ringing around various contacts in the community to alert them.
Fitzgerald makes an arrangement with the CFA: he’ll look after the section of land along the National Park Road. He has a crew of eight firefighters in two ‘slip-on’ utes. After leaving the CFA, they race down National Park Road, knocking on doors, stopping cars, warning as many residents as they can contact. Then they take up a defensive position along the crest of the gorge near Masons Falls. Fitzgerald gathers his crew together, explains that they’re about to undertake the most dangerous operation a fire crew can perform and gives them the option of leaving, returning to their homes. None do.
Whatever steps he and his crew take will be dwarfed by the magnitude of the blaze, he knows that. But they have to do something. At best, his hope is that they will be able to make some sort of attack on the fire as it crests the escarpment, take the sting out of it. There are some hundred houses behind them: if he can reduce the fire’s intensity, it will increase the occupants’ chances of survival.
Fitzgerald has earlier received a call from Steve Grant, his boss in Broadford, warning him that the incident control centres are barely functioning and that he and his crew are on their own.
Fitzgerald and Redmond have gone up to Sugarloaf to get a better view. They are there when the wind change comes through. Burning debris begins to bombard the slopes directly below them.
A piece of burnt bracken lands at their feet. Aaron stomps on it almost casually, then thinks, Hell, if the embers are coming this way… Fitzgerald has the same thought. The clifftop lookout is no place to be; the fire will be on them in minutes. They hurry back and join their colleagues.
Fitzgerald has already discussed the options with his 2IC, Sean Hunter. The first is to beat a retreat; the crest of the escarpment will be where the fire is at its most lethal. The other, infinitely more dangerous, option is to attempt a backburn.
The creation of a backburn in the face of a firestorm is about as delicate and dangerous a task as a firefighter can attempt. The theory is that you burn a line just before the main front, timing it so that your fire will catch the convective wind and be drawn into the advancing flames. As the main fire hits the burnt area, it should lose some of its intensity. The timing is critical: too early and your own fire could come back at you, too late and the inferno will overrun you.
Fitzgerald knows that the operation has only a slight chance of success, but feels he has to do it. If it works, it could reduce the impact of the fire upon the houses on National Park Road, saving lives and property.
He positions his team in a line of maybe seventy metres, waits for the slim window of opportunity. The tension is electric: a tiny crew with not more than a couple of utes for protection strung out across a ridgeline waiting for an inferno to fall upon them.
Aaron is struck by the smell in the air: a pungent mixture of smoke and eucalyptus vapour. There is a period of stillness. The fire is approaching, sucking the air in with such force that it cancels out the ambient wind.
Fitzgerald studies the bush intently, searching for the signs, and suddenly sees what he’s been hoping for. A stirring of leaves on the ground, a tug of wind from behind their line. It gathers strength, as he’d hoped it would: the speed of the convective wind increases with its proximity to the fire.
The crew members glance at each other, anxious, waiting for the signal. ‘Wouldn’t say I felt afraid,’ says Aaron. ‘Just focused. We had a lot of faith in Tony.’
He is amazed to realise that he is standing in two different layers of wind simultaneously. The air around his upper body is perfectly still, but the debris on the ground is being sucked towards the unseen fire, leaves and embers tumbling in the opposite direction to the way they were blowing shortly before. The leaves
Fitzgerald makes an arrangement with the CFA: he’ll look after the section of land along the National Park Road. He has a crew of eight firefighters in two ‘slip-on’ utes. After leaving the CFA, they race down National Park Road, knocking on doors, stopping cars, warning as many residents as they can contact. Then they take up a defensive position along the crest of the gorge near Masons Falls. Fitzgerald gathers his crew together, explains that they’re about to undertake the most dangerous operation a fire crew can perform and gives them the option of leaving, returning to their homes. None do.
Whatever steps he and his crew take will be dwarfed by the magnitude of the blaze, he knows that. But they have to do something. At best, his hope is that they will be able to make some sort of attack on the fire as it crests the escarpment, take the sting out of it. There are some hundred houses behind them: if he can reduce the fire’s intensity, it will increase the occupants’ chances of survival.
Fitzgerald has earlier received a call from Steve Grant, his boss in Broadford, warning him that the incident control centres are barely functioning and that he and his crew are on their own.
Fitzgerald and Redmond have gone up to Sugarloaf to get a better view. They are there when the wind change comes through. Burning debris begins to bombard the slopes directly below them.
A piece of burnt bracken lands at their feet. Aaron stomps on it almost casually, then thinks, Hell, if the embers are coming this way… Fitzgerald has the same thought. The clifftop lookout is no place to be; the fire will be on them in minutes. They hurry back and join their colleagues.
Fitzgerald has already discussed the options with his 2IC, Sean Hunter. The first is to beat a retreat; the crest of the escarpment will be where the fire is at its most lethal. The other, infinitely more dangerous, option is to attempt a backburn.
The creation of a backburn in the face of a firestorm is about as delicate and dangerous a task as a firefighter can attempt. The theory is that you burn a line just before the main front, timing it so that your fire will catch the convective wind and be drawn into the advancing flames. As the main fire hits the burnt area, it should lose some of its intensity. The timing is critical: too early and your own fire could come back at you, too late and the inferno will overrun you.
Fitzgerald knows that the operation has only a slight chance of success, but feels he has to do it. If it works, it could reduce the impact of the fire upon the houses on National Park Road, saving lives and property.
He positions his team in a line of maybe seventy metres, waits for the slim window of opportunity. The tension is electric: a tiny crew with not more than a couple of utes for protection strung out across a ridgeline waiting for an inferno to fall upon them.
Aaron is struck by the smell in the air: a pungent mixture of smoke and eucalyptus vapour. There is a period of stillness. The fire is approaching, sucking the air in with such force that it cancels out the ambient wind.
Fitzgerald studies the bush intently, searching for the signs, and suddenly sees what he’s been hoping for. A stirring of leaves on the ground, a tug of wind from behind their line. It gathers strength, as he’d hoped it would: the speed of the convective wind increases with its proximity to the fire.
The crew members glance at each other, anxious, waiting for the signal. ‘Wouldn’t say I felt afraid,’ says Aaron. ‘Just focused. We had a lot of faith in Tony.’
He is amazed to realise that he is standing in two different layers of wind simultaneously. The air around his upper body is perfectly still, but the debris on the ground is being sucked towards the unseen fire, leaves and embers tumbling in the opposite direction to the way they were blowing shortly before. The leaves
Similar Books
