RFS volunteer and truckie who helped save him now mates
Little did truckie Mick Duggan know that the stricken Rural Fire Service volunteer he was desperately trying to cool down after collapsing was Matt Eyles – who had just hours earlier saved his home. WATCH THE VIDEO
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The heroic actions of firefighter Matt Eyles not only helped save the home of widower Mick Duggan – but gained him a new friend for life.
Mr Duggan, a truckie, will be forever indebted to Mr Eyles, a Rural Fire Service volunteer, who has been too busy saving homes since November to earn a living as a builder.
Mr Eyles pushed his body beyond breaking point extinguishing “a hailstorm of spotfires” at Mr Duggan’s Balmoral home late last month, before he fell out of a fire truck at the local fire brigade HQ and collapsed.
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Without realising he was looking at the man who had just saved his home from burning down, Mr Duggan got on his knees, ripped off Mr Eyles shirt and packed Zooper Dooper ice block treats around the fallen firey.
Mr Eyles was awake but unresponsive, with a blank “thousand-yard stare” and had a body temperature of 40C, which placed him at risk of organ damage or death.
The pair had briefly met for the first time earlier that day when firefighters checked which residents were staying to defend their homes.
But the moment Mr Eyles regained cognition he instantly recognised the man also stuffing ice in his mouth and muttered “we saved your house mate”.
Mr Eyles saved six homes that day, but another 20 in Balmoral were destroyed.
Shortly after Mr Eyles was loaded into an ambulance, firefighters ordered Mr Duggan to shelter in the fire shed from an inferno fanned by fierce southerly winds barrelling towards the village.
While homes outside were being consumed by 50 metre-high flames turbo charged by 100km/h winds, inside the shed Mr Duggan quietly conceded he was going to die.
“I struggled to breathe through the thick smoke and intense heat and when the power went out I thought the shed was on fire,” Mr Duggan said.
“I thought to myself ‘this is it’.”
In the four weeks since the Balmoral blaze the pair have struck up a friendship.
The firefighter’s phone number is saved in Mr Duggan’s mobile under “Matty My Hero”.
“Thanks doesn’t cover the depth of my appreciation for Matty,” Mr Duggan, who lost his wife Lydia Duggan eight years ago to breast cancer at just 48, said.
“I met him in the morning and never thought I’d see him again but through the kindness of his heart, he saved my house and we have since developed a very special friendship.”
The fire came so close to Mr Duggan’s home, potplants under an awning by the front door caught fire before Mr Eyles extinguished them.
“That day scared the shit out of me,” Mr Eyles said.
“There was fire everywhere at Mick’s place. All the grass was alight, the trees were alight, everything was alight.
“I still have flashbacks and just thinking about it makes my eyes water a little bit.”
While Mr Eyles was recovering in his hospital, his wife Kathy Eyles drove his ute full of uninsured tools through flames covering the road from Balmoral to their home in Buxton.
He will use those tools when he returns to work this week.