Matthew Holland is a member of the Witchcliffe Bush Fire Brigade and captain of the Witchcliffe Volunteer Fire and Rescue Service. He was the winner of the 2015 Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) Youth Achievement Award.
This is his personal account of assisting at the Waroona Fires on Saturday 9 January 2016:
I was first called to join with Cowaramup Volunteer Fire and Rescue at 1330 on Thursday and we were told to meet up in Busselton at 1500 to travel to Waroona.
Once we arrived at Waroona we were tasked out to protect houses to the north of the fire, working between South West Highway and Forrest Highway.
On arrival into Waroona fire activity seemed relatively minor.
After we headed out to our sector, we were then asked to escort two crew change buses that were leaving Waroona and were heading back to Margaret River and Busselton.
As we did so the fire unexpectedly impacted the road we were on and we got the buses through with only minutes to spare.
We were then separated from our sector as the road back to it had become impassable.
It was approximately 1900 hours at this stage.
We had met up with several other crews that had found themselves in the same situation.
Around half an hour later we witnessed the fire cross Forrest Highway just to the north of us.
It was just one huge fireball that came bursting out of pine plantations and rolled straight across the dual carriageway.
At this point we couldn’t go north so we fell back to Preston Beach as we knew there were still people there.
We had started to advise people to leave when we had word that the road into Preston Beach had been blocked.
We ran house to house gathering everyone and getting them down to the beach.
We set up several appliances to protect around 300 people in the car park, which was down at the beach.
Thanks to a timely northerly wind change the town was never directly impacted.
The fire ran through to the beach just south of our location.
We spent a few hours trying to grab some sleep as we wouldn’t be able to get out until the next morning (in the end sleeping under the truck on the road to avoid the bit of rain that had developed!).
At about 0900 Friday morning Western Power crews had been able to clear the road of all of the fallen power lines and trees and we headed back to Waroona. It was quite a sight to see what we thought had been relatively safe previously had now been completely destroyed.
We grabbed some breakfast at Waroona and were just preparing to head home when we were called to a structure fire in Waroona.
One of the local workshops had been impacted and we were working to prevent it spreading between buildings.
We spent about an hour there before being relieved.
We then headed back, taking back roads to avoid a collapsed bridge before taking South West Highway back through Yarloop which had been devastated overnight.
I suspect the wind change that saved us at Preston Beach is what caused the devastation at Yarloop.
We arrived back on station Friday afternoon, 24 hours after leaving.
We next left our station at 0530 Saturday morning to bus up to Brunswick for a change out with the night shift.
We were tasked to asset protection in Cookernup, we spent an hour or so assessing and preparing the town before being called to an outbreak to the east.
We spent the next seven hours chasing fast moving grass fires as far down as Government Road on the back of Harvey.
The fire was fanned by erratic winds that meant we were constantly on the move to try and stay one step ahead, rest breaks were few and far between and I’m pretty sure I drank my own body weight in water to stay hydrated!
Thankfully the wind moderated and the fire slowed as it reached irrigated farm land at the west of Harvey.
We were then relieved by night shift at approximately 1730 and we bussed back home.
