Local resident and CFA member Kelly Hicks said last year’s fire season was the worst she had seen.
By Melissa Meehan
IN ALL HER years fighting fires, Pakenham Upper CFA’s Kelly Hicks said 2008/09 was the worst fire season she had encountered.
After fighting fires at the Police Paddocks in Endeavour Hills a week before Black Saturday, Kelly then fought the Bunyip State Forest fires, and a week later made her way to Kinglake to give local firefighters there a rest.
“If I was going to pick out one fire that sticks in the memory – more emotionally than anything, it would have to be Kinglake,” she said.
“I’ve been to a lot of big fires, but driving into Kinglake, you could just feel the emotion in the air.
“Driving along you could see the tape and the people who didn’t want to leave but had nothing left – it was horrible.”
Kelly said being there was something surreal – much different to seeing the devastation on television. She said driving into the town, she expected to see the same images that she had seen on television for over a week – but it was nothing like it.
“The smells and senses,” she pauses.
“When you see it on the screen it’s devastating – but when you go there and see the people, their faces and they have nothing, it was just, it sticks in the mind.”
While in Kinglake, Kelly and her team relieved a lot of the local CFA members who had been fighting fires for over two weeks.
They did some blacking out and focused on areas where there was a possibility spot fires could reignite.
Her team was also on call to any fires in the area while they were there.
The days were long, but Kelly said it was important for her team to help out other volunteer firefighters in need.
“We got bused up at 5am in the morning and wouldn’t get home (to Pakenham Upper) ’til midnight,” she said.
“We’d meet in Pakenham, get on the bus to Hallam and then go on to Kinglake from there.”
Kelly made the trip three or four times.
She said fighting fires in new areas was often difficult, but that crews relied on local knowledge of people in the towns.
“In Bunyip we were able to work out possible exit points because we knew the area,” she said.
“But in Kinglake we needed to listen and ask a lot of questions.
“And if you see a local grab them and listen to what they have to say.”
Spending time away from friends and family can be just as demanding as fighting the fires, but Kelly says her family’s link with the CFA means she’s never too far from the ones she loves.
“I know that I probably won’t see my mum or dad for three or four months when the fire season starts,” she said.
“But I know that when I am heading out to a job, mum or dad are overlooking what is going on from the Incident Control Centre.
“I think Christmas last year was the first one in a while where we have all been able to eat a meal together.”
Since the Black Saturday fires that swept the state, Kelly said there had been a large increase in numbers of the community who want to join the CFA. For the first time since it began, the Pakenham Upper CFA needed a roster for the 2009/10 fire season because it has so many members.
