A day me and the rest of the team will never forget. The day started like any other strike team day with a briefing and tasking for the day. We were all pretty happy and cheerful we knew it would be a busy day but we didn't know how bad it would get.

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At approx 1100hrs we got sent to Clarence RFS shed to stage for property protection and while there we started extinguishing small spot fires and protecting the houses near the shed. Within minutes, the fire front was on us as the wind changed and we faced a 30 ft wall of flames. We had to abandon the houses and retreat to safe zone as the fire front passed through. We were getting ember attacks and could not see anything in front of us, it was like midnight. Then my tanker T300 got an emergency call from our team leader to a house on fire with flames from roof and 2 occupants inside.

We got to the house and me and Retained Firefighter Rick Hathrell went to the door and entered the house, it was full of smoke and the ceiling was about to collapse we got the occupants out and safely to the Strike Team Leaders vehicle and we also quickly checked the remaining rooms and located their pet cat that we also saved. The house was not saveable unfortunately and the fire was all around us.

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At this time we exited as quickly as we could and were then tasked to more property protection after what felt like hours but was probably only minutes we were retasked to stage at the monkey cafe at the top of the mountain. We made our way up through fire and smoke we had to stop along the way to assist an RFS strike team defending a property, we had to gain entry to the house for them and check for internal fire and with none found we moved on to the cafe where we met with a strike team of FRNSW pumpers from Sydney and prepared to fight and defend the cafe.

We set up and were ready to go when we got another call via radio from Senior Officers wanting us to pull back and get prepared to be burnt over as it was to late to leave.

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We packed up quickly and retreated to the trucks, the atmosphere in the trucks was tense waiting for a sign or order to move or stay. Eventually we got a break in the fire front and the team leaders got us to make our way down the mountain back to Lithgow it was now 2130hrs and we were all exhausted, physically and emotionally.

We were stood down and returned to our motel for some rest and food.

I'm probably not the best at telling the whole script but this was my experience and at the end of the day we saved lives and property and we all made it home to our families.

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Experiences like these makes me feel sad for the houses we couldn't save and the families who live in them.

Thanks T300 crew Rick Hatherell Jonathon South and Tee.

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