Hugs– the secret fire weapon

By Kath Gannaway
HUGS and bits of old carpet are hardly standard CFA fire fighting equipment but on Black Saturday members of the Wandin Fire Brigade used them very effectively on the front line.
Wandin is unique in the Yarra Valley as a combined fire and rescue unit.
On 7 February, with one of the fire trucks already out and calls pouring in for help with the Coldstream/Gruyere fires, the pumper and the road rescue unit were all Peter Polovinka, in charge of the station had to offer.
With the fire heading towards Wandin, he sent them out with a clearly defined mission – particularly relevant for the rescue unit which has no firefighting equipment.
“Get in the trucks and do the best you can,” he recalled saying.
The brigade had a number of call-outs on the day and with the communications systems out of action it was, again, back to basics.
Mr Polovinka has since taken on the role of brigade captain.
“We used this like an old watch room,” he said scanning a bank of radios and other electronic equipment which under normal circumstances would serve the brigade well enough.
“I had one of the members relaying where the fires were and it was like the system we used in the old days, the only difference was we were using mobile phones, not radios.”
He is enormously proud of his people, but also of the residents who were fighting the fire with everything they could lay their hands on, alongside the CFA volunteers.
The fire came up Leonards Road towards Boundary Road at Coldstream and was heading for Wandin.
“There were a lot of people, private people as well as fire fighting vehicles, working on that fire and there is no doubt it was the quick response and the combined efforts which stopped the spread.
“It was a smart move,” he said.
It was the potential for that fire to go through Wandin and on to Mount Evelyn and beyond, to the Dandenong Ranges, that is so frightening.
As with so many other fires on that day, it was a wind change that ultimately avoided that scenario.
Angela McCormick is one of 13 female members of the brigade.
At 48 it is more usual for volunteers to have had 20, even 30 years’ experience behind them.
But Ms McCormick is a late-comer having joined in 2006, the same year she trekked the Kokoda Track with a group of her Upper Yarra Secondary College students.
She had no qualms about heading out in the rescue unit.
“It was about getting crew on the ground,” she said. With the radio system down, they followed the smoke trail.
“We came across two houses where the fire was burning right up to the concrete at the back door.
They had very little water pressure but had pieces of carpet and were using them to put out the flames until a tanker arrived.”
The reality of just how frightening it was for the residents, battling with whatever they had on hand in the hot, windy and smoky environment, is something Ms McCormick will never forget.
“I offered to take over a hose from a woman and she turned around and just looked at me with a terrified look,” she recalled.
“I just said ‘oh, you need a hug’. She looked so scared. I said to one of the guys, ‘take the hose; I’m giving people hugs’.”
Hugs are not specifically identified as part of CFA training, but community support is.
“It’s not just being there on the end of a hose, it’s about camaraderie of the community,” Ms McCormick said.
“When you see someone with such a terrified look on their face, that’s what they need.
“You are thinking in the minute, but it’s about teamwork too, there was someone there on my team to take the hose.”
Like Mr Polovinka, Ms McCormick is proud of the job Wandin CFA volunteers did throughout the February bushfires, and is unstinting in her praise for the efforts of the Coldstream/Gruyere residents.
One thing that still surprises Mr Polovinka, however, is that there are still people who don’t realise their local CFA firefighters are volunteers.
“A lot said they couldn’t believe we were volunteers risking our lives and doing it for nothing,” he said.
“We say it comes from the heart… not the hip pocket.”