Volunteer fireys stand ready to answer call
It's a hot Sunday afternoon, you've just had a beautiful lunch, the cricket is on the television and the kids are running through the sprinklers underneath another clear blue Perth sky.
You've worked all week, and this is your time to relax and recharge. And then you get the call.
There's a fire, a big one, and we need you.
Would you go? Could you go? Should you go?
Well, thousands of volunteer firefighters do, every day, every night. From everywhere.
And since New Year's Day these everyday heroes have helped save the homes of more than a hundred WA families, from Ellenbrook and Bindoon to Rugged Hills and Toodyay - who will all be for ever in their debt.
Justin Smith is one of those volunteers. He is from Vasse and he is a welder.
Bob Mander is another. He lives near Busselton and works as a school-bus driver. Rob Barnett is yet another, a retiree living in Margaret River.
They got the call last week that they were needed in Bullsbrook, where a massive blaze heading towards the coast threatened hundreds of homes.
"We are all volunteers, and so we could all say no - but we never do," Mr Barnett said, as he prepared for another shift, under the helmet and on the hose.
John Matten, who runs the Molloy Island volunteer bushfire brigades near Augusta, mobilised this southern strike team on Tuesday.
And since then his crew has worked 12-hour shifts, back to back to back, damping down and mopping up, to make the sure the fire does not flare up again.
It is laborious, taxing, physical, unglamorous, vital work. And they have done it without complaint, or payment.
"You can be very different people, but the camaraderie is always the same wherever you go," Mr Matten said, who spent his working life in the military.
"And that is very important when you are spending 12 hours in a cab together."
There are 26,000 of these people in WA, members of more than 550 volunteer bushfire brigades. That is more than 80 per cent of WA's firefighting resources.
The Bullsbrook fire blackened nearly 7000ha.
That is a land mass bigger than New York's Manhattan Island.
It was started just after 9.30am and, moving at 3km/h, became life-threatening in just over an hour.
Like the career firefighters, the volunteers and the Department of Parks and Wildlife got to work.
The call went out to the South West, the Lower South West, the Mid West Gascoyne and the Goldfields-Midlands regions - leading to 400 firefighters on the ground at the fire's peak.
Dave Gossage, vice-president of WA's Association of Volunteer Bushfire Brigades, said the back-up from volunteer support crews who provided fuel, water, food and transport was often overlooked, but never underappreciated.
"People have come from north of Geraldton to Margaret River to fight this fire, from all walks of life, to help each other and the community," he said.
"They can be under an extreme amount of stress, having to make millisecond-decisions."
Mr Gossage, a 34-year veteran of bushfire battle, is one of the most experienced volunteer firefighters in Australia and was involved in fighting the harrowing Victorian Black Saturday bushfires, in which 173 died.
He noted that in the days around the efforts at Bullsbrook, 150 volunteer and career firefighters had fought a blaze at Toodyay, 100 more at another fire at Bindoon, another 100 at Gingin, while other major mobilisations had gone to Donnybrook, Ellenbrook and Rugged Hills.
"People sacrifice their social lives, lose thousands a day in pay, sometimes pay their own expenses - all because they want to help their community," Mr Gossage said.
Emergency Services Minister Joe Francis was one of those battling the Bullsbrook blaze.
Back in his office this week, he said that only two derelict homes and five sheds were lost in Bullsbrook - an astounding testimony to the work of volunteer and career firefighters.
