JOHN GALLAGHER, 34
Tathra Rural Fire Brigade
Bega Valley
The screams of five children trapped inside a burning house are what John Gallagher can’t shake when he recalls their terrifying rescue at first light on New Year’s Day. The veteran firefighter received a cluster of triple-0 calls shortly after 6am as residents of the tiny town of Quaama, just inland from Bermagui on the NSW south coast, woke to find the flames at their doorsteps. “The intensity of it caught so many people off guard,” he says. At dawn a firestorm had surrounded the town within minutes and firefighters had been ordered to retreat from the frontline to shelter inside Quaama’s fire station. “Then this call came in for seven people, five of whom were children.” Gallagher and brigade partner Nathan Barnden left the safety of the fire station in a Hyundai Terracan 4WD with “no resources” and drove into the eye of the inferno. “The family’s survival came down to just two firefighters,” he says. “Two streets had already gone up in flames and we were surrounded on both sides of the street by fire.” Operating on “autopilot”, he arrived to find five children, their mother and godmother sheltering in the kitchen. By this time, the house was “fully engulfed” by a wall of flames. “We jumped out and proceeded to the first door we could find,” Gallagher says. “I was yell­ing and screaming as much as I could. They came out barefoot with no shirts on and they ran across the burning ground to our vehicle.” Gallagher and Barnden ordered the children to stay below the car’s windows as fire lapped at the vehicle, melting the plastic on the doors. “All I could think about was getting this family back to the fire station.” Still in their Terracan, the two fireys saved six more people from burning homes that day. All up, 13 people owe their lives to Gallagher and Barnden. Picture: Jonathan Ng

CHRIS WRIGHT, 16
Woodford Rural Fire Service,
Blue Mountains, NSW
Years volunteering: Four
Fighting bushfires is something of a way of life in the thickly wooded Blue Mountains. Chris Wright has been part of his local RFS brigade since he was 12. He joined as part of the cadet program the Rural Fire Service runs in local schools. About a half-dozen of his mates did the same, and he was one of a dozen or so RFS members from his area who were on standby this week as a total fire ban was issued across seven regions in NSW. Asked why he joined the RFS, he is blunt: “My father is captain — he told me to. Plus I wanted to.” On Thursday, Wright’s crew was largely spared the drama that played out near Canberra and on the NSW south coast. “At the moment, we haven’t been called to anything and there’s nothing around the Blue Mountains.” There were advice-level fires in Blue Labyrinth, Ruin­ed Castle and Grose Valley, and an afternoon blaze threatened near Richmond. Mercifully, that was about as exciting as things got for the teen firefighter. Picture: Sean Davey.

JOHN LARDNER, 55
Nana Glen Rural Fire Brigade
Nana Glen, NSW
Years volunteering: 38 Captain John Lardner writes poetry to help process the trauma of surviving the fatal Nana Glen inferno in November last year. He cheated death when a bushfire so ferocious it created its own weather system overran his fire truck on the NSW mid-north coast. “It’s an ungodly feeling,” Lardner says. “It’s so dark that daytime becomes night and it feels as if you’re in the eye of a tornado.” As the bushfire changed direction with unexpected intensity and the sky turned bright orange, then pitch black, jarring winds shook the fire trucks and Lardner gave the order to flee. “It happened so fast,” he says. “I probably had 20 people under my control and they are dependent on your leadership.” The crew was forced to retreat from the frontline as a wall of fire encircled the brigade. The blaze brought whipping winds, bursts of thunder and lightning strikes. Lardner recalls deafening, apocalyptic roars that will stay with him forever. “It was like waking up in hell,” he says. “I waved to the captain of the Woolgoolga fire brigade and I thought that was the last time I would ever see him.” That day, however, luck was on Lardner’s side. “We just held our breath and drove. It felt like 30 minutes but it would’ve been a maximum of five minutes.” The crew emerged from the “gates of hell” to find a crowd of elated firefighters cheering their survival. Lardner, who has been volunteering with the Rural Fire Service for 38 years, calculates his crew saved 750 homes on Nov­ember 12. The horror of the overrun, however, still plays on his mind. “You realise how fragile life is. We nearly didn’t come home, and unfortunately there are some guys who don’t get to come home.” Lardner, right, meets a famous fan, Nana Glen local Russell Crowe. Picture: Facebook

SALLY ROWEN, 46,
Broadwater/Amiens Rural
Fire Brigade, Stanthorpe
Years volunteering: 6
Sally Rowen is no stranger to natural disasters. “We’ve had hailstorms and droughts and fires,” she says. “But the fire we had in September was what they would call a perfect storm.”
Farmers in Stanthorpe, on Queensland’s southern border, have been in the grip of a prolonged drought. It was the ever-dwindling water supply, Rowan says, that stopped her brigade from conducting hazard reduction burns in winter. “Normally we do between 50 and 60 controlled burns,” she says. “Last winter we could only do 12 or 14 because we just didn’t have water.” Even so, Rowen says no amount of controlled burns would have prevented the inferno in September last year. “It was a crowning fire and the wind was just horrendous.” Crowning occurs when a bushfire moves from treetop to treetop, burning far above the ground and rendering efforts to control the blaze from the ground useless. A farmer herself, Rowan received the call-out at 2pm on Friday, September 6, as the fire began its march towards Stanthorpe. By 5pm, the flames were lapping at her own home. “It’s very disturbing,” she says. “There’s a lot of emotion that comes into it when you’re defending your own home and your neighbours’ homes.” Hours later she returned, solemn and distressed. Five of her neighbours had lost their homes and scores of drought-afflicted farmers were left with acres of charred land. “That fire came so close to wiping out Stanthorpe,” she says. On her own property rows of round hay bales lay smouldering, but by some miracle her property was intact and her animals had survived. She says the town has always stuck together. “I am so proud of our Stanthorpe community and I just wouldn’t live anywhere else.” There’s no doubt the mother of two has a strong sense of duty. “I just got back from five days working on the Jinden fire between Queanbeyan and Cooma in NSW,” she said this week. “When the fire hit us, people from as far as Perth and Sydney came to help out. It was just nice to give back to another community doing it tough.” Picture: Aaron Tomkins

TREVOR WATSON, 61
Valdora/Yandina Rural Fire
Brigade, Sunshine Coast, Qld
Years volunteering: 7
Peregian Beach, a resort town just south of Noosa Heads, usually boasts beaches of soft white sand and unspoilt watersof crystalline clarity. In September and October last year, however, smoke shrouded the landscape and ash-laden waves lapped at the blackened shore. Trevor Watson, a member with the Valdora and Yandina Rural Fire Brigade, arrived at the seaside hamlet as a fast-moving fire tore through bushland and jumped a major road, setting several properties alight. “When it’s so close to so many properties it sort of raises the urgency level,” he, 61, said says. “You are certainly conscious that a lot is at stake.” The paperbark trees, a defining part of the lush coastal oasis, roasted in the extraordinary heat and exploded in showers of embers. “The trees were hitting the ground and virtually combusting, just bursting into flames,” Watson says. Sirens blared as a wall of flame engulfed Peregian Springs, Peregian Breeze and Peregian Beach, while fierce winds stoked a hellish ember storm. “It was like it was raining fire. I’ve never seen anything like that.” Police went door to door, evacuating panicked residents as the blaze tore through a part of Queensland more accustomed to tropical downpours than raging firestorms. Remarkably, only one home was lost in the series of bushfires that menaced the holiday hotspot from September last year until Christmas Day. Watson’s brigade patrolled the streets for two days after the initial onslaught had passed on September 9, dousing rogue spot fires. “The job doesn’t end when the fire calms down,” he says. “Just one ember is enough to spark an entirely new fire.” Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

CHRIS SEYMOUR, 45
Johnsonville Fire Brigade,
East Gippsland, Victoria
Years volunteering: 20 Chris Seymour has lost count of the number of days he has spent on the frontline of the nation’s unrelenting bushfire crisis. He is the captain of the Johnsonville Fire Brigade, nestled in a small hamlet between Bairnsdale and Lakes Entrance in the fire-ravaged region of East Gippsland in Victoria. He has been called in for 24-hour shifts and fought the Gospers Mountain “mega-blaze” in NSW after lightning struck the brittle earth in late October last year. Three months on, that fire still burns. Yet Seymour, who has just received a medal for 20 years’ service, says the Gospers Mountain blaze pales in comparison to what he witnessed in East Gippsland. “I fought the fires in Black Saturday,” he says. “At points, these fires in East Gippsland were worse and more intense than what we saw on Black Saturday.” What sets these blazes apart in terms of their size, Seymour says, is that they are routinely occurring in populated areas and are being fuelled by strong winds and dry forests. “You never completely extinguish those fires,” he says. “It’s just too much bushland and they’re not the sort of fires you can put out. Tens of thousands of hectares have burnt and you’re just never going to put all of that out.” Seymour’s brigade has been battling blazes for months and they have been sent as far away as Coffs Harbour on the NSW mid-north coast, more than 1000km north. In early January, however, the threat came too close to home when a suspected arsonist lit a fire in Johnsonville. “My family had to leave,” he says. “It was the first time my wife and three girls left. It’s no small thing to send your family away, but we knew the house couldn’t be defended.” Even so, Seymour says there have been some wins. “We got 75mm of rain last Sunday night, so the pressure is off. It doesn’t mean the threat is over. There will still be patches of fire around.” It’s a small victory, but any reprieve in the months-long battle is well worth the wait.

THE HARDACRES
Ruby Fire Brigade
South Gippsland, Victoria
Combined years volunteering: 34 When duty calls in the Hardacre household, there’s no shortage of family members ready to pull on the heavy, bright yellow outfit of the Country Fire Authority ­volunteer. Darren Hardacre — a CFA veteran for 25 of his 49 years — and sons Nathan, 22, and Tim, 19, jumped when the call went out for volunteers to deploy to the epicentre of Victoria’s bushfire crisis: East Gippsland. They formed part of a five-person strike team from Ruby Fire Brigade that left in early January this month to support some of the hardest hit communities. “It was a pretty proud moment to be out there with my two boys,” Darren 49, Hardacre says. “I was the captain when they were born so they’ve just grown up around it and knew no different. Every Sunday we would test the appliances and I’d always just bring them along.” Hardacre and his sons, from the tiny town of Ruby in South Gippsland, were entering towns on the verge of collapse as thousands fled for their lives. It was the first time they had been deployed together. “We started our shift at 3am protecting Nowa Nowa near Lakes Entrance. Sometimes we wouldn’t get back to camp until 4pm.” Nathan, an electrical engineer, and Tim, a university student, joined Ruby CFA aged 16.And for the Hardacres, firefighting is certainly a family affair. Their late great-grandfather was a Ruby CFA member and their 71-year-old grandfather is still on the team, along with their mum and Darren’s wife, Karen. “My daughter is hoping to join as well,” Darren Hardacre says. “It’s a great way for kids to learn about community values and develop a skillset.” Picture: Wayne Taylor

TRACEY BACCI
Two Rocks Volunteer
Bushfire Brigade, Perth
Years as a firefighter: Five
Their faces and uniforms blackened by layers of toxic soot and ash, members of the Two Rocks Volunteer Bushfire Brigade thought they had the blaze they were battling in Perth’s north under control. Then the wind changed. “It kept changing direction and started as a small fire that ended up being 13,000ha,” says Tracey Bacci. As the temperature soared to 43C, the fire burst it containment lines and drew closer to suburban Perth. “I noticed the fire had jumped into the backyard of one of the volunteers,” Bacci says. The blaze was burning in the backyard of her friend, Wendy Noone, a longstanding member of the Two Rocks brigade. Bacci and fellow firefighter Tara Andrews rushed into Noone’s backyard, desperately working to douse the flames. “We reversed the truck and got right in there,” Bacci says. “Wendy had just finished her shift and had come home to relax, only to find her house was about to go. “I could see her face and thought, you know what? She needs a hug.” The women embraced as spot fires ignited around them and embers glowed in the orange sky.Echoing the recollections of many battle-hardened firefighters, Bacci says the mission to save communities from the Yanchep fire in December last month is a blur. “I just lose count of the days,” she says. “I was there from the start to the end and it was just an army of people. Firefighters were in every corner doing everything they could to save homes.” The firefighters saved 6000 properties from the Yanchep infer­no, meaning hundreds of family still had a home on Christmas Eve. “If I could hug more people, I would,” says Bacci. “That fire was fought by so many agencies and so many great firefighters. She says the firefight is also about forging friendships on the frontline. “I call Wendy my fire brigade mother, while Tara and I have been best friends since she joined two years ago,” Bacci says.