A TRIO of Country Fire Service volunteers have returned safely to the South East after fighting fires in Queensland over three days in harrowing conditions.
Kingsley Group firefighters Wade Chant, Jason Watts and Stefan Bowden arrived in the sunshine state on Thursday last week and were sent to the town of Canundra to provide support.
They joined 55 other South Australian firefighters for a five-day deployment to help battle raging fires, which threatened the state.
The three volunteers returned to the South East on Monday and Mr Chant said they witnessed the significant loss Queensland had suffered in the fires.
“It was quite confronting,” he said.
“The area was split up into sectors and on the southern sector up near what was the Binna Burra Lodge the fire had burned with real intensity and that’s where they lost the 11 houses.
“We actually came across the lodge when we were doing a patrol of our area and it was a bit confronting because it was just reduced to rubble with only one wall standing.”
Mr Watts said each morning they woke up to a “thick haze” of smoke.
“For as far as you could see it was just this black thick haze,” Mr Watts said.
“All you could hear was helicopters constantly flying over, sirens and radios.”
With the fires burning in inaccessible areas, Mr Chant described the environment as particularly challenging for authorities to get under control.
Without the help of aircraft, he believed the fires would continue to burn.
“We had helicopters filling up from the dams right beside us but there was another dam the helicopters could not get into, so our first task was to move the water before the other ran dry,” he said.
“They had three helicopters going a day and in one day they had something like 230 drops, so without them it would have been impossible.”
He said the terrain presented another challenge for him specifically.
“It was a bit daunting on the cliff sides because when you looked down, you could not see the bottom, so that was a bit scary,” he said.
“By day three I was pretty used to it, so it gave me confidence in my ability.”
It was Mr Bowden’s first deployment to help another state and he said the experience was much different to what he was used to back home.
“It was just so dry, everything seemed to burn so much easier and running up and down hills on the different terrain, it was very different to what we are used to here,” he said.
Mr Chant said the three volunteers were required on the ground for around 12 hours each day.
While he admitted he was now feeling fatigued since returning home, he never noticed it on the job.
“You do not realise it, you just go and get the job done, but when I got back I just crashed,” he said.
“The CFS are really good, they have fatigue management protocols set up so that we cannot attend another call-out for another 48 hours.”
