From the first responders who donned breathing apparatus to search a burning home for survivors, to the crews who fought it house to house, yard by yard, to those who followed the orders of their captain perched on the roof of a supermarket and broke the back of the terrifying blaze, The Courier-Mail tells the story of those who beat the firestorm.

More than 300 firefighters and emergency services would pour in to Peregian on the Sunshine Coast in what is being called fastest-growing fire emergency in Queensland history.

Started by a group of teenagers in bushland on Monday afternoon, in just hours it would displace hundreds of people, threaten homes, destroy one, and at its height, stoke fears it could reach as far as iconic Noosa National Park and Hastings St.

When Maroochydore station officer Vanessa Madge and her crew arrived in Godwitt Place, one street over from where the blaze had begun near Koel Circuit just minutes before, it was already shaping as a battle.

She and her crew were second only to local Coolum station to getting to the fire.

With the brutal south-westerly wind howling, they hosed down houses, fending off the embers that would fast become the enemy of those battling to save homes.

“We were confronted with extreme conditions,” Officer Madge said.

“It was extraordinary conditions.

“There’s only so much you can do with that wind when it is throwing embers so far away.”

North Coast fire service Inspector Bernie Massingham would arrive seconds later.

In a shift that would last 26 hours straight, Insp Massingham would first steer the epic emergency service effort through heading off the blaze, then work out how to destroy it the next day.

“We received the call at 4.30pm. I had arrived just after 4.30pm,” Insp Massingham said.

“Through the height of all operations I was the incident controller for this job.

“It was incredibly fast.

“By the time I got here it had already jumped the Sunshine Motorway, so it was already burning on the eastern side of the Sunshine Motorway and from there is burning towards the back of the Coolum State High School.

“The winds were gusting around the 50kmh mark and they were forcing the flames incredibly quickly.

“The smoke plumes were thick towers into the sky.”

Inside the Peregian firestorm

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He had called in water bombers on the way to the fire, and rural and urban trucks were pouring into the area, but it was not enough.

With near perfect fire conditions, it jumped roads and roared through scrub, headed to Peregian, homes and people.

Peregian runs in a narrow strip between the beach and David Low Way, with a housing estate off the left hand side, an IGA, pub and hardware store bulging west into scrub and bush.

There is also a 50m-deep stand of paperbark trees that lines the road.

Once the fire hit them, the paper bark became millions of flying wicks, lit bits of paper that were soaring away in the tearing wind before lodging in roofs and gutters, yards and gardens and setting them alight.

“The fact that was out of our hands was the winds and direction that was pushing it,” Insp Massingham said.

“It took it out of our control.”

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With no chance of stopping the fire, Insp Massingham sent the urban crews into stop houses from going up in flames. The yellow, rural trucks were tasked with trying to keep the fire down along David Low Way, the evacuation route.

Hitting at peak hour, desperate residents had to pick up kids from childcare, grab pets, personal possessions and flee.

When the fire jumped David Low Way, the battle for Peregian was on.

“When I received reports it had jumped the David Low Way, where the properties are, we took our urban resources and positioned them all here,” Insp Massingham said.

Officer Madge’s crew was one.

In the dark, smoke and ember storm, she was grabbed by a desperate neighbour who said there was still someone inside 28 Plover St.

“We went straight into internal search of the house,” Officer Madge said.

“That was the house that did get gutted.

“They had a thermal imaging camera to be able to see through the smoke.

“That’s a full kit, breathing apparatus.

“They did that, went upstairs and downstairs.

“An ember must have lodged into that timber roof and started that fire.

“We were on the day crew. We’d been on for 15 hours by that stage.

“The first crew would have done that rapid search in six or eight minutes.

“I radioed and said now it’s time to withdraw, the roof is fully involved.

“Then it was surround and drown.”

Pam Murphy, 89, would lose her house to the flames. Thankfully, she had got out first.

“The initial day there was information that came back 10 to 13 homes lost,” Insp Massingham said.

“It’s easy for that perception from that night to be gained.

“The reports I was receiving back at incident control were ‘we’ve got multiple structures on fire’, that ‘I’ve got structures on fire in this street, I need immediate assistance’, then 30 seconds later, ‘I’ve got a unit complex of 20 units there are six on fire’, then 30 seconds later, ‘we’ve got multiple homes on fire in this street, I need immediate assistance’.

“While all that was going on, we were committing crews.

“We had one report of a house fire with persons missing.

“So we had crews don breathing apparatus to do a primary search and rescue to see if there was anyone in that premises. Thankfully, there was not. Then crews went into structural protection with the homes on the upwind side because that’s the way the smoke and flames were burning.

“So with that, it’s easy to see with those ember attacks it was apocalyptic. You’ve seen the footage.

“It was easy to see how that number of homes could be said “this one’s on fire” because there was so much.

“It was down to the crews the use of their hoses to put small fires out, whether they be fences or vehicles the ember attacks that were hitting people’s roofs and in gutters with leaf litter.

“They absolutely stopped multiple homes and millions of dollars of infrastructure being destroyed.

“They were going over fences, through gates. That took place for a couple of hours.

“It very quickly made its way through to bushland on the foreshore and then raced up the foreshore, up the beach.”

Captain Luke Chapman joined the battle with a crew from Beerwah Auxiliary brigade, aboard a borrowed truck from Mooloolah.

“At the time, Vanessa had 28 Plover St going and we were tasked to give her assistance,” he said.

“By the time we got up to Vanessa’s crew in Plover St they the fire contained.

“We were redeployed to the hardware and the IGA about 8.30pm.

“Our mission was to try and slow the ember attack that was going to go across the David Low Way into the area behind that, the surf club.

“Seeing we had a good vantage point, I got the boys to put our large extension ladder up and positioned myself on top of the IGA.

“That gave us a really good perspective on the fire.

“There were multiple heads on the fire because of the terrain it was burning through. One of those heads of the fire was going to directly impact on the corner of the IGA.

“The heavy vegetation here is a bit deceiving. It is only about 50m wide but then it goes into grassland.

“All the embers were coming out of the 50m area.”

They poured water into the paperbark - 2000l a minute as the fire bore down.

“The fire generally with a consistent wind will turn into a teardrop, where the most intensity is,” Capt Chapman said.

“By being able to directly attack the head of the fire, as we were able to at the IGA, we were able to put the head of the fire out and the fire moved away, as a single flank, which ran around to Woodland Drive.”

It was a major breakthrough - breaking the teardrop - but the fire was not over yet.

The edge continued, burning around to threaten Woodland Drive and the homes nearby.

Maroochydore station officer Peter Watson had joined Officer Madge at the house fire before heading to Woodland Drive.

“There was an estate in there that was in the direct line of fire and quite vulnerable,” he said.

“We had a lot of resources in there.”

With the rural brigades tackling the brush and timber, the urban brigades poured in water and beat down embers in the streets, yards and gutters.

On the rural line was Pete Garrett from Maroochy River with rural brigade comrade Scott Brook from Valdora-Yandina Creek.

“There were flames, embers, smoke, people in utter panic,” First officer Garrett said.

“The paperbark would light and then get thrown a kilometre and then start a fire a kilometre in front of where you were.”

“The visibility was down to zero,” First officer Brook said.

“It was like a freight train coming through, or even an aeroplane.

“We were trying to keep the flames down, keep the road open to evacuate.”

They would fight for hours, finally sent home for rest Tuesday morning.

“At that stage we thought we’d lost 10 houses,” Mr Brook said.

“I was shattered. It wasn’t until we turned up again the next day and found out it was only one, I was pretty sure we’d saved a lot of houses on David Low Way. Without the urban service being here and helping them out, it would have been just devastating.

“It’s been amazing. As I leaving, just as the residents had been let back in, I came past the pub with the Valdora truck. We got a standing ovation. Just the roar of it. It was like the Queensland team running on for the State of Origin. We were nearly going to do a couple of laps just to keep it going but flicked our lights on, and the traffic parted. It was really awesome.”

There work, and those of hundreds of others, had stopped the fire at Woodlands, and also in the dunes, slowing it enough to be tackled Tuesday from the air.

Without it, Insp Massingham said it would have run 10km further north. Others have said it would have directly threatened Noosa, even Hastings St.

“Just where the fire started, it had that little channel and that was just happened to be the way the wind was blowing,” Insp Massingham said.

“When I handed over control at 1am, I got in my car and went for a drive around the entire scene and all the different sectors to see what damage had been sustained.

“And it was remarkable driving through the streets to see there were fences burnt, there was a Kombi burnt and the one house that was unfortunately lost but to see all the crews all vigilant, to see all bar one property still standing, it was incredible.”