A busy week in the life of an Echuca CFA volunteer

Friday, November 19, 10.04am: Fire reported in toilet block at Echuca College. Echuca CFA attended and extinguished the fire, secured the scene, and returned to the station within the hour.

Friday, November 19, 10.15am: Flames reported coming from a car on the Northern Hwy. Echuca CFA sent second main appliance and the cause of the fire was quickly controlled. Appliance returned to the station in little more than an hour.

Friday, November 19, 9.20pm: Echuca CFA called to an undefined fire on Ogilvie Ave. Two appliances attended and after some concern traced the source of the report. Situation resolved and appliances returned to base within an hour.

Sunday, November 21, 11.34am: Echuca CFA joins numerous local brigades in a call to burning haystacks west of the twin towns. Crews battle for hours to stop flames spreading to surrounding paddocks and other sheds. They return to base around 6pm – and as with all callouts, then have to clean and restow all trucks and equipment used.

Sunday, November 21, 4.36pm: Echuca CFA Captain Rob Amos sends out appeal for members to come and help exhausted teams with clean-up.

Monday, November 22, 11.55pm: Another haystack fire, another need for as many members as possible, as units from multiple stations in the district watch a small fortune in hay go up in smoke as it was too well alight when they arrived. But another shed was saved by Echuca units despite several spot fires starting.

Tuesday, November 23, 12.18am: Call goes out for backup members to get Echuca’s floodlights to the scene as firefighters battle incredibly thick smoke and a fire pumping out draining heat from its 849°C core. All teams get back to base around 4.30am; still facing over an hour of clean-up before any chance of seeing beds. Some go straight to work.

Tuesday, November 23, 11.41am: Call from local farmer of silos overheating and grain storage bags on fire; desperately wanting tankers to hose down silos lowering their temperatures and extinguishing grain bags. Echuca CFA turns out for the fifth time in 48 hours. The members involved are back after a two-hour turnaround.

On Tuesday morning it was still dark as Kyle Bartlett rolled his last hose; stowed his firefighting gear in the Echuca fire station’s turnout room for the next call; and finally, as the sky gave way to grey and light started filtering in, went to work.

It was just 5.30am.

And he hadn’t just got out of bed, he had been at a haystack fire for the previous five-and-a-half hours.

He wasn’t alone. Echuca CFA volunteer members across the twin towns were using matchsticks to keep their eyes open after the brigade had just attended its 10th callout for the past week – and its fifth in the previous 48 hours.

Many of them were knackered, pure and simple. But across the brigade membership they kept answering the calls, kept fighting to protect the property of community members and (mostly) kept going to work.

Kyle has run 7 Beans on High St in the heart of the port precinct since 2016. Earlier this year he opened another 7 Beans in Kyabram; two weeks ago, it was the launch of 7 Beans Coffee Express in Hare St and now Alpha Espresso by 7 Beans (which will be in Echuca St, Moama). Nine months of the year he does a night shift at Kagome – and he runs an online business in the NFT (non-fungible tokens) space. Slightly complex to explain here, but it is increasingly taking up more of his time.

Yet of the 10 calls attended by Echuca CFA in recent days, Kyle managed to make eight of them.

“As a kid I always wanted to be a fireman, you know how it goes, you get a little fire engine and a helmet for Christmas, but for some reason had always thought they were professionals — and I didn’t want to go down that path,” Kyle said.

“Then a customer, who was also with Echuca Village CFA, explained it all to me and I was down at the Echuca station the next day to see the captain (Rob Amos) and get started – and I have loved every minute of it.”

Despite his workload (sleep must slot in there somewhere), Kyle reckons he currently makes at least 50 per cent of the Echuca CFA calls. He won’t abandon a shop if he is needed to serve.

But he says it doesn’t take long for his staff to understand what the alarm is that keeps going off in his pocket.

“I straight away am given ‘the look’ by whomever is on at the time, but they really are fantastic and if they can handle things they seem happy to see the back of me,” Kyle said with a laugh.

“When I am working at Kagome, basically from February to October each year, there’s no nicking off because whether it’s tomatoes, carrots or beetroot, everyone is going flat-out around the clock,” he said.

“It was harder when I had just the one store, because I was very hands-on in that role, but now with the extra stores I have become something of a nomad between the stores, so getting to more calls is much easier now.”

At its worst, the second night of haystack fires, the blaze had heated to 1031°C – it might have got hotter but none of Echuca CFA’s tired volunteers were putting their hand up to get closer to find out.

One of the downsides of being a firefighter is many of the calls you receive are about bad news. By extension, every alarm can mean a life at risk, a home and a lifetime of memories on fire, or a grassfire trying hard to turn into a bushfire.

The damage bill for the recent haystack fires will run into six figures; that’s a heartbreaking place to find yourself – you went to bed planning the next day and are woken to discover those plans going up in flames, along with a year’s work and potential profit.

Echuca CFA Captain Rob Amos said it could be a confronting experience for all volunteer firefighters because they were turning out to fires in their own backyard.

“Our members are trained to deal with a variety of dangerous conditions, not just fires, but, inevitably, one or more of our team is going to find themselves at a fire or a crash or something that involves a friend, even a family member, because we live in a small town,” he said.

“That makes some callouts much tougher than just dealing with the immediate problem, and that’s why these volunteers should be, and are, held in the highest esteem. They have to park their own feelings until they get the job done.

“It is the same for other volunteer groups in town, such as the SES and Search and Rescue. All volunteers doing their best to help.”

Kyle agreed, saying the new members keep coming to bolster the brigade’s ranks and, like him, everyone is there to help as best they can – whether they are at the fire front or helping co-ordinate and support from the station.

He said being able to do something so important for his community was a prime motivation.

“I look at the 12 new recruits who have now completed their training and are attending fires and I think they are a fantastic group, so very impressive,” Kyle said.

“They are turning out at every call, they are keen and quick to learn and welcome instruction from the more experienced members — they are a pleasure to work with.

“And that is important, because everyone wants to come home from every job in one piece, and that means you are relying on everyone in the team to have your back, just as they rely on you.”

The CFA motto is, Everyone Comes Home.

Using his spare three or four hours a day to sleep – unless he can find something else to do – Kyle has become a big fan of energy drinks. His current pick is Red Bull and V, as well as his own ‘coffee magic’ – a double shot ristretto that does wonders for the attention span.

“What’s not to love about being a firefighter with Echuca CFA? You get the satisfaction of knowing you can really help, and really make a difference,” Kyle said.

“The CFA is a family, the Echuca brigade is a family, it’s my family.”