate the containment lines to prevent the fire moving any further when the conditions heat up again this weekend.
I'll let you all know how it goes when I return.
Love to all
JJ
I admit I'm not a blogger but so many people have been contacting me to check that I'm ok and asking me about my experiences of the past few days (and how I'm coping) with our devastating wildfire disaster, especially being a firefighter in Victoria.
Because of my home situation, caring for my Dad with Alzheimers fulltime, I can't respond to any fires as I can't leave him alone. That ends up giving me a lot of stress at times like this where I just want to be out helping and using my trained skills in a useful way.
I started off getting very stressed as Saturday approached, with my knowledge of wildfire behaviour & suppression (I teach it at a TAFE college and to our firefighters as a senior instructor) & as an experienced Wildfire Crew Leader, I knew that Saturday would be the worst day of my firefighting life (over half my life now eeeep!). I felt sick in the gut as the day started ... I knew it would be bad and just wanted to be out there at the firestation, ready to go. I went to a briefing at the station and we all talked about the potential and emphasised to our newer members the liklihood of the extent of the day and how to prepare themselves. As the day progressed I saw the deteriorating conditions and, as I was watching all the websites and listening to the fire scanner go crazy, listened as fires erupted all around the region and state and appliances were sent in every direction.
One of the appliances from my station (a Quickfill unit) was sent to the Bunyip fires as part of a strike team (group of five takers and a strike team leader's vehicle) and were immediately deployed into asset protection as the township was under heavy ember attack. Despite not carrying any water (our vehicle is a massive pump designed to fill fire appliances rapidly if we find a good water supply) the guys set the vehicle up on a pool and then worked really hard and managed to save the caravan park with equipment not really designed for firefighting.
Mid afternoon the fire scanner was going mad - amost every fire truck in the area had been deployed and more active fires started up in the NarreWarren area to which our tanker (a fire truck carrying 3000L of water) was called. This area was much more residential with lots of houses abutting a large paddock of grass. Our tanker went to a street on the east edge of fire to find three houses fully involved and numerous others beginning to burn or threatened. They were the only firetruck on scene for a long time as there were no other appliances available. They managed to save a number of houses and were assisted by, what they describe as, "hundreds" of residents with buckets!
The tanker and quickfill finally returned to our station the following morning and many members of the brigade turned up to help wash them down, clean all the dirty hoses (lots), sort and restow all the gear and supplies. I was at least able to help with this as, had Dad needed me, I could have immediately gone home (he has a medical alert he can press the button on and the alert company can then call me letting me know he needs assistance). Dad and I also went to the firestation the following night for a BBQ and debrief. Normally I coordinate training on a Monday night however, after such a traumatic experience, I felt it was best for people to share their experiences and for the rest of us to understand how hard it had been for them.
The last few days I have been glued to the news reports and websites and gradually getting more frustrated as the death toll increases and feeling useless as I've wanted to be doing something I've been trained for. Some of my friends became aware of this and one (Evil Sarah YAY) has offered her mother to come and stay with Dad so I can respond (whoot Dad-sitting)! Just after she made the offer yesterday our brigade was asked to provide a crew to go up to the Kinglake complex of fires for night shift tonight. I'll be heading up to the staging point for the crews at Cranbourne fire station at 4pm where we'll be briefed, fed and then taken by bus up to the fires. We'll be on the appliances all night then fed, debriefed and sent home probably mid to late morning. So a light shift compared to what many are experiencing. Night shift, due to the cooler conditions and lesser fire behaviour, is where you work really hard with backburning and blacking out, trying to consolidate the containment lines to prevent the fire moving any further when the conditions heat up again this weekend.
I'll let you all know how it goes when I return.
Love to all
JJ