Burning ambition: Hand-picked 100 heroes set to protect our state
You have to be the best of the best to make it as a firefighter in NSW. As 6500 people compete for just 100 new jobs on offer at Fire and Rescue NSW, we talk to 10 firefighters who are trained and ready to save your life about why they joined the brigade.
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- How tough do you have to be to become a firefighter?
- PICTURES: The tough physical test to become a firefighter
More than 6500 people are expected to compete for one of 100 new jobs which have opened up in the ranks of Fire and Rescue NSW.
Provided enough women pass the physical aptitude test, 50 men and 50 women will make it to FRNSW State Training College at Erskine Park for 13 weeks of intensive training to become card-carrying firefighters.
The only official condition for applying is holding a valid driver’s licence and there’s not even a minimum or maximum age range. But how do you ensure you’re in the 1.5 per cent of successful applicants?
“We’re looking for people who are fit, passionate about helping their communities and have really good interpersonal skills,” FRNSW Deputy Commissioner Jeremy Fewtrell.
“You’re not only working in a close-knit team but you have to deal with the community on the whole, including in incredibly distressing situations.
“You also need to be are good at problem solving because that’s the bottom line — a lot of the work is solving problems of one sort or another.”
MORE FROM JACK MORPHET:
99.9 per cent accurate DNA tech to catch cow thieves
New hi-tech computing subjects for all students
Mr Fewtrell encouraged anyone who’s considered becoming a firefighter to throw their hat in the ring, for what he considers a “really exciting and rewarding career”.
“Working with the community and keeping them safe is very satisfying but our people also work in a really supportive team environment and get to use a whole range of problem solving skills, physical skills and community-engagement skills,” he said.
Applications are open until August 4.
OUR HERO FIREFIGHTERS
Craig Gilhooly, Regentville Fire Station
When firefighter Craig Gilhooly approached a crumpled Nissan on Northern Rd in Orchard Hills late last year, he could immediately tell 23-year-old Katherine Hoang and her unborn twins were dead in the back seat.
“I’m not allowed to pronounce death but sometimes you just know,” Mr Gilhooly said.
An elderly lady who arrived at the scene before the fireys was cradling the head of Ms Hoang’s 17-year-old sister-in-law, who was dead in the driver’s seat.
“I told the onlooker to walk away; ‘thanks for your help but you don’t want to look in the back of this car’,” he said.
Mr Gilhooly and his colleagues cut the sole survivor, newlywed Bronko Hoang, 25, out of the car and then waited five hours for the police to finish their crash investigation before cutting Mr Hoang’s lifeless bride and sister out of the wreckage.
“You have nightmares; you see things in your head you don’t want to see every now and then,” he said.
“The fact of the matter is the bad thing has already happened, we can’t stop it or change it, our job is to stop the accident or fire or entrapment from getting worse.
“If we left that man (Mr Hoang) in the car he would have died but we showed up and cut him out of the car and he didn’t die — that’s the silver lining.
“We get people out of shitty situations as best we can.”
Mr Gilhooly graduated from Sydney University in 2000 with a teaching degree, which was his second choice after his HSC mark fell short of the entry mark for law.
There hasn’t been a single day since joining the fire brigade in 2003 that he has regretted not pursuing teaching.
“It’s a fulfilling job that makes a makes an impact on society — not just going to work to make money, going home and spending that money and repeat,” he said.
“I have kids now and my kids can be proud of me.”
Trent Waterhouse, City of Sydney Fire Station
After defending Sydney’s in the NRL’s City vs Country matches in 2006 and 2009, premiership-winning former Penrith Panthers star Trent Waterhouse now defends the city as a firefighter based in the CBD.
After a glistening career as a powerful second-rower who pulled on the jersey for NSW and Australia, Mr Waterhouse struggled to land a career after football.
Mr Waterhouse’s goal was always to become a firefighter but he twice failed the psychometric testing and was forced to try his hand at trades in the meantime.
“I started a mature-age electrical apprenticeship while playing footy in the Gong in the country comp but it wasn’t really my cup of tea,” he said.
“Then I was working on cranes as a dogman for two years, which was good but the hours were massive and I worked six days a week.”
According to Mr Waterhouse, the camaraderie inside the fire station rivals the tightest bonds forged on the football field.
Terrene Black, City of Sydney Fire Station
She’s fighting fit and has spent the best part of the past two decades saving lives but new recruit Terrene Black, 36, wasn’t sure she’d ever land a job in the highly competitive Fire and Rescue NSW.
The professional lifeguard was knocked back on her first three applications at the first hurdle - psychometric testing - and it wasn’t until her fourth attempt that she made it far enough through the process to be physically tested.
“The physical test was the part I was looking forward to excelling in and showing off to the recruiters,” she said.
“The physical test is the reason a lot of girls can’t get in to the fireys because you need a high level of strength and fitness, and I certainly didn’t find it easy.”
Tomorrow morning Ms Black will compete in the Molokai 2 Oahu Paddleboard World Championships for the seventh time, where she is hoping to complete the 52 kilometre open-water course in five hours to secure her third win.
Hugh and George Lloyd, City of Sydney and Burwood Fire Stations
Identical twins Hugh and George Lloyd are constantly striving to stand out from the other, unless one of them slept through their alarm.
“Of course we follow Fire and Rescue NSW protocol in all aspects but it’s certainly handy having an identical twin if you can’t do a shift,” Hugh said.
The twins have been firefighters for six years, when George grew tired of working at an open cut coal mine in the Hunter and goaded Hugh to give up business banking and take on a greater challenge.
The fiercely ambitious pair couldn’t be split and were both offered rare jobs in the fire brigade, where they still compare career accomplishments.
George is the first to admit he’s envious of his brother’s coveted rescue role but still finds great satisfaction in the less adrenaline-inducing responsibilities of fireys.
“I recently had to get a teddy out of a drain crawl space for a young boy. Our motto is we save the irreplaceable, which to me could be someone’s house or teddy,” George said.
“To that boy, that teddy is just as important as someone’s car keys or putting out a fire.
“We obviously prioritise the urgency of jobs and won’t get cat out of a tree if there’s a critical incident unfolding, but when it’s appropriate I’m more than happy to help the community.”
The more brash brother, Hugh, isn’t happy unless he’s saving people from certain death.
“Going to disturbing scenes can be harrowing but as bad as it may sound, I’m there to do a job and I’m not thinking about feelings,” Hugh said.
Hugh is slavishly devoted to the fire brigade’s motto “Prepared for Anything” and revels in saving people from certain death in any circumstance.
When a 64-year-old barfly from Ashfield didn’t show up to his local pub for the first time in eight years, Hugh and his colleagues found him lying on his living room floor, severely dehydrated, and administered first aid.
“The police fight crime, ambos help sick people, but we do a lot more than fight fires,” he said.
“We do things the other emergency services simply can’t.”
Stefanie Fernandez-Preiksa, Marrickville Fire Station
Teachers at Sunshine Beach State High School were hoping to scare Year 12 students straight by showing a video of a nasty car crash where firefighters freed passengers with the Jaws of Life, but then 17-year-old Stefanie Fernandez-Preiksa missed the point while daydreaming about a career in the fire brigade.
Ms Fernandez-Preiksa, 32, parked her ambition to become a firey to chase her dream of cycling professionally.
The dream came crashing down at the Adelaide SuperDome in February 2016 when she clipped the handlebars of a competitor in the keirin national championship race, ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and sustained a year-long brain injury.
Three weeks after a knee reconstruction to repair her ACL, Ms Fernandez-Preiksa conveniently forgot all about going under the knife when seeking permission from an unsuspecting GP to sit the Fire and Rescue NSW physical test, where would-be fireys regularly submit to exhaustion and require treatment from paramedics after lugging hoses, jerry cans and dumbbells around in hot and heavy suits.
“I may have lied to my GP to allow me to sit the physical aptitude test, which all came up when I had the medical with the fireys and they realised I was fresh from a knee reco,” she said.
In the past 18 months as a firefighter Ms Fernandez-Preiksa has made a difference at house fires and car crashes but it’s the “little wins” she relished most.
“I once made an entry for a family with a child locked in a unit, where a pot was left on the stove and the unit was smoke-logged,” she said.
“When you’ve just broken a door down so a mother can embrace her scared little child is pretty satisfying — it’s pretty awesome to be part of that.”
Dale Weiley, Gordon Fire Station
By his own admission, Dale Weiley was a mediocre and miserable dental supplies salesman sleepwalking through a career that started with a warehouse job straight out of school.
“My wife was tired of me being miserable and said ‘why don’t you do something you actually want to do’,” he said.
The firefighter from Foster considers the years he spent peddling mouth mirrors, bib clips and suction tips “wasted” and regrets not joining Fire and Rescue NSW sooner.
“I love the job so much that one of my son’s, Emmerson (19) is applying,” he said.
“I don’t want to sound too wanky but it’s a good feeling helping people.”
Earlier this year Mr Weiley pulled a sleeping tradie out of a burning house in Collaroy.
“He’d either had a big night on the turps or he’s a great sleeper because he was out of it and my boss and I couldn’t wake him up,” he said.
“He’d slept through the fire alarm and would have died if his neighbours hadn’t called triple-0.
“He eventually woke up and asked what was going on and we said ‘your house is on fire’. That’s pretty satisfying because he has no idea how close he was to dying.”
Joel Morris, Gordon Fire Station
Fire and Rescue NSW firefighters have the best training of any brigade in the world but that doesn’t stop the Morris family worrying about each other when they’re racing headlong into a fire.
Joel Morris, 37, and his wife Kelly are both firefighters who work on opposite shifts so one of them is always home with their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
“Obviously I worry about Kelly at work but we’re one of the best trained fire brigades in the world,” he said.
“She’s a great firefighter and I trust she’s got the knowledge that she won’t put herself in a harmful situation, but you can’t help but worry.”
While working as a powerline electrician, Mr Morris made three failed attempts at the rigorous vetting process before he cracked it nine years ago and followed his grandfather, Ray, into the fire brigade.
His sparky skills come in handy when weighing up whether downed electrical cables are safe to approach, as does his experience working at heights.
Two window cleaners who fell about nine storeys after a cable snapped on their platform at the corner of Pitt and Bridge Street in Sydney’s CBD owe their life to Mr Morris, who took paramedics up in an aerial firefighting crane to retrieve one of them from a building awning.
“I took the ambos up in the Bronto, which is like a giant cherrypicker, up to the awning where the bloke was barely conscious and suffering from internal injuries,” he said.
“When the bells go off you never know what you’ll be turning up to but it’s massively satisfying when you finish a shift and you’ve helped someone.”
Tegan Chandler, Regentville Fire Station
In the same way rugby league players don’t have time to be scared when a hooker’s rampaging in their direction, fireys don’t have time to be scared of a furious blaze when someone could be trapped in the inferno.
That’s according to former Australian and NSW rugby league player turned firefighter Tegan Chandler, 27.
“When you’re about to go inside a house fire, you’re trained to deal with the situation but you still don’t know exactly what you’ll find in there,” she said.
“You might have to crawl through the house trying to find someone or even the source of the fire and you might have the added danger of the roof collapsing.
“We’re very cautious but you just never know what’s going ever happen — there’s adrenaline but there’s no time to be scared — you’re out of the truck and in the house.”
When Ms Chandler applied for the fire brigade she had a win at the 2013 Women’s Rugby League World Cup under her belt and was studying exercise science, so it should come as no surprise she breezed through the gruelling physical test where most women stumble.
“Some people really struggle, so I feel bad saying, so I found it quite easy,” she said.
Marc Ecob, Liverpool Fire Station
Two days after the devastating 2011 Christchurch earthquake, firefighter Mark Ecob crawled the rubble of a collapsed five-storey 1960s office building searching for survivors.
Superannuation adviser Amanda Fuller lost three fingers when she was found and freed from under a collapsed desk after four days.
Mr Ecob, 54, didn’t find any survivors but he found a handful of the 18 workers who were killed in the collapse.
“You never get used to fatalities and people being badly hurt but you learn to deal with them better,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say anybody gets used to it but everyone has their own coping mechanisms.”
After 24 years as a firey, Mr Ecob wouldn’t dream of returning to his old job as an accountant.
“I don’t even do my own tax returns,” he said.
Originally published as Burning ambition: Hand-picked 100 heroes set to protect our state
Rappers’ prison brawl ‘linked’ to drive-by shooting: Police
Police have linked a drive-by shooting to an alleged prison fight between two rappers. CCTV footage from the night of the shooting has been released.
New survey: 90pc of parents demand action on social media
Parents have overwhelmingly backed age limits stopping kids accessing social media until they hit 16, according to a state government survey of more than 21,000 people.