Fighting wildfires, from northern B.C. to New South Wales, is a family affair
Credit to Author: Gordon McIntyre| Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 00:12:09 +0000
There was a bit of down time Tuesday night in Merimbula, halfway between Melbourne and Sydney on Australia’s southeast coast, giving Jeff Austin a chance to answer some questions from a reporter via email.
But by Thursday the forecast is for temperatures to surge to 35 C with wind shifts.
“Things will get sporty again,” said Austin, a 60-year-old wildfire fighter from Williams Lake. “With the amount of unsecured fire line there still is out there … ”
Austin, a veteran of 41 firefighting seasons who is an air-attack officer at the Cariboo Fire Centre, is in New South Wales as part of the Canadian effort to tame the unprecedentedly devastating blazes that have been raging across the country.
Down Under he is an air-attack supervisor, organizing 15 aircraft — Astars, a BK 117, Hueys, Blackhawks, a Skycrane, a Chinook and fixed-wing Fire Boss skimmers — and their crews. He and a pilot fly over the fires every morning to plan the day’s action based on what’s in danger, crew status and the behaviour of the fire.
Bateman’s Bay, Eden, Bermagui, Moyura, he’s seen a lot of scorched earth and burnt-out shells of buildings.
“We are flying up to 10 hours a day and yes, we are tired,” the sole Canadian in the Merimbula crew said. “In essence, it is Groundhog Day every day.”
The news clips you’ve seen may look horrific, and they are, he said, but it’s worse live. Ash and charcoal where once there were homes. Whole valleys burned side-to-side.
“I have never experienced anything on this scale before, and this is not my first rodeo,” he said.
Hundreds of fires, some classified as mega-fires, have or had been burning since September, killing an estimated one billion animals and putting some endangered species at risk of extinction.
The fires, covering 186,000 square kilometres as of Jan. 20, have killed at least 34 people, including three U.S. firefighters on Jan. 24 when a C130 water bomber operated by Port Alberni’s Coulson Aviation crashed.
“Jeff phoned me immediately to let me know he was OK,” Austin’s wife, Jo Anne Fosbery, said.
Fosbery, Austin’s wife of 30 years, has been back at their ranch looking after the horses, cats and dogs, while keeping the wood-burning stove going non-stop so pipes don’t freeze in the minus-30 C temperatures the area has experienced recently. All while the emergency nurse has been on call 24/7 from the primary-care station at Tatla Lake.
With a 22-year-old son, Vince, who is also a wildfire fighter, she tries not to worry.
“But absolutely I do,” she said over the phone from the family home 30 km outside of Williams Lake. “I do every fire season.”
Because Austin’s job is to fight fire from the air, Fosbery likes to get to know the pilots who fly him around. Some are experienced, some look like they’ve just begun shaving, but once she’s met them they become like family, she said, and she feels comfortable.
“With him being in Australia, I don’t have that comfort, I don’t know who they are and that makes it seem more precarious and less safe. I worry, but I try not to and I certainly try not to communicate any fear to him so he doesn’t have more to worry about,” she said.
The livestock’s water froze the day before Austin was scheduled to leave Vancouver and his flight to Australia, so he postponed his departure to make sure their animals could drink before catching the next available flight.
Fosbery chopped enough wood to get the house through the winter in warmth, has had to plow her road and is now spreading dirt-and-sand on it because it’s turned to ice.
She is, Austin said, one tough Chilcotin gal. But Fosbery said she’s nothing special.
“A lot of women around here hold down the fort while their husbands are away at jobs,” she said.
It will have been 38 days of Austin being away when he returns home Feb. 10, a long haul as he put it.
“He actually looks forward to coming home and the cold winter,” Fosbery said. “He’s looking forward to coming home and skiing. Winter is when we get a break, by May we have fires here again.”