Are You a Volunteer?
In Australia we have bushfires and some are very large. I personally survived including my home, a bushfire in 2002/2003 where 1.4 Million Hectares of homes, farms, bushland and countless farm and wildlife animals were destroyed.
Due to Australia being a very large country with a small population, about 90% of firefighters are ALL volunteers-not paid. These volunteers consist of ordinary people both men and women of all ages doing training and firefighting in their own time.
I live in the State of Victoria where the Country Fire Authority (CFA) is the controlling body of Volunteer Firefighters. I myself a Voluntary member of the CFA and an Operational Wildfire/Structural Fire Firefighter. At our Brigade, we train one night each week after work and some weekends at the CFA training school.
My wife is also a Voluntary member of the CFA but in a support role (mainly because I will not let her go near a fire). The good lady is heavily involved with the communications and on large bushfires – part of the IMT (Incident Management Team) where all logistics, support, incident management etc are carried out...
The last major bushfire we had here was in December/January of 2006/2007. The bushfire in mountainous areas in and near the state forest being part of the Gippsland area. Fire crews were called in from all over the state as the fires raged out of control for weeks on end. IMT was set-up in the township of Bairnsdale and at first was about 50km’s from the fire front
The IMT control point was also where fire crews were updated on the fire and crews changed over. My good lady was sent their for a 2 week period as part of IMT.
In Victoria, we also have daylight saving, so at this time of year, the sun does not set till 9.00pm
The good lady took the photos below from where she was stationed with IMT
The first photo shows some fire trucks and the staging area – The photo was taken at 3.00pm
The second photo just outside the offices – this photo was taken just one hour later at 4.00pm; the glow in the sky is not the moon but rather, the sun. The marks on the photo are falling ash.
The Main fire front was only 20km’s away….
ARE YOU A VOLUNTEER – SHARE YOUR STORY….
Martin Down Under