The night before...

Friday was hot and dry. Nothing unusual there. I was off work until Monday and had little to do – at the time, I was splitting my time between two towns, my home and this second town in which I still reside…and was a joint member with both urban fire brigades.

Late that afternoon, I received a simple administrative pager message. Requesting all crew leaders and senior firefighters to attend the fire station that evening for a “crisis awareness meeting”.

I had been…blissfully ignorant. I guess in a way I wanted to stop thinking about it and face the facts as they arose. I was already losing sleep over concern of fire or losing my rented flat here– which was in an area under massive threat (with a national park literally two streets back from me) and in a city ranked as one of the highest risk in Victoria – which as a state is rated as highest bushfire risk in the world. My city prides itself on being a “City in the Forest” and I had an ominous feeling that was not something to be happy about in February, 2009…

So I hadn’t even looked at the weather for the next day. I just didn’t want to know anymore. I guess I was fatalistic – if it was going to happen, it was going to happen – and no amount of stress was going to stop it. I’d already been to several refresher training sessions in Nov/Dec in preparation for a horror fire season – and these sessions reinforced my wildfire training and tactics – and, as a dark reminder, went through procedures for survival in a “burn over” – e.g. when the fire truck is trapped and we stop fighting the fire and focus solely on survival. Later on, how glad I was that I refreshed it.

Survival training in fire is something that is, of course, essential but we all secretly hope to never use it. For wildfire, it was basically take cover on the floor of the truck/cab, cover yourself with a blanket and keep your face and body low. If possible, exposing one hand to direct a fog-spray over the top of you but you had to be careful with that that you didn’t risk drenching yourself and boiling. Literally. For structural fire, survival is a matter of taking cover and activating an alarm on your breathing apparatus. Both essential but not things I’d had to use before, thankfully.

Refreshing it though reminded me of the cold, hard facts – it was a serious risk.

I went along to the meeting. A huge role in a modern fire brigade, especially the major urban brigades like mine, is prevention and community awareness so I was reasonably light spirited, assuming it was just an update on the situation in Gippsland, mayyyybe a request for crews, and a general overview.

That attitude quickly changed and any smile vanished from my face when I met the region’s operations officer when I stepped into the meeting room and saw the look of genuine concern on his face. My station officer was poker faced – and I knew that wasn’t good. There was an atmosphere of foreboding in the room before the meeting had even started…no one spoke, even as the others arrived.

I sat silently wondering why. A nasty fear gripped me – the fire situation in Gippsland was that of heavy, dense forest and hills – the worst-case environment in which to fight a fire. Heavy fuel load, high temperatures, great entrapment risk – my mind instantly thought of the Geelong West fire crew of four men who were killed in the Linton bushfires in 1998. Surely, that hadn’t happened again…had it? Or was this about something else. Either way, the regional command knew something bad.

I’ll never, to the day, I die, forget the tone of our regional officer as he stood up and started with the following simple statement in a voice one would expect to hear at a funeral.

“Gentlemen…tomorrow, we as a service, a brigade, a city…a state – will be facing our greatest fears and challenges. Tommorrow, February 7th – has been predicted this afternoon to be the WORST fire conditions EVER on record in the state of Victoria. If…*pause*…when…it happens…we will be in for a firefight of the likes NONE of us have ever seen – including me, and I’ve been in the service for over 35 years.”

The room was dead silent. Like a tomb…as everyone processed this shocking thought. The Ops Officer gave us the chance to think about it for a good minute, before moving on.

“If…*again, a pause*…when it happens…I need you men to remember the following. Lives will be in danger. Including yours. Lives before property. Take no stupid risks. Do your best to save anyone trapped – but…and I don’t like to say this…we need to band together and look after ourselves first. It may well be this means there are people we cannot save. It certainly means properties will be lost. But we are not to leave anyone behind or risk ourselves. Mark my words…rest well tonight and be nice to your loved ones. When tomorrow comes, we will see. We can only hope it will pass without event but…” – and he stopped. Letting that thought sink in – knowing full well that all of us would be processing that comment – the BUT. Always a but…

Thing is, I thought….there are too many risk factors. Power lines can fall. Idiots throw cigarettes out windows. A car stops on grass and it’s exhaust starts a fire. Stupid, stupid children playing with matches. A lightning strike. People who ignore total fire bans. Or, worse, those who forget that total fire ban means NO machinery that can start a fire…(it was later shown, an angle grinder started the Murrindindi complex fires – which killed the vast majority of the 173).

He went on…

“Those familiar with the fire danger index, FDI, will know, that a theoretical worst-case scenario will be reached at a ranking of 100. The scale is supposed to be 0 – no fire risk, through to 100 – and comprised, as you know, of fuel load, heat, wind, all risks combined. The fact it is a weekend and people are out and about more – at home – doesn’t help. But…tomorrow has been rated differently. Unofficially, tomorrow, Saturday, has a fire index rating of over 800.”

He let that sink in.

Eight hundred! Eight fucking times the theoretical maximum?! How was it even possible? But I knew…the absolute extremes had reached a point of climax. A perfect brew for the perfect storm.

“Tommorrow, we are forecast to have a maximum temperature that will most likely beat all previous state records. It could be as high as 50 degrees in some places. As you all know, we have not back burned for some time – and the months in the lead up to this summer have been very wet. There is a massive fuel load of grass and bushland that is now tinder-dry and needs just a spark and it will not just burn but explode into flames…the winds, however…*long, pained pause*…we are forecast to receive winds over 100km/h. Hot, strong north winds that will fan a blaze out of control in MINUTES.”

I knew all too well that the wind was the killer. The heat was a focus of the public but it didn’t matter – the fuel was dry, and all the heat did was contribute to the dryness and make the firefighting terrible for us. But a fire will not spread without wind – and a wind of gale force on such a hot day was, frankly, catastrophic.

I stood. “If I may ask…how much of this do you want us to tell the crews? I have a number of new starters with little experience who are under my care at the moment – do I tell them and terrify them, or leave them oblivious? And…I hate to ask this, but what will be our strategy? A fire starts – what the fuck will we do, if you’ll excuse my French?”

My station officer spoke to me next – and to the rest, who were nodding in agreement. His statement was simple. “Tell your guys the facts. We’re paging them now to come in next for a meeting. We have to be honest – they need to know the risk is just…phenomenal. As for strategies…asset protection. If a fire starts, it is going to be unstoppable. We cannot fight it with ground resources – the aerial bombers will come in and attack the front, us on the ground will have to split our time three ways – prioritising community safety, of course, then asset protection – get up to the buildings and houses under attack and try to protect them. If we have to, we’ll pull back and protect groups of evacuees – and if we get word of entrapments, we’ll move straight to them. Last of all, we’ll try to get in, attack a fire where we can and pull out. But I suspect that will be futile”.

A single nod of solemn agreement from the Ops Officer…

I felt physically sick. This was just so much to try to take in. If it started, and odds were, it would, it wouldn’t be a single incident, it would be a massive scale of emergency that I’d never dealt with – and as much as I stuck my hand up voluntarily to fight fires, I could NOT walk away. It never even occurred to me. No, I resolved, I’d just find the courage I needed as I went.

We moved onwards. Never have I paid such close attention in a meeting in my life, might I add…!

But next was a video address from Russell Rees, the CFA Chief Fire Officer at the time. I’ll refer back to CFO Rees at a later date, for the record, I personally believe he was unfairly crucified by the state, media and government – and to this day I forever maintain my faith in him.

The “Chief” addressed us all in a similar way to our Ops Officer had. Outlining the threat and stressing the need for firefighter safety, drink plenty of water and object if something seems unsafe. I was listening but my head was spinning – I couldn’t focus properly. His address was brief and sharp, and we then moved on to taped transcripts of the evening news – which was, I felt, not firm enough. The risk was stated as “extreme” and people were urged to refrain from all travel for the day, review their fire plans and keep alert for signs of fire or smoke. I was frustrated though – I felt they downplayed it, perhaps to avoid public concern, but…facts are fucking facts. Frankly, fuck public sensitivity – I’d rather they be on edge. Also frustrating was the focus on “keep an eye on the CFA website, radio news and television for updates” – because I thought, soon as the whole fucking state logs onto a website, it will jam, whilst radio and TV are fine, but…delayed, by the time they get information “officially” and can broadcast it. On a day like Saturday was forecast to be…that delay was just too much. I shook my head thinking “why not tell the public, stick your head outside your door once in a while and, you know…LOOK for yourselves? Look for smoke. Smell for smoke. Look for a dark plume! Jesus Christ…it’s not rocket science. I must admit, it was infuriating – that people are so reliant on someone else to think for them, they couldn’t take the initiative and LOOK. I mean, it was a total fire ban anyhow so there could be no excuse for confusion as there will be no burn offs or other fires allowed.

I maintain this point to this day…think for yourself. You live in high risk – get off your fat arse, look out the window and observe your surrounds. Don’t wait for someone to tell you.

Also was the warning to contact police immediately for suspect activity…something I didn’t want to think about. That someone – people – could be low enough to even consider arson on a day like that.

How naïve was I…? Very, looking back. Very naïve to think people would think for themselves, and very naïve that some sick, sick animals would refrain from their disgusting fire lighting actions. On an aside, I think arsonists should be put to death for the good of the nation – there is NO excuse, mental illness, low IQ, no matter what. They are the most destructive criminals…

The remainder of the evening passed in a bit of a blur. We addressed our own crews after this meeting…to a mixture of concern and some, I hate to say, misguided macho-ism (those who reacted with anything resembling a gung-ho attitude were taken aside by myself and other crew leaders to be counseled into realising this was not a movie script – and if they weren’t going to see the importance, they’d be kept behind to run radios and fuel incoming trucks. Most saw the sense.)

We checked the trucks again…focusing on protection mainly…and I went home to pack my deployment bag of spare fire gear and clothes, water, burns cream and anything I thought I might need for a sustained, long deployment away from home – then went to bed to try to get some sleep.

A very restless, uncomfortable night ensued – and not because of the heat outside…