Chances are Australia could be facing another disastrous bushfire season like the one we experienced five years ago, which from a personal perspective, came too close to home.
I wrote about the night, November 8, 2019, when we could see the glow of flames in the distance racing towards our coastal enclave near Noosa. My wife and I received texts from the authorities telling us to be prepared to evacuate. Some of our near neighbours did just that and we spent a restless night after hearing a news report that a service station just a few kilometres away had exploded in flames.
Fortunately, that was another example of media hyperbole but it was scary stuff, as I described:
In a scene straight out of Dante’s Inferno, flames and embers fanned by winds gusting to 50 knots suddenly threatened thousands of homes at Peregian Beach and other coastal centres to the north towards Noosa, during the week.
While the firies put their lives on the line to save homes, a couple of motorcycle cops and others in a car braved the flames sweeping across access roads to rouse residents from their beds in some cases, and direct them to safety. Their bodycam footage dramatically showed just how horrendous the situation was, as the load hailer message ‘evacuate now’ filled the night air.
It was starkly brought to mind by an article in the latest edition of our local newspaper, Noosa Today, which reported on a bravery award given to an absolute hero who helped save many lives that night.
He wasn’t a firie who played a big role, as doubtless many did. He was a cop. Now retired, the former Senior Constable Stephen Fitzpatrick put his life on the line way beyond the normal call of duty and was recently awarded a Queensland Police Bravery Medal.
As reported, when he went to investigate a bushfire at Cooroibah just north of the international tourism hotspot of Noosa:
He was met by a dynamic fire that was rapidly changing course and firefighters who told him there was nothing they could do. ‘You’d better leave because we’re not hanging around.’
He did not heed that advice.
Working alone, Snr Const Fitzpatrick criss-crossed the road, going from house to house to evacuate people and pets, putting them into the police Landcruiser.
‘I went from one house where there might be no one, then another house and there were two pensioners watching General Hospital, oblivious to the fact their garden was on fire and there was smoke everywhere. So we got their medication, got them in the car. I went to another place. The guy had headphones on. I had to kick his door in, drag him out, put him in the car. I picked up a couple of dogs that were in a house by themselves… I had seven adults, two kids, and a baby (in the Landcruiser) at one stage,’ said Senr Const Fitzpatrick.
He ended up driving on the rims of four flat tyres with fire on both sides of the road.
‘You’ve never seen anything like it. I drove into one place, next minute the gas bottle in the shed blew up, then it came crashing down. I ended up driving through flames. The windscreen wipers were on fire. I had to get the fire extinguisher out. But we didn’t lose any people, that was the main thing.’
This was not the only time he risked his life. When bushfires impacted the Peregian areas, the ones we could see from our home, he was on his way to help again, riding a quad bike to the scene where he put out spot fires in backyards and assisted in evacuations.
Following 22 years in the police service, Senr Const Fitzpatrick has retired with a bravery medal ‘for his exceptional courage and determination to protect the Queensland community during unprecedented and hazardous circumstances’.
Bravo and well done! It’s an exceptional story, but going back to the day of the fires, it’s worth remembering their true cause.
No, it wasn’t ‘climate change’ as some politicians and media headlines proclaimed at the time.
As I said in my article written after that unforgettable night:
Not unexpectedly the fires here, in the Gold Coast hinterland, other parts of Queensland and New South Wales, have sparked the usual outcry from some media commentators and politicians blaming ‘climate change’. This includes the Greens’ Adam Bandt and even Jackie Trad, in her short role as Acting Queensland Premier.
Well, climate change doesn’t provide matches or lighters, and the real tragedy is that the Peregian fire and a number of others were deliberately lit. Two teenagers have been charged with starting the Peregian blaze and police have set up a special task force to investigate, with about 10 so far identified as having been maliciously or negligently ignited.
Let’s hope there will be no repeats over a predicted long, hot summer.
John Mikkelsen is a former editor of three Queensland regional newspapers, columnist, freelance writer, and author of the Amazon Books Memoir, Don’t Call Me Nev.
