Sunday part II - now for the scary part!

At around 3:15pm (hottest part of the day!) power-trip dude and side-kick decided they'd go for a little drive to see when their buddies were going to show up. They'd radio'd or called for back-up from the forestry a little while earlier. Those of us that were doing some work realised that we were approaching a very steep gully so we decided to move the cars further ahead of the fire as it would be safer there for them. After a few minutes another member came up to us (Michael and I decided to stay with the cars in case we needed to move them again with any urgency) and said Dad had decided to back-burn a little faster as the wind was circling in this little gully (kind of forming a wind tornado) and he was worried the fire would get away from us) I should also mention at this point that we were burning a break to keep ahead of a huge fire that was burning down in the gully below us. We were up on top of the ridge.
Michael and I left the cars because we had the drip-torches and burnt from near the back of the cars back down the hill to were nearly everyone else were. Dad rushed past and asked us to hurry, but we were both having trouble with the flow of our drip-torches so it was taking a little longer than usual. Mine was working a little bit better than Michael's so I kept going past him and when I reached the others I had a little breather - it was really hot!!
Meanwhile, Justin and Rob had also walked up around the gully to try to contain the back-burn with the swirling winds. Michael said he'd also go back and try to help. So at this point it was Mum, myself and Ronnie at the bottom of this section. Mum and Ronnie were talking about something or other when I noticed the glow of flames on the trees at the bottom of the gully - the fire we were trying to protect ourselves against had just entered into the swirling winds. I stepped forward (near the edge of the fire-break) to see better and must have called out to Mum and Ronnie cos next thing there was an absolute wall of fire leaping up in front of my face! Fortunately we'd already completed our back-burn there so the fire had no more fuel to consume and died down in about 4 VERY LONG seconds. Lucky, I thought!
But with that, the fire had charged up an almost vertical hill on the other side of our little gully heading straight for the cars! Mum was on the two-way yelling for our members to 'Get out, just get out!' and Ronnie had run back around the little gully - almost into the flames to try to save our guys! I think I said 2 prayers (obviously very quickly) while watching a 200 foot flame-front shoot up the hill on the other side. Id always thought they exagerated on the movies, but it really did move THAT quick!!! We were convinced our guys had perished on the other side but couldn't see anything for the smoke and flames. We were sure they didn't have enough time to get out. The fire was so hot it left white ash where fully grown trees had been moments before! Massive Black Boys (over 10 feet high some of them) were nothing but ash - not even their stalks survived.
Ronnie came back unscathed, but seriously alarmed, and Mum was still trying to reach them on the two-way. The reception for it wasnt good, so I took it off of her and climbed another 30 feet up an almost vertical slope to get better reception and hopefully reach our guys.
After several minutes of trying I finally heard Dad's voice (which meant that he'd survived, and so had our truck - not terribly important in that it was our vehicle, but INCREDIBLY important to have a working vehicle if we had any injured members who desperately needed medical attention) so we talked about who i had with me, who he had with him etc, but the line wasnt clear and I never heard him say Michael's name. (Turns out it was just that a static crackle occured each time he said his name). So I had impossible visions of Michael, and of me being a widow...very distressing, but the reality was that the fire was still burning so hot we couldn't even get near where we'd last seen them. Im sure Michael has told you his end of the events, so I'll skip over that, but suffice it to say that we were VERY, VERY lucky our guys got out alive, and I was so elated when I saw him walk over the ridge-top an hour later, following the dozer. Fire-fighting is a very serious and dangerous thing to do, and we would not do it if our properties/homes/lives were not in danger of being lost. However, as we have been fighting fires for the last 20 years in this type of country, we do know what is best, and how to handle our back-burns. In summary, our men (and women) would not have nearly died on Sunday if the Forestry guys (particularly power-trip dude) knew even a tenth of what we know about fires in our type of country.
That's it, bed time now :)
BEC