Local Firies in Queensland

Three of our local firies flew to the Cairns region recently to assist with the fire effort in Queensland. 1st Lieutenant Shannon Treacy, Captain Mathew Trigg and Barry Gaiter joined the District 20 and District 2 strike teams, flying out of Melbourne on November 10 for a 5-day deployment.

The strike teams worked with members of the Queensland Rural Fire Service (QRFS) to protect key assets and assist landowners with backburning, and were part of a team that extinguished an out of control grass fire heading towards the township of Mount Garnet.

Lodging at Lake Tinaroo, the crews faced a 2-hour drive to the staging area at Mount Garnet and another 45-minute drive to the fire ground each day. The trio was involved in afternoon shifts from 2pm to 7pm, but were still onsite until 10pm most nights, returning to their lodging for a late tea and showers.

Advised to protect landowner assets and monitor the situation, the trio found themselves also taking control of landowner backburning attempts that got out of control. 

“Landowners were doing their own backburning by themselves, and that made things quite challenging, because you have a plan in place, and when you have landowners doing their own thing to protect their property, it changes things significantly,” Lieutenant Treacy said.

They were also part of a crew that extinguished a fire that had jumped the morning crew’s containment lines into a landowner’s property and threatened the town of Mount Garnet, with a population of about 200 people.

“Our crew got in there, and probably within 15 minutes had it all mopped up and it was done – and they couldn’t believe it,” Lieutenant Treacy said. 

Landowners and the QRFS, who had visualised the worst case scenario, were thrilled with the quick result.

“All the feedback we received from the locals was very, very positive, and they were very impressed by our experience and also by our work ethic, and just how effective our work was.”

Lieutenant Treacy said the crew worked exceptionally well in unfamiliar terrain and the deployment provided a new experience. “It was very rocky, very hilly. The roads in were purely bulldozed roads, so that was very different from what we’re used to. The professionalism and the expertise of the crew that we were working with was sensational.

“It was a very interesting deployment, working in different situations, different things that we’re not familiar with, that was quite interesting. Also looking at the effectiveness of backburning, when used correctly, because it is a technique that we don’t use that often here. It was actually quite good to complete some of the backburning.”