Do you remember how intense Black Summer was? With much of Gippsland already on fire, on December 31, 2019, a dry lightning storm passed across the high country of north eastern Victoria and East Gippsland, starting hundreds of new fires. Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMV) crews and aircraft swung into action, and did their best to quell the many small fires that were slowly consuming individual trees.

As a volunteer with the Mt Hotham – Dinner Plain fire brigade, I headed up the hill as the area was evacuated. There were four fires around Dinner Plain, all small and slowly consuming the unfortunate trees that had been hit by lightning.

We could see the columns of smoke from JB Plain, and asked for permission to walk in and tackle the fires. That was refused higher up the chain because we weren’t trained in ‘dry’ firefighting techniques.

So, we waited, preparing Mt Hotham and Dinner Plain for the fire that was likely to come. On January 3, the wind picked up, and those fires in single trees blew out into the landscape, eventually merging into a blaze that burnt more than 40,000 hectares.

 

Header image: JAN 4, 2020: the Tabletop fire burns towards Dinner Plain. Photographer unknown.

On January 4, we had 7 tankers and almost 30 fire fighters gathered at Dinner Plain. We prepared for the fire that was burning up the valley towards the village. By a miracle, the winds shifted and nudged the fire slightly to the south. In the following days the fire came back again (and was stopped from burning into the village by a Large Air Tanker), then passed eastwards and threatened the area around Cobungra.

It was that day that our campaign for a volunteer remote area firefighting team (a RAFT) was born. Why didn’t Victoria have a volunteer group who could be trained to go out and tackle these small fires before they get going? We have many skilled and hard working remote area (also called Arduous) firefighters employed through FFMV. However, in times like this, it is clear we need more suitably trained firefighters who can assist in this work.

At the time I didn’t realise that most other states already had these groups. We started a campaign calling for a volunteer team within the CFA which would work along side FFMV crews to tackle these small fires before they become uncontrollable blazes.

Since January 2020, we have worked hard to promote the idea of a volunteer RAFT, and build support for the concept across the CFA, FFMV, and in government.

A WIN

Six years later, this idea is now a reality. We are proud to have played a key role in building the political will to create the first volunteer arduous firefighter team in Victoria.

The first group of arduous (remote area) firefighters have just completed their training and – depending on how many fires we see in coming days – are likely to be deployed for the first time this week. The plan is to start training soon for a second group of volunteers, this time drawing from areas to the north of Melbourne (the first group came from Geelong and the south west) before expanding the program state wide.