Firefighter Jasper Croft had just come face-to-face with the devil.

Its hellfire had blackened the sky — turning day into night — with impenetrable black smoke as violent flames roared searing death as they leapt from tree to tree.

Croft is a member of the Wyoming 509 crew. He and his colleagues, including good mate Ervin Blancaflor, were helping to fight the devastating blazes on the NSW south coast on New Year’s Eve just gone.

Wyoming 509 was far from home. It’s based on the Central Coast but with most of the state under siege, it was all hands to the pump — literally. All NSWRFS crews had been sent to where they were most desperately needed.

LISTEN: NSW Fire & Rescue firefighters Jasper and Ervin became unintentionally iconic to Australia’s bushfire crisis after footage of them being overrun in their firetruck went viral. They tell the Night Watch how it all unfolded.

“We were tasked to go to Hames Rd, there was an RFS crew and civilians under threat by a fire front pushing through,” Croft, 36, told The Night Watch.

“As soon as we turned onto Hames Rd, I saw the ember attack come across, we heard the radio message ‘flashover, flashover — we’re being overrun’ — we couldn’t physically make it to this other RFS crew without putting our own lives in danger.

“I’ve got onto the radio and notified the rest of the crew to say this is too dangerous, let’s retreat, retreat, retreat.”

But it was too late. The devil was already upon them.

“It just literally roars like it’s a devil,” Croft said. “He was right on top of us, our trucks within seconds. It’s the devil, it’s the beast of the fire just roaring through that bushland and you think, this thing’s going to get us, no matter what we do it’s going to get us.”

Wyoming 509 had no choice but to stay in the truck — shelter in place — as the deadly wall of fire crashed over the top of them.

The “flashover” passes over in a matter of seconds. But it felt like an eternity. “If one of those windows gave away and broke, there was no way of surviving that,” Croft added.

“We would have suffocated instantly because that fire is drawing all of the oxygen out of the air. Everything around us was alight, the flames are coming up over the trees to the right hand side, to the left hand side — everything was alight, it was literally like you’re in a barbecue.”

The vision Blancaflor recorded on his phone as the truck was swallowed by fire was as frightening as it was defining. Those 90 seconds put not just millions of Australians in that cabin at that moment but many millions more from all over the world.

The vision Blancaflor recorded on his phone as the truck was swallowed by fire was as frightening as it was defining. Those 90 seconds put not just millions of Australians in that cabin at that moment but many millions more from all over the world.

“I just grabbed my phone to capture what was going on around us,” Blancaflor said.

“I wasn’t expecting the ember attack or flashover to happen.

“And when it happened, I’m like ‘whoa’.”

It wasn’t until the 509 was out of danger that the pair finally had a chance to watch the video and realise exactly what they had just been through.

Fearing his family would see the footage on news websites before he could tell them he was okay, Croft called his mother and partner to reassure them he and his crew were safe.

Shaken but safe.

Miraculously, Croft and Blancaflor were able to ditch their truck and leave the scene in a vehicle belonging to a freelance journalist.

But another Fire and Rescue NSW crew, which had also been tasked with helping to contain that fire front, remained trapped in the blaze further down the road.

Croft said it was an agonising wait not knowing if they had survived.

“It’s a strange feeling, because you’ve got out of that situation but what about the rest of the boys?” he said.

“There’s still another 12-odd guys in there and we don’t know what’s happening.

“We had to wait for at least an hour while being chased by this fire front with no radio communications with the rest of the crew. We thought at that point that there was eight dead fireys in there for sure.”

Fortunately the stranded crew equipped with breathing apparatus had managed to get out alive after also ditching their truck, later found destroyed by fire.

Relieved, both crews regrouped that night for a barbecue in Nowra to ring in the New Year.

Blancaflor said he always felt the crews would survive during the ordeal because firefighters get a special feeling of professionalism when they put on their uniform.

“It changes you a little bit,” he said.

“You’re there to do a job, you’re there to save lives, to save a community.”