Western firegrounds expecting cooler conditions
Several fires burning in western Victoria have been down graded to advice, after a day of high temperatures and strong winds brought catastrophic fire conditions.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 It's been a hard few days, probably since last Thursday, but it's good to see the cool
00:05 weather change and hopefully get a bit of relief and get on top of everything.
00:10 That sense of relief must have been pretty incredible last night when you got through
00:13 those tough conditions.
00:14 Yeah it was.
00:15 But it was a hard day yesterday, we were expecting worse than we got.
00:19 Mother Nature played a big part in giving us a chop out, as well as resources from other
00:26 firefighters from New South Wales and around the state, and helicopters and bulldozers
00:31 and all the machinery we needed to get on top of it.
00:33 Yeah there was certainly no shortage of crews about here.
00:36 How many people do you reckon you had out and about?
00:38 I think there was around about 700 I think was the call yesterday, from everywhere, which
00:43 is good to see the support you get when something does go wrong.
00:48 And we did see a couple of flare ups around Beaufort, I know there was a bit of smoke,
00:51 a few little fires creeping up, what was the sort of strategy to get on those so quickly?
00:57 As soon as they came up, the ICC that was running out of our fire station, sort of got
01:02 as many people as they can, we just jumped on it quick and hit it hard to stop it spreading.
01:07 And it looked like you were getting a bit of aerial support?
01:10 More than we've ever seen for quite a while, it was good to see.
01:12 And they do a good job, they do the work of probably half a dozen trucks in one hit, that's
01:17 good, helps us get right on top of it when the word go.
01:21 At this point we're at almost a week, what was it like on that Thursday when this massive
01:27 fire first really took hold?
01:29 The first day was quite daunting actually to see it spread so quick, and we were getting
01:33 spot fires from the main fire, probably 10 to 15 kilometres in front of it, up to the
01:38 township of Beaufort and out to Raglan.
01:41 It was definitely a hard day, hard to get on top of, but we kept going and managed to
01:45 get through it.
01:47 That must be incredibly tough for you and your crew when you are the locals?
01:50 Yeah it is, the crew here has been working really hard, we're only a small brigade, most
01:55 of our members have been on it since the start, every day they turn up, put in 11 to 12 hours,
02:01 go home, come back the next day.
02:04 We do it because we're here for the community, not for anything else really.
02:09 Brilliant that the containment lines have held, what do the next few days look like
02:14 with this fire?
02:15 Well if the weather stays the way it is, hopefully it will be good for us because we'll
02:19 be able to go around and keep mopping up, run patrols and just look for hot spots and
02:23 small flare ups and put all that out and that should hopefully wrap it up.
02:27 [BLANK_AUDIO]