Very Tired Today Due To N.S.W Fires

[Excalabur50]

Hey everyone very tired today both in the body and emotionally as I was on duty on the day the fires broke out on the N.S.W Central Coast and was back at it again on the Sunday till late and I gotta tell ya how hard it is when your mates are out on the fire ground and they are calling out that houses are going up and that they themselves are in danger and you have to say to them, there are no resouces left to send you just battle on as you are it leaves you gutted. I have cried quietly to my self a couple of times just from the sheer scope of things as it was my first time dealing with something of this scale and wasn't prepared how to handle it all but doing better now. The fires are still burning across the state and we have more bad weather on the way.
It's just the start of spring and we have had multiple days of 37 celcius and plus with strong westerly winds of upto 150kph and the forcasts are for no rain of any proportion till at least December so it looks like we are in for a long and very hot summer, there is talk of temps rising to 45 celcius plus during the summer months. Just to give you an idea it is 1037pm whilst im typing this and it is still 29 celcius in my pc room.
I normally don't talk about what goes on at the RFS but I trust my OC3D family and needed to talk to someone and let it off my chest hope you all don't mind.
Cheers Ex.

 

[ShaunB-91]

I think we're quite fortunate to live in a country where this doesn't happen. Same with America with all their tornados and fires.

Stay safe man!

 

[SuB]

Holy shit dude, that's some heavy stuff there. Huge respect to you and your job and your fellow workers mate.

Thoughts are with you all during these very difficult times.

We're all here if you need us fella, we're a family here

 

[barnsley]

We're here for you buddy . You have my admiration for dealing with such a horrible situation.

 

[Excalabur50]

Thanks very much for the kind words, I knew I can always talk to the people on this wonderful forum, the thing that amazes me the most about the RFS is the fact that 98% of the people doing it are volunteers.
Anyway im off to bed now with a lighter heart see you all on the morrow!

 

[SuB]

Sleep well fella, and good luck tomorrow.

 

[Wraith]

Massive respect buddy! I have friends living out in Oz they tell me often just how fortunate we are here in the UK especially when we complain about the weather. Stay safe and our thoughts are with you.

 

[SieB]

Stay safe dude

 

[chrismjurd]

Unbelievable stuff man, just keep doing your best, and stay safe.

 

[WillSK]

All the best mate, stay safe

 

[Remmy]

It sounds like you have an unbelievably hard job, but respect to you for being able to do that, and keeping people's lives safe is one of the best honours

 

[Mark3Max]

Massive respect for you , your fellow workers and the job you do.
My thoughts and prayers go out to you all during these difficult times .
Stay safe and keep up the good fight.
We are all here for you.

 

[dalewakelin]

Respect, stay safe

 

[Excalabur50]

You guys are the greatest, Actually Im one of the lucky ones although Im a fully trained firefighter due to my body not being so good I don't work on the active fire ground, I work in the Comms room and what that involves is running the radios, answering the phone calls as they are given to us from 000, dispatching fire trucks and waterbombing aircraft, keeping the situational awareness boards upto date, keeping hand written logs of all communication as well as organising all other sundries like food and water for the active units.
So as you can imagine it can get very hectic in there during major incedents.
An example of which is we had radio work with 40 trucks and 8 helicopters it gets a tad busy. And trying to hear youself think and hear the radios when the helicopters land at the back of our base for refuelling OMG particularly when it's the Erricson Sky Crane the whole building shakes.
There is some footage on youtube which I will put a link to of one of our trucks as it was first approaching the fire, just hope I can figure out how to post it properly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQJT6QDzFf8 nope still cant work out how to do it lol thought it was phptag but it didn't look right hope a mod can fix for me

 

[Mark3Max]

Wow that's incredible footage , completely overwhelming to see.
I wish there was some way to send you some rain.
Please be safe , and do your best to keep everyone else safe.

 

[ShaunB-91]

Wow, how do you control fires that big? Scary stuff.

 

[Excalabur50]

Thanks for all the support peeps muchly apreciated, got some good news and some bad we managed to get our fires contained but the forcast for tomorrow is for 38 degrees celcius with strong winds from the west again, I really hope they are wrong but time will tell but the guy's and gal's up in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney are doing it much tougher that fire now has burnt over 30,000 hectares and nearly had three fires merge into one super fire so the RFS have 200 trucks out there on standby in case the shit hit the fan.
Also our new prime minister Tony Abbott is a Rural Firefighter and he has left Canberra and is out on the fireground battling the fires too so even though I didn't vote for him I've gotta take my hat off to him for rolling his sleaves up and mucking in with everyone else. Will keep you all upto date with what's going on if you like.

 

[ShaunB-91]

Please do. That's good of the prime minister to help out too, I wonder if ours would do the same...

 

[MrKambo]

that sounds insane!

im glad to see officials actually getting invovled with things like this, just shows alot of character!

take it easy and try and keep safe! hope things swing in your favour!

 

[SuB]

http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?p=688001