‘One day we were fighting fires, the next day people were being evacuated because of flooding’: Whanganui firefighter back from Queensland wildfire relief

Whanganui volunteer firefighter Aaron Hartley is back from battling wildfires in Queensland, Australia.

Whanganui volunteer firefighter Aaron Hartley is back home after battling wildfires in Queensland through extremely high temperatures and heavy rains.

Hartley, a rural fire officer with the Whanganui Volunteer Fire Brigade, was part of the second deployment to the state from Fire & Emergency NZ (Fenz).

The Bravo Deployment consisted of four five-person crews and two strike team leaders.

They were sent to assist the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) after large wildfires broke out in the state at the end of September.

Hartley said it was good to be back in cooler conditions as the high temperatures he experienced in Queensland made his work a challenge.

“I’ve personally never experienced the weather to be that hot before,” Hartley said.

Temperatures during the daytime peaked between the high 30Cs and mid-40Cs, while back in Whanganui temperatures were much cooler.

“I was looking at the weather back home and it was like, oh 12C in Whanganui, that sounds nice.”

For the two-week deployment, Hartley and the rest of the Bravo Deployment were based in the town of Emerald and fought a fire in the Carnarvon National Park in Central Queensland.

The team was there for the relief of the QFES, to be used for any roles necessary.

“That was either being on standby or a new start if [a new fire] started and also to do other logistical stuff that [QFES] haven’t got the manpower to do,” he said.

The fire they battled was around 350,000ha inside and from top to bottom covered a distance of around 100km.

The squad was sent to fires in the area and aimed to control the blazes by using a technique called “blacking out”.

“Blacking out is making sure the edge, possibly 30m in, is completely, 100 per cent extinguished so that the fire can’t travel out of those containment lines,” he said.

Whanganui volunteer firefighter Aaron Hartley.

However, within the first week of their deployment, heavy rains rolled into the area, which got the fires under control but also presented a whole new threat to residents.

“One day we were fighting fires, the next day people were being evacuated because of flooding,” Hartley said.

The rains also brought increased humidity, which presented new safety issues for the strike team.

“When the temperature’s high and the humidity’s high, it’s probably more dangerous than just super-high temperatures because there’s more moisture being sucked out of your body and you sweat more.”

The wet conditions also made driving treacherous.

Near the end of the deployment, the team took part in a 10-hour convoy drive from Rockhampton to Brisbane to demobilise all the fire engines brought to fight the fires and take them back to base.

Some of the fire engines needed to fight the blaze on the way back to Brisbane.

Due to the rainfall and a significant drop in the number of fires across the state, Bravo Deployment will be Fenz’s last deployment to Queensland for the foreseeable future.

The two deployments made up a total of 53 personnel from Fenz, the Department of Conservation and forestry industries.

Hartley said the fires being brought under control and Fenz’s help no longer being required was a good result.

“It is a good result for Queenslanders themselves, they thanked us for bringing the rains,” he said.

The team’s morale was high over the deployment and they remained flexible and tackled tasks when they came up.

Now he was back home, Hartley said he would be preparing for New Zealand’s own wildfire season.

Finn Williams is a multimedia journalist for the Whanganui Chronicle. He joined the Chronicle in early 2022 and regularly covers stories about business, events and emergencies. He also enjoys writing opinion columns on whatever interests him.