NOT MANY people, maybe none, were as destined to be firefighters as Alan Eley. His parents were station keepers for three decades and Alan was actually born in the old Echuca fire station. Destiny, clearly, had already made up its mind about where life would take Alan and the community is all the better for it.
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Firefighting is in Alan Eley’s blood.
He was, quite literally, born into it – his mother gave birth to him in the old fire station.
His parents were the Echuca station keepers for 32 years and it was a genuine double act.
“Dad had to go to work but somebody had to be there all the time, so mum would ring the fire bell and all that business,” Alan recalled.
That was almost 90 years ago and while he might not be as quick as he once was, Alan is still going strong.
Despite being retired for 34 years.
The 89-year-old, affectionately known as Pa, has been involved with the CFA since he was 14 and has spent the past 25 years as Echuca’s volunteer fire investigator – a community service recently recognised with life membership of the Victorian Association of Fire Investigators (VAFI).
The humble great-great-grandfather is more “embarrassed” than anything else, but the award is well deserved considering he’s investigated 550 fires across a quarter of a century.
“I asked the (VAFI) president why and he said: ‘we think of you as a role model as you show investigators that once they reach retirement age, they don’t have to stop’,” he said.
So what is it that keeps the veteran firefighter going after all these years?
“I suppose I’m not a person to sit still and it keeps my mind active in today’s world,” he said.
Born in the Great Depression year of 1929 in the old Pakenham St fire station, Pa formally joined the brigade in 1944.
After marrying wife Jean, the couple moved to Melbourne where Pa joined the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in 1953.
Things were a lot different then.
“Firefighting used to be a lot of manual work,” he said. “When we had house fires in the early days, smoke was not a problem. You had one size hose and water from a hydrant.
“They would say go in the front door through to the back door and have a spit. But now because there’s so much plastic in houses, you can’t get through the front door without a breathing apparatus.”
As a paid firefighter, Pa spent 32 years as the northern district officer.
“I had all the brigades in the district under me so I needed to make sure they were doing their drills,” he said.
“If they had a fire and couldn’t find the cause, they’d ask the district officer to come because in those days they didn’t have a designated investigation side so it was left to the district officer to do that job.”
And that’s how fire investigation started — eventually being accredited for structures, bushfires and vehicles.
“They were all challenging,” he said.
“You need to figure out where the fire started and how it started.
“If you take a house, you start at the least damaged area and work to the most damaged and that becomes your area of origin. In that, you’ve got to find the point of origin and look for indicators and various burn marks on furniture or a V-pattern going up the wall. Then you’ll find out which way the fire travelled.
“It’s the same when you go to bushfires, but you work the opposite way because most of the time with grassfires the cooler area is where it starts. As it gains momentum, it becomes hotter.”
Discovering bushfires had been deliberately lit was always hard to stomach.
“I get annoyed because a lot of them are smaller but they can take on larger fires,” he said.
“People think ‘we’ll light a little bit of grass over here’ and they get a thrill out of that and so they light a bigger one. And then they end up destroying other people’s property.”
As with most emergency service responders, Pa has seen his fair share of destruction and death.
But it’s the loss of young lives that hurts the most.
“There’s been a few fatal fires I’ve had to investigate, but it’s the children that really get you,” he said.
“I remember a little boy who was killed when a campfire on the Murray River burnt a caravan annex.
“Before I went to Melbourne, when I was still volunteering in Echuca, there were two children, left alone by mum and dad who’d gone to the Salvation Army hall.
“There was a fire at the house and I don’t really know what caused it but they were both killed.”
Not all tragedies he’s seen involved fire – he recalled a horrific car accident he was called to in Blackburn in Melbourne.
“The first thing we saw was the engine of this car in the middle of the road 100m up from the accident,” he said.
“I thought how’s that? This car with four young fellas in it had come around the corner and hit a light pole so hard that the engine catapulted out.
“Unfortunately three of them were thrown out and their remains ended up in a couple of different driveways.
“The ambulance people gave us plastic bags to pick up bits and pieces. And then we had to wash the blood off the driveways and poles.”
The fourth man also died, but his legs were stuck so he was trapped in the car.
“The police surgeon happened to go past and we were having trouble getting his body out so he said: ‘Got a knife?’ and he cut both his legs off,” Pa said.
“When I was driving back that night, I thought ‘I wonder what my children are doing tonight’?
“So yeah, things like that really hit you.”
And while fires are never a laughing matter, there have been some funny situations along the way.
“I went to a house fire in Brunswick and we tried to get in the front door and we’re banging and pushing on it and it just wouldn’t give, so we put the hose in the lounge room and put the fire out,” he said.
“We went round to the back door and found out that this lady had collected newspapers and they were all stacked up in the passage right up against the door.
“We went in to ventilate and went into her bedroom and there was so much stuff on her double bed, she only had a tiny bit to sleep on.
“Then we went into the bathroom and there were all these empty bottles around the floor, you couldn’t walk. She was a hoarder.
“Anyway I’m outside the window of this lounge room and they’re passing the burnt furniture outside and there’s a crowd at the front gate laughing and carrying on. Then the lady behind me says ‘I’m glad I didn’t panic’ and I turned around and she’s bare from the waist up.
“The next day she came to the station all prim and proper as she was going off to work. You wouldn’t know it was the same woman.”
Returning to Echuca to retire in 1984, Pa did anything but stay still.
Echuca CFA was looking for a secretary so Pa put on his volunteer hat once again. And so did Jean, who joined the Ladies Auxiliary.
Unfortunately, she only lived for another four years before dying of a brain haemorrhage.
As difficult as it was losing the love of his life, Pa battled on, as he has with everything.
“It keeps me busy. And my doctor says just keep doing it,” he said.
“I guess health-wise I’m not too bad. Some of the joints are getting a bit creaky, but I went down on the knees the other day and I made it back up again.”
His contribution since then has never faltered and when he was called to the Black Saturday fires 10 years ago, he didn’t think twice.
“I was requested to investigate the Kilmore East fire. That was one of the first ones that kicked off,” he said.
“We spent that first day going up and down hills and what not, then police called us to Murrindindi, which was another source of a fire that took off and went.”
Pa was part of a three-man investigation team which looked into many fires to see if it was part of a larger fire front and whether they were deliberately lit.
“We traced the first one all the way back more or less to the roadside and there was a lot of controversy over what it was,” he said.
“For two weeks we travelled around the area and our team was increased to five.
“We had help from Western Australia and Queensland.
“Because of the high winds in mountainous areas, it was hard to get fire appliances in.
“(Fires) run a lot faster uphill and they’re very hard to control.”
The final death toll from Black Saturday stood at 173 people.
“There were so many unfortunate people who died as a result of the fires,” Pa said.
Not surprisingly, Pa was one of 44 CFA staff to be awarded National Emergency Medals for their service during Black Saturday.
It complemented the Australian Fire Service Medal he received in 1995, as well as the Order of Australia Medal he was awarded in 2014 for his service to the Echuca community.
And that is Alan’s watchword – community.
“The outcome of fire investigation is to help the community by saying, for example, a particular brand of toaster has caused five fires,” he said.
“This goes back to Melbourne and they say ‘right, we’ll contact the supplier and have them withdrawn’. That’s the end result. To help the community and let them know what’s what.”
He also referred to a close call at a house in Ogilvie Ave many years ago.
“These people had just moved into a house where the hot water came from the pipes that went through the stove,” he said.
“Before they got there, the owner had put in a proper hot water service so the plumber capped off each end of the pipe going through the stove so the water didn’t go through.
“The new people decided to cook some scones in the nice wood oven, so they stocked up the oven and went in the room next door to watch TV. A little while later, there was this massive explosion and the stove blew to bits and blew a hole in the brick wall.
“There was a flash fire out of it but had they been in the kitchen, they’d all have been killed.
“Then it happened a week later in another place near Melbourne. So what went on was to the plumbers – don’t cap the pipes because there was still a little bit of water vapour in it and it couldn’t go anywhere so it expands just like a cylinder.”
It’s the satisfaction of helping the community in its time of need which makes Pa proud.
“Even when I was a professional, I still hoped I could help,” he said.
“When you have a fire you lose everything. It’s a bit different to a flood. And it’s pretty distressing for people. And I felt if I could help them a little bit, I’m happy.”