Stromlo Fire


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			Stromlo Fire
			Christmas and New Year 2001/2002 were busy times for our firefighters, as for many volunteers from all over the country. Sydney went up, coastal regions to the north and south of Sydney went up as well as the National Parks in the hinterland of the south coast, and Canberra went up. We were fortunate that our own local area stayed fire free, but our volunteers went to numerous fires in the ACT, Queanbeyan area and into the National Parks at the south coast. Eddy, our brigade photographer, spent the whole night of Christmas Eve, along with several other volunteers from our brigade and numerous other people, at the Stromlo Forest fire in the ACT. It was less fun than having a few pre-Christmas drinkies and wrapping the pressies, but it was a job well done. This is for all the firefighters who worked over that hairy time.


The view as they first approached the fire in the early evening.
Our guys had been on standby for a good part of the day, and we had an amazing view here in Sutton of the huge billowing column of smoke that was filling the sky. The troops had to dash off to a couple of false alarms as calls came in that fires had started much closer to home. This proved to be an optical illusion. It is very common for observers to think that a fire is much closer than it is. They finally left in the early evening to do the night shift.


The scene on entering the fire zone.

A distant scene showing the extent of the smoke.
Now you might wonder why, at this point there are no pictures of brave firefighters squirting water at towering infernos, but when that situation arises the photographer has to stow his camera and get on with firefighting. It was a long night. Perhaps the only disappointing thing was hearing on the radio the next morning a spokesman for the ACT firefighting service pronouncing that their resources had been stretched to the limit the previous day. Now there might have been a bit of milking the media for dramatic effect in there, but there were New South Wales firefighters sitting on standby all day around the ACT perimeter, watching the smoke and waiting for the call, which did not come until a change of shift was required in the evening. So why did they stretch themselves to the limit, by their own telling? Co-operative endeavours between different fire brigade areas are steadily improving, but there is still a way to go yet. (All opinions expressed here are the personal responsibility of the webmaster, not the official opinion of anybody in the Rural Fire Service.)


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