Greg W. 22/6/10
REMEMBERING ELVIS THROUGH THE FIRE.
The place; Faulconbridge, Latitude 33.61South, Longitude 149.8East. high in the mountain ranges 50 miles west of Sydney, Australia.
The year is 2001, the time a hot mid-afternoon at the end of December.
The scene is a heavily wooded ridge running away to the south and overlooking a network of densely forested valleys which drop sharply away hundreds of feet below. A typical summer day, clear blue sky, dry and hot, but this year, the fifth in a series of droughts, it was blistering. Midday temperature over 40 degrees, that’s 108 in old speak. Worse still, there had been short rains through Spring that year. These had done nothing to put water into the reservoirs but they had allowed the undergrowth to grow very thick, to dry off in the subsequent summer and to leave a huge bank of tinder-dry leaves and twigs spread thick over millions of acres.
The left-wing government had taken on the greenie lobby policy years ago to stop the back-burning of our land. Fire bans had been institutionalised, barbecues banned and jail terms issued to offenders. The world had got insane.
We were just four blokes, volunteer firefighters, trained locally in bushfire control and in recent times we had seen a lot of bad summer action.
For the last five hours Ian, Ross and I had been slashing, burning and felling our way along this forgotten fire track, with Steve trailing us in the tanker appliance mopping up any breakaways or spot fires. There was another team we could hear off in the distance, chain sawing and sweating through their own fire break with the calm panic that is the default when you work against a deadly and capricious foe like this.
We had all been trying for days to create a controlled fire break to slow the raging front. We want to protect the bush and its wildlife, but today, more critically perhaps, to save the homes, farms and towns in the fire's immediate path. Every time we had laid in a break but were forced to retreat, we had watched as the inferno again and again engulfed our mortal attempts to slow it.
The blast furnace that had begun as spotfire #39 was relentlessly decimating our horizon and its smoke and fly-ash was stinging our eyes. Ian turned his black-smeared face to me and shouted, pink lipped and bearded, that he was going to report in and get a status. I acknowledged him with a wave, turned and motioned for Steve to drive up. We could all do with a break.. I watched as Ross, within earshot of Ian’s conversation on the radio, started to pick up the tools and I guessed we were being closed down. Checking my surroundings, all was well and I gathered up my gear while I waited for them to walk back to me.
It turned out, Control had told Ian the wind was forecast to change and we were to back out asap and return to base. It had taken a couple of minutes for Ian and Ross to reach me and I wondered why Steve had not bought the truck up yet. The three of us set off carrying our gear back down the track only to hear Steve slowly grinding the starter in an attempt to get the truck to kick. I looked past him to see how our back-burn was going behind the truck. If Steve hadn’t been able to kill the breakouts because of the truck stalling… But the burn looked safe for now. I saw Ross glancing at the sky, he knew it would be anything but safe if the wind did turn on us. It was clear from our faces the same thought was with us all.
Time was now a most precious element to us. Ian radioed in the situation, Ross dived into the back of the truck to switch to the spare battery and I lifted the engine hatch. Steve told me there was loads of diesel and the gauges were all okay, the engine just wouldn’t kick. The calm panic rose a notch as we all worked flat out to solve the problem. It was Ian who made the call to Control with the news our tender was dead. We had half a tanker of water and one working auxiliary pump. Ross tested it was okay and the decision was made to stay with the tender and wait help. Silence fell uncomfortably between us as we looked at each other. I was thinking of a million different things and wondered how these three blokes would handle what could be either of two options; a full-on disaster, or a few days stressful wait for rescue. We each drank a bellyful of water, soaked the blankets and sorted through the gear we would need if we were still here when the fire front hit. The sounds from the other team had stopped and we figured they would have been recalled too, or they were driving the rough trails to come to our aid. Control had requested our radio silence while they coordinated our recovery and the equally urgent relocating of over 30 other teams.
It wasn’t long before our ‘stressful wait’ option became redundant, the air around us stopped moving, the leaves high in the trees hung limp and a few glowing ashes previously held aloft and harmless now started to fall from the sky into the valleys below. When you are in the middle of a horror of nature it all happens in slow motion. We watched the glowing embers fall into the dry undergrowth. Almost on cue the breeze began to rise from the valleys providing air for the embers. Wisps of smoke began to rise from a little smolderings here and there in the valley below. We waited to see if they would catch, hoping they would not. The fire front is still some ten miles away but these bloody embers have bought the enemy in full threat right to our feet. Ian calls in our s.o.s. and Ross and I set about rigging the tanker to shower itself with our remaining water. Jobs done we grab the blankets and head into the truck’s cab to await the inevitable. Sometimes this works, the fire rushes over the truck, the pump sprays and keeps the heat down and the truck wet, the blankets protect you from radiant heat, the front passes and the team gets out. Mostly though, everyone dies together in a burning metal box. We are not under any illusions or false hope here. On the good side, the truck was stopped in a cleared area so there wasn’t much fuel nearby, on the bad side, all the tracks would be closed by the ember fires within minutes. Rescue or escape was not going to happen.
As it turned out there was not much time for us to discuss the options, within a minute there was thick smoke all around us, Steve closed the vents in the cab and wound up his window, we each covered ourselves with our blanket, stage one. We looked out waiting for stage two when the air would gust in to feed the fire front as it shot up from the valley to take us. It’s a blur after that. I remember the truck being buffeted by rushing air, Ross starting the pump, Ian yelling to us to cover up, the sound of lightly falling water, the sudden darkness from black dense smoke all around, then an exploding orange world and all the air being sucked out of my lungs as the searing heat hit. I managed a gasp of oven-hot air and above the roar and the coughing of my mates I heard the thwop thwoping of a helicopter, the sound of a rain heavier than anything on earth but overriding all of that was the unimaginable, the wonderful, the beauty of light and coolness. I must have passed out of the world. Then, someone calling my name. I am rising into the sky, I see vaguely falling away below there is a clearing, in the middle a small truck surrounded by blackness and white clouds. I fade away.
It’s nearly ten years now. Helitankers are still being flown into Australia every summer to fight the bushfires.. The fires inevitably destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine bushland and kill millions of animals and a few equally innocent people. My burns are healed but my scars remain. I am bitter the bush is not being better managed, I am bitter successive governments fail to act intelligently, but I am eternally grateful to the crew of Elvis, the Erickson S64 Helitanker #N179AC, which dumped 2000 gallons of water on me and my mates, and to the support chopper that winched us up and back into the safety of our families.
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