A short film made by a Canberra volunteer firefighter about his colleagues' experiences during one day engulfed in the Nerriga firestorm has been released, distilling the ferocity of the Black Summer blazes that raged up and down eastern Australia nearly three years ago.
Martin Greenwood, deputy captain of the Rivers Volunteer Bushfire Brigade, tells a dramatic story in the film Nerriga Firestorm from the perspective of Canberra and NSW volunteers tasked to fires burning near Braidwood, as they are confronted by ember showers and flames shooting more than 60-metres high.
It was Saturday, December 21, 2019, a hot, horrible day when Braidwood was sitting between the huge Currowan fire to the east and North Black Range to the west.
The documentary features interviews with volunteers Katie Tabke (Hall), Matt Dutkiewicz (Rivers), Brett Vey (Molonglo), Gary Hooker (Guises Creek) and David Hanzl from NSW (Carwoola) as they were deployed first to Braidwood, but then diverted to Nerriga, a little village to the north-east of Braidwood, also under threat from two large fires.
The film is raw and real, using footage captured on the day by firefighters on their phones as they sheltered in trucks, from cameras on helmets and from dash-cams in the fire trucks.
"I'm a firefighter, I've been doing it since before I was making a film, so I wanted to tell a genuine story," Martin said.
"One day. This is just what happened. Just here. Not trying to tell the whole story."
It was late afternoon on a summer's day, but just like the Canberra firestorm in 2003, the day turned to night as the smoke and flames blocked out the sun - all captured on camera as the volunteers continued to travel into the heart of the firestorm.
"The footage speaks for itself," Martin said.
The crews were trying to stop the fire travelling across bone-dry paddocks to the Nerriga pub where locals were sheltering, as dozers tried to put in breaks in the darkness.
"It was dark. It was suffocating-ly dark," Matt Dutkiewicz said in the film.
Then the fire hit.
"As a firefighter, you're often close to flames but this was sort of coming out of the sky, over the top of us," Gary Hooker said in the film.
David Hanzl and Brett Vey's crews were sent to protect the old schoolhouse museum in Nerriga, when a shower of embers started to rain down on them, forcing them to take protection behind sheds.
They were actually confronting the firefront which had been funnelled down to their extract location.
There was fire on all sides and no way out.
Katie Tabke, working in forward command in a 4WD, radioed the crews to tell them if they can get out, "get out now", only to be told "We are way past getting out of this".
"Hearing that was pretty stressful," she said, in the film. "And just talking to them and making sure they were okay, you know. They knew what they were doing."
The volunteer firefighters continued down roads and driveways trying to help householders, engaging in property protection.
The sun started to come out again and the crews had a brief rest at the pub, served up spaghetti bolognese by one of the locals.
"I said to her, 'How are you going?'," Gary Hooker said, in the film.
"She said, 'I think I just lost my house, but I'm fine'. And there she is, just serving us."
Katie remembers people sheltering under blankets in the pub.
"That's all they had. They had just lost their homes," she said, in the film.
"That was pretty hard to see."
Nerriga Firestorm was shown this week as part of the Canberra Short Film Festival and in a separate screening for firefighters and their families.
While today's lush, rain-soaked landscapes are in stark contrast to the tinder-dry paddocks of that summer, Martin hopes the film reminds everyone not to be complacent about the ever-present threat of bushfires.
He also hoped the film would honour the work of the volunteer firefighters.
Some fires were still burning in February, 2020. By March, the world was consumed by COVID.
"We never really got to unpack it. I think if COVID hadn't happened, we'd probably still be talking about the fires in a way that we aren't," Martin said.
- Nerriga Firestorm can be seen on YouTube. The link is here.
