Shaun Skelly of the RATs: it runs in the family
The RATs are choppered in and out of Tasmania’s remote areas to fight bushfires. It sounds glamorous — but nothing could be further from the truth.
Shaun Skelly wasn’t even born when his father joined up as a volunteer firefighter shortly before Tasmania’s horror bushfire season of 1967. In fact, he doesn’t remember his dad’s years in the service at all. But Skelly’s two brothers – seven and 12 years his senior – grew up seeing the old man jump on the fire truck, and it inspired them both to become career firefighters. And Skelly, in turn, was inspired to follow in their footsteps. Now, all three brothers are professional firefighters in Hobart – and all three also put up their hands for a side gig: the challenging, specialist, dangerous work of the Remote Area Teams, or RATs for short.
It sounds glamorous, on the face of it: the RATs are choppered in and out of remote areas to fight bushfires. Each team comprises a minimum of four, including a crew leader, a specialist tree-feller and a specialist first-aider; their ingenious techniques to secure a water supply for their hoses include the use of portable PVC dams that they’ll set up on a ridgeline – filled by helicopters, one 1000-litre bucket at a time.
It can be hellish work. On this day last year, Skelly’s team was dropped off near the Hartz Mountains to fight a bushfire sparked by lightning, and it took them three hours to battle through barely a kilometre of thick scrub, carrying tools and 20kg backpacks, just to reach the fire line. Then the really hard work began: digging up smouldering peat from the forest floor, and cutting trees to make a hole in the canopy so the pilot could lower in water buckets to douse it. Skelly, 42, a father of three, is pictured having a quick break – a moment captured by fellow RAT veteran Warren Frey. “All day you’re breathing in smoke, sweating, covered in ash,” says Frey. “But no one ever complains. In fact, the harder it gets, the more we joke about it.”