‘You could feel it sucking in the wind and fuelling itself’ — Albany vollie’s dramatic account of Perth blaze

Stretched out in a line with the firefront heading towards them, Great Southern volunteer firefighters were all that stood between homes and destruction. “The fire creates its own wind,” Elleker Volunteer Bushfire Brigade’s Maxine Jones said. “The closer it gets, it sucks the air in. The fire was coming towards us and the closer it got, you could feel it sucking in the wind and fuelling itself. “We were in a line — appliance, appliance, appliance — waiting for it.” Ms Jones was one of 22 volunteers from the Great Southern district who spent three days in the thick of the action tackling the Perth Hills bushfire last week. She saw no homes destroyed during her three days with the Great Southern Strike team. Ms Jones has spoken about the ferocity and scale of the blaze that destroyed 86 homes — and the incredible Statewide effort that saved an estimated 195 others. Facing a fire with a perimeter of more than 100km, firefighters had specific zones to cover. The Great Southern Strike team was on the north-west edge of the blaze. After briefings at 7am, they stayed on the fireground into the evening. Unpredictable weather meant even the best laid plans had to be redrawn on the fly. “The thing that really struck me was that even though we were getting updated weather and wind patterns, it was like the range had its own version of the wind,” Ms Jones said. “At one point we were getting ash on our back but there was no fire behind us. “It was actually curling back on us. “At night-time the wind was really very unpredictable. That was when protection that we’d done got undone because the wind was doing its own thing.” At the peak of the incident, there were more than 500 fireys on the ground. Volunteers would check properties to make sure they were properly prepared and no one was home. Ms Jones said they defended at least a dozen homes over the three days. With a COVID-19 lockdown in Perth, they had to wear face masks when they were not fighting the flames. Returning home on Sunday, the crews that made up the Great Southern Strike Team went their separate ways. Ms Jones said the local volunteers had been eager to join the fight in Perth, returning the favour from previous bushfires in the Great Southern. “I was at the Stirling Range fire and you see the Perth Hills trucks in there and you think, ‘Wow’,” she said. “Even at the briefings last week, you had all of these people that had come from all over the place. “They’re vollies — they’ve left their families, they’ve left their workplaces and there’s just a real feeling of camaraderie.”