Welcome to Australia. We're in the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney
in New South Wales and we're here at the peak of the wildfire season.
We've been given incredible access to one of the world's
biggest firefighting forces at its busiest time of the year.
Every day, the state's 70,000 firefighters can be battling
more than 100 fires across an area bigger than France.
We're following their operations to find out why there are so many
wildfires here, and why they're so hard to control.
- Oh, look out. Right side of the road. - Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!
And meeting the scientists uncovering the secrets
of fire behaviour to help those on the front line.
You'd now be feeling quite a lot of pain potentially on your skin.
- You can't actually... - We've pretty much got two kilowatts on us now.
Oh, wow.
In this first programme, we'll explore the rapid response system
developed to protect New South Wales.
There's 1,162 firefighters, 422 vehicles.
Those are people actually out...
Yeah, absolute deployed on those fires.
We'll reveal the surprising way fires ignite.
It seemed to explode.
And how they spread.
Bits and pieces of the bark have come off
and started a spot fire.
So it didn't just jump the little break,
- it jumped quite a big distance. - It did.
And we'll investigate the technology
being used to find the fires that can't be seen.
Amongst all the foliage there, there's patches of green,
- and green means? - Green means heat.
The camera shows us exactly where to go.
The lessons learnt in Australia are helping firefighters tackle
wildfires across the world.
So join us as we go inside the wildfire.
Sync and corrections by n17t01 www.addic7ed.com
To learn more about wildfires, we've come here to New South Wales
in eastern Australia.
It's home to Sydney and beautiful beaches,
but also stunning mountains, open grassland, and ancient forests.
Now it may all seem calm and tranquil here,
but this is one of the most fire-prone regions on Earth.
Each year, from October through to March, wildfires rage across
this state, impacting the lives of its seven million residents.
New South Wales suffers some of the most intense
wildfires in Australia and we've arrived in January when it's summer
and the season is at its height.
This state spans a vast 800,000 square kilometres
so we're splitting up to follow
all aspects of the operation.
I'm heading west to join frontline teams in fire-prone regions,
while Kate heads to Sydney,
HQ of the Rural Fire Service,
to meet Head of Operations Rob Rogers.
We're getting reports it's burning...
I've arrived at the end of a record-breaking heat wave
with peak temperatures reaching as high as 45 degrees.
So the screens up here,
everything that's listed in these two panels,
are those current fires?
Yeah. So all of the blue dots on the map represent a fire
and an incident that is being managed.
There's 101 bush and grass fires at the moment,
there's 1,162 firefighters, 422 vehicles.
Those are people actually out...
Yeah, absolute deployed on those fires.
There's an enormous number of people that are committed just today
on firefighting operations throughout the state.
To co-ordinate the action, the HQ employs 300 staff.
It seems to me that this is almost like a war office.
That you're standing here looking at, kind of, battles breaking out.
You've got all these skirmishes which are fires that are occurring.
Sometimes they evolve to a point where it's a major event
and that becomes like a major battle, I guess, and we're sending
a lot of resources into an area in a very short space of time,
trying to contain something, which is very much like the military do.
What's surprising about the firefight in New South Wales
is that they're not just contending with
one or two big wildfires,
but over a hundred smaller ones too,
each with the potential to spread.
Today, the operation spans a high intensity blaze
in a pine plantation...
a fast-moving grassland fire in the north
threatening the major highway connecting Brisbane and Sydney...
and a fire
twice the size of Birmingham
that's been slowly burning for a month in remote bushland.
This situation is far from unusual.
The Rural Fire Service has been dealing with this high level
of fire activity for three months.
We've all seen footage on the TV
and this year in New South Wales has been particularly bad.
Back in October, we were starting to lose property,
we were quite concerned about people's lives.
We had firefighters from Victoria, South Australia, ACT and Queensland.
So they all came and helped us when we were very busy,
because we had, obviously, a lot of fire throughout the state
and particularly in the urban areas. So we were quite stretched.
These so-called October fires tore through the Blue Mountains
just outside Sydney at the start of the season.
For five days, New South Wales was declared a state of emergency
while more than 1,300 firefighters battled the flames.
Despite their efforts, the fires destroyed over 200 homes
and did over £50 million worth of damage.
Amazingly, no-one died.
And this year, in all your experience...
how does this year compare?
I think you have to go back probably more than a decade,
probably 2001-2002, we had pretty busy fire seasons then,
and then before that, '94, where we had some pretty bad fires
around Sydney,
and we lost I think 400 or 500 homes in those fire seasons.
So, probably 2001-2002.
Well, I don't envy you. It is a non-stop task.
One reason this fire season has been so bad is the weather.
2013 was the hottest year on record in Australia
and this year seems to be continuing the trend.
This map here, what's this showing us?
Here we're seeing a forecast of the temperatures expected across
- New South Wales this afternoon. - Right.
These darker orange colours that you can see in the north
of the state are corresponding to temperatures over 42 degrees.
That's obviously fairly scorching conditions up there.
Wildfires, or bushfires as they're known here,
are so dependent on weather that the Rural Fire Service
has its own in-house forecaster, Simon Lewis.
So can you explain what the correlation is, the connection,
between weather and fires breaking out?
Weather really is critical for determining amount of fire activity.
The weather on any particular day can make the fire behaviour
much worse, but there's also the long-term effect of the weather.
Over a period of time, if we have drought conditions,
so very dry, that acts to dry out the forests,
the forest fuels, and also the grass fuels.
Wildfires, like all fires, occur when fuel combines with oxygen
and heat in a chemical chain reaction that gives off energy.
The drier the fuel, in this case the parched trees and grasses,
the quicker it will ignite and the more intensely it will burn.
With the land in New South Wales ready to flare up,
forecaster Simon monitors the meteorological data.
He's looking out for a set of weather factors
that will increase the chances of fires igniting,
and also suggest that any fires which do break out
will quickly spread.
When we're looking at fire weather,
we're looking at three main weather ingredients.
The first is temperature, the second is the relative humidity--
when it's very hot and dry, that acts to dry out the fine fuels
which increases the intensity at which the fires burn.
The third ingredient we look for is the wind speed.
The stronger the winds we get, the faster that pushes the fire along.
So, why is there a sense of urgency in here today?
Based on the forecast of temperature, wind and humidity
for today, we've determined that the overall fire danger
is quite high and we do have fire weather warnings current.
Simon's weather warning is key to fire prevention.
- So, you know, 36... - Easterly.
Yeah, wind strength's up a bit.
The Rural Fire Service enforce their highest level of precaution.
Just advising total fire bans for tomorrow.
We've got southern ranges, central ranges...
A total fire ban is designed to prevent residents
from starting fires by mistake.
Sir, just checking you're aware of the total fire ban.
It's now illegal to use solid fuel barbecues or machinery
that could create sparks capable of igniting the dry land.
Thanks, sir. Bye-bye.
Breaking the ban could result in a hefty fine, or jail.
It may seem strict, but it's essential.
Up to 85% of all wildfires in Australia are started by people.
With the chance of fires so high, it's critical to spot them early.
I'm a little bit nervous.
So the Rural Fire Service mobilise a team of key personnel.
I've come to see one of them in action in Galston,
just north of Sydney.
- Hello, there. - Hello, welcome aboard.
- Wow! That gets your heart racing, doesn't it, that climb? - Quite high.
Wow, what an amazing view though.
- Hello, I'm Kate. - Good day. Good morning. Paul's the name.
Nice to meet you, Paul. Thank you very much for inviting me up today.
- What a spectacular place. - It's a fantastic view.
Paul is a fire-spotter.
He helped build this tower 40 years ago
and, ever since, has been on call to scan the horizon
when the danger of fire is high.
- What's this intriguing piece of kit? - We call it a sighting scope.
On seeing a column of smoke,
as we can see at the moment in the distance...
Hang on a second, where's the smoke?
- So... - You are eagle-eyed, aren't you?
- Oh, yeah, there is. - So if you look through there,
you might have to move it so you point exactly...
So, do you want the cross actually on the smoke?
- Yeah. - Is that what you try to do?
- That's the origin of the smoke. - OK.
Actually, there is quite a lot of smoke, isn't there?
Does that give you cause for concern?
That being only a very light-coloured smoke,
it'd be just something like a back-yard, burning pile of rubbish.
- Right. - If that column of smoke goes to a brown colour, a light brown,
then a dark and then into a black,
that generally means the fire has escaped perhaps into the bush
and that becomes what they then call a going fire.
So you're not just spotting the smoke,
- you're actually analysing it... - That's true.
...and knowing from your years of experience
- what type of fire it is. - It is, yes.
Paul reports every fire he spots
to his local Rural Fire Service station.
FireCom, this is Galston Tower,
yellow, with a smoke sighting,
and it's just a steady, rising column, over.
If this fire starts to spread, he'll report in again
and ground and aerial firefighters will be sent to put the blaze out.
How does it feel when you spot a fire?
It's a good feeling.
I guess the aim is you want to be the first one to report it
because you're knocking it on the head straightaway
before it can perhaps get out of control.
You feel elated that you've done something good.
This is one of 50 lookout towers
strategically placed across
the state of New South Wales to protect towns and cities.
Paul's tower is responsible for helping to keep
4.5 million people safe.
You're not too far from Sydney here, are you?
Distance, approximately 30km in a straight line.
So you must play a pretty crucial role in the line of defence
against fire hitting Sydney.
Yes, for sure, we are.
Without us here, things could happen whereby a fire starts,
it escalates before anyone maybe from the public might pick it up,
we report in what we've found and action is taken.
And how realistic is it that a fire could hit Sydney?
Very realistic.
There has been fires north of Sydney recently.
For eight decades, fire-spotters like Paul
have played an indispensable role in feeding back crucial information
to the Rural Fire Service,
but today, modern technology is turning everyone
into a fire-spotter.
Social media has become a real tool for us
because everyone has the ability to share intelligence.
People these days are tweeting pictures very quickly.
The Twitter feed is now so important,
it takes up a place on the main information board.
This is a fire that started out on the Castlereagh Highway.
What they have done, they have tagged us
so at least we've been able to see that picture internally.
We can see it hasn't crossed the road at this stage,
it is starting to build a momentum, it is going to cause some traffic delays.
Photos are brilliant because with them, sometimes,
you can get the geo-tagging out of it so we can pop it on a map.
The Rural Fire Service relay this information
to one of 50 regional control centres
who deploy the nearest crews.
And with weather conditions perfect for fires to spread,
Simon is finding out why every second counts
in the fight against wildfires.
We're on our way to a fire. We're following a fire truck ahead.
We think that there are several other fire trucks and crews
already working on the fire
and they're saying they may have to call in air support.
I'm en route to a fire that's just been reported
near the small town of Wattle Flat in Bathurst.
We can see the smoke through the trees now.
The fire's just here. Let's see if we can stop and get close to it.
With the town just 5km away,
15 firefighters have been dispatched to protect
its 363 residents.
Are you one of the RFS guys or is it your land?
- I told the farm at the bottom of the hill. - You warned them?
Yeah, we rang the fire brigade
and then we came up. Every minute counts.
- You live how far away? - At the base.
- You're presumably always on the alert for it. - Sure.
- Oh, look out. Right side of the road. - Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Watch your footing.
Just suddenly the flames erupted on this side of the road.
There's a firefighter who's gone down the bank,
- he's got the hose down there. - Are you all right, Alex?
They have to throw themselves into danger to try and get the fire out.
You can see the smoke coming off it.
Just 30 seconds, a minute ago, there was nothing going on here.
The firefighters here have a vested interest in saving the land.
They're all local volunteers.
They're part of a 70,000-strong volunteer force
spread across the state, on call throughout fire season.
Yeah, I've got this here now, that's good.
All right?
This team is led by Andrew Seemon.
- Hello there, sir. - Hello. - Are you a volunteer? - Yeah.
What's your normal occupation?
I'm a grazier round here, grazing sheep.
- So you're on the land... - On the land.
What's the aim of firefighting in a situation like this?
Well, we've got to get it out before it gets too hot.
If it gets into scrub on the other side, there's 2,500 acres of scrub.
Stamping out this fire before it starts to spread
further into the scrub is crucial.
A key characteristic of wildfire is its ability to move
and spread rapidly from its source.
In today's dry weather conditions, a fire like this could grow
to the size of two football pitches within 15 minutes.
We've got a chopper coming in now.
Looks like they're coming in to water-bomb.
Whoa!
That just dropped about 20m ahead of us.
- Bloody useful having them up there, isn't it? - It's good really.
They have the outside
and then the volunteers, they go and work their way in.
Helicopters have been dispatched by RFS HQ.
They dump 650 litre buckets of water
on the fastest moving parts of the fire,
while the volunteers extinguish the smouldering areas left behind.
It's ludicrously hot today anyway
but this fire is putting out a huge amount of energy.
I've seen fires before, you see them at a distance,
but I've never been on ground that is still burning.
It's quite a scary feeling actually.
How much of a problem are the fires at this time of year?
Ah, a big problem.
This is the second one today and we had five yesterday up the road.
The crew believe this fire was started by a resident.
Fortunately, their speedy response has enabled them to suppress it
within 30 minutes.
So, the fire's under control?
Yeah, yeah, we're on top of it now, yeah.
- Success! - Yeah, thank you.
In this state, volunteer firefighting teams
are the first line of defence for more than a million homes
built in fire-prone areas like Wattle Flat.
Without their rapid response, it's very easy for a small fire
to become a dangerous threat to property and life.
And back at the HQ, reports are coming in
of a fire that highlights just how quickly this can happen.
Oh, the Oxley crossing. It's broken to the north, as we know,
and is probably under threat in about an hour.
300 miles northwest of Sydney, a fire
on the Oxley Highway
has escaped the control of firefighters.
It's now heading rapidly for 12 houses
in the small town of Rocky Glenn.
I'm just going to put you on a conference call.
Do you believe, as it moves towards the properties, you can defend them or not?
So this emergency warning, tell me what that actually means.
So, really, what that means is to have a red fire is quite concerning
because the amount of destruction that fire can do
in a very short space of time, it's a matter of minutes before
they start impacting on properties.
The Rural Fire Service uses a colour-coded system
to categorise fires in terms of their risk to life,
both to allocate resources and to warn the public.
Blue controlled fires pose no immediate danger.
Yellow fires indicate a higher level of threat
and must be monitored closely.
Red fires are emergency fires.
The question then is to say, OK, it's the highest level of warning,
and we need to now warn that community
and what method do we use to warn that community?
This is a bushfire message from the RFS.
There's a bushfire in the Rocky Glenn area.
Fire your bushfire survival plan, stay up-to-date.
Water-bombing aircraft and helicopters are quickly mobilised.
Number of aircraft inbound and then obviously they're talking
with local police about the closure of the highway.
Four aircraft, 26 trucks and 75 firefighters are dispatched.
The town is saved,
but it will take 48 hours before the fire is back under control.
The Rural Fire Service's network of spotters and volunteers
help tackle the blazes that occur near communities,
but many fires in New South Wales
break out in vast tracts of wilderness.
The way fires start here and the kind of terrain they burn through
demands a different kind of firefighting strategy.
Simon's on his way to discover how you deal with fire
in a remote forest.
It is scorching hot here now.
We're on the edge of the Wollemi National Park,
we're heading into the park now
to see another side of the firefighting operation.
The Wollemi is 80km northwest of Sydney...
and borders the northern edge of the Blue Mountains.
This landscape is carpeted with 70 different species of eucalyptus tree.
When the temperature rises, they release vapour into the air,
creating a blue haze which gives the region its name.
They might be beautiful to look at, but eucalyptus trees
are among the most flammable on Earth.
And they're another major reason why wildfires are such a problem
in New South Wales.
It's stunning, absolutely stunning.
Great to look at, but it's bloody hard work to fight fires in,
let me tell you.
David Crust, affectionately known as Crusty, should know.
He's been leading a team battling wildfires
in this 5,000 square kilometre wilderness for 100 days straight.
The largest fire began five weeks ago.
So far it's consumed 440 square kilometres of forest.
It's taken 74 firefighters
and seven choppers to get it under control.
Today, teams are working to dampen down the last of the embers.
So the crews have been inserted...
- See that rock shelf down the bottom there? - Right.
We deployed them into there and then they walked up-slope from there.
- Working away like little ants. - It must be extremely hard.
It is, it's really challenging for the guys to get around
and it's really hot today.
From up here, I get my first look at the incredible scale
of the destruction.
Down beneath us now I can see the trees have been completely
scorched and blackened.
The canopy looks as though it's been singed,
but the trees and the ground has really burnt.
It's a terrible scar.
Although these eucalyptus trees may look dead, in time they'll recover.
They've been living with wildfire for millions of years
and they've evolved ways to survive.
But around 50km away are a unique group of trees
for whom fire could be fatal.
Crusty is desperate to protect them.
Amazingly, in 1994, a fellow ranger, a guy called Dave Noble,
was exploring some of the canyons around this area,
he found a specimen, something he thought that was pretty unusual.
He took it home, showed it to a botanist, the botanist went,
"Whoa, how about this! This looks just like this amazing fossil record
from the Jurassic period,"
and it turned out to be a new species-- the Wollemi pine.
This is the only place on Earth that the Wollemi pine occurs--
in this particular canyon system in Wollemi National Park.
That... that's... that's spectacular.
The exact location of the Wollemi pines
remains a closely guarded state secret.
- That's the Wollemi pine. - The dinosaur tree.
Wollemi pines have survived here for more than 200 million years.
They're a living relic of the Jurassic age.
- It's like a... a lost world down there. - It is.
The pines actually do look rather special.
They look different, they stand out, they look majestic,
and they reach a hell of a height as well.
They're big trees. They're big, majestic trees.
There's a big tree there we call King Billy, that one there.
King Billy. He's got a name.
He must be up, what, 40m?
Yeah, he's, he's about 40-44m high, so it's a big tree.
The pines have been preserved in a small prehistoric
wetland at the base of this canyon.
So far, it's remained untouched by wildfire, but with this being
the worst fire season in a decade, Crusty must be ever-watchful.
If you had a wildfire coming through here threatening the pines,
what sort of damage could it do?
I mean, presumably, it could wipe them out.
Yeah, it's possible that it could
result in some sort of extinction and, you know,
we're very mindful of that, and it's really important that we
manage fire actively to make sure that it doesn't happen.
Already this season, the wildfires have torched
700 square kilometres of the Wollemi--
that's an area almost twice the size of the New Forest.
And in this remote place,
the majority was started not by humans,
but by a force that's much harder to control.
Lightning is responsible for more than two thirds of the wildfires
in Wollemi Park, but to find out why it's such a fearsome fire starter,
I need to leave the bush and head for the lab.
- Just so I understand, this is a lightning chamber? - Yes.
The lightning current will rush through here, and when it reaches
that point, it'll jump to this tree, which is our test object today.
Professor Manu Haddad,
one of the world's leading lightning scientists,
normally uses his equipment to test the impact of lightning
strikes on airplane parts...
but today he's running a unique experiment.
It's always been accepted that lightning can set a single tree
on fire, but today we're going to try to discover
if lightning also affects the speed at which a fire can spread.
When a lightning strike hits a tree, it will follow a certain path
along the tree, and this is what we're trying to replicate today.
As in the Wollemi,
the target of our lightning bolt is a eucalyptus tree
and, to replicate the leaf litter found on the forest floor,
dead leaves are scattered at its base.
How are we going to be able to see what happens?
I'm presuming we're not going to be able to stand here
- while this is going on. - No, we will go in a safe area.
In order to monitor it, the lightning strike is happening
in a millionth of a second, so what is called micro-seconds,
and a normal camera wouldn't see much,
so we use a very high speed camera, and then that way we can look
at the frames up to a millionth of a second.
This kind of experiment would be impossible to do in the wild.
The special camera should allow us
to examine what happens at the moment of ignition in minute detail.
And what do you think is going to happen to the tree?
We may get ignition.
To recreate one of nature's most powerful forces,
they're charging up the lightning chamber to 55,000 volts.
When unleashed, the lightning bolt will deliver an electrical
charge of 30,000 amps straight to the tree.
For that instant, the power is equivalent
to the output of an entire nuclear power station.
Three, two, one.
That was incredible-- it seemed to explode in there.
It's hard to see exactly what happened in real time,
but the slow-motion footage reveals all.
Look at the... It erupts at the bottom!
That's an incredible sight to see. Can we see it again?
This is extraordinary. Talk us through what we're seeing here.
As the lightning strike hits those trees,
the heat actually ignited those leaves.
The temperature reaches more than 30,000 degrees centigrade,
but what this experiment reveals
is that it's not just heat that causes fires.
The lightning channel generates a big pressure wave which
throws things away from it,
and that fire is even ejected elsewhere,
and it's actually like fireballs that leave on fire
and it's just going further away from the tree.
And if there had been dry, dead leaf material around there, as there
would be in the natural world, this is going to start a blaze.
Yeah.
This experiment clearly demonstrates that the explosive
force of a lightning bolt can create not only one fire, but many.
And this is just one bolt hitting one tree.
Every year, New South Wales is hit
by an estimated 1.5 million lightning strikes.
Because lightning can so easily start fires,
the Rural Fire Service must constantly track
the movement of thunderstorms across New South Wales.
Forecaster Simon Lewis knows that some
types of storms are particularly threatening.
Over the last few days, we've had quite a lot of thunderstorm
activity, and with that we've seen what we call some dry lightning,
which occurs when you have very dry air underneath them,
and what you see is that the rain will evaporate before
it reaches the ground.
Unlike normal thunderstorms, the rain in dry lightning storms
never reaches the flames.
In that situation, if you get lightning with no rain,
then that can ignite new fires.
So, are there any thunderstorms expected today?
We are expecting thunderstorms to develop this afternoon,
just off to the east of where the hottest weather is.
There is probably some potential for some of those to start fires
again, so we'll be keeping a very close eye on that this afternoon.
It's not simply the threat of lightning the firefighters
need to worry about.
Overnight, a storm has struck at the Wollemi.
Crusty now needs to find any new fires
started by lightning before they take hold.
With 5,000 square kilometres of thick eucalyptus forest,
that's no easy task.
I've returned there to see a key piece of technology
he uses to help him.
We've got a really good lightning detection system, so
we know where the lightning occurs. We look for ignitions and fires.
Once the storm passes through, Crusty's team take to the skies.
How do you find them?
We've got what's called a FLIR camera,
a forward-looking infrared camera,
that picks up heat in the infrared spectrum.
This infrared camera, originally designed for the military,
has been used to find fires in the Wollemi for nearly a decade.
The helicopter and the operator have flown really low and slow,
and anything that's registered as a hot spot
they've taken this image of.
So we'll just bring one of these guys up.
Filmed from 200m above, the images reveal small fires
called hot spots ignited by lightning.
And, depending on the quality of the image,
we can generally see what it is. There's a bit of active fire there.
So, I can see... Well, we can see there's a lot of tree
coverage there, and that could be...
Absolutely, so it's looking through the trees.
Very difficult, very difficult to look through
- with the naked eye. - Yeah.
But amongst all the canopy and the foliage there,
- there's patches of green. - Yeah.
- And green means... - Green means heat.
And not all this heat is from fires burning on the ground.
Surprisingly, some fires are actually hidden inside logs
or tree trunks.
You know, the great thing about this is that you wouldn't
necessarily see this from the ground, you know?
The log's burning inside-- it may not be putting out smoke.
That's fascinating, I'd never have thought of that.
So, something that's burning away deep inside the tree...
It may not be obvious that it's on fire, but the camera tells us
that there's an issue there, and it shows us exactly where to go.
The thermal-imaging camera has identified the exact
locations of 12 dangerous hot spots that need to be dealt with quickly.
There's four crews, there's a few hot spots,
the plan is to put the crews onto those hot spots.
We're seeing really, really significant fire behaviour
quite quickly-- just be really careful.
Everybody knows what they're doing, go and get your gear together,
head out to the helipad.
If finding the hot spots wasn't hard enough,
I'm about to discover putting them out is even harder.
Oh, my goodness. Josh.
- Hey, mate, how are you? - Hello, mate. - Hi, Michelle. - Hi.
I think you're getting lumbered with me.
Oh, great! OK.
Are you getting ready to go out? Clearly.
Yeah, we are, we are.
We're just packing up our kit that we take out.
Um, yeah, getting all the bits and pieces together
- so we can head out in the bush. - And what do you take?
An axe, some fuel. We'll take another couple of tools, but, yeah.
- What have you got? All right, yes, that's definitely an axe. - Yep.
- Heavy one as well. - Justin's coming in with a load of water.
Yeah. This is, um, 4½ litres of water.
Should easily drink that today-- easily.
- That's all for one person? - For you, yes.
Yeah, and that all needs to go in.
And I suppose as much as anything you're taking,
- this is life-saving stuff. - Yeah, yeah.
So, it hasn't rained in, well, probably a month now,
so there's no water in the creek systems up there, so...
- So take your own. - Take your own water. - OK.
Along with firefighting tools, we need to pack survival equipment
and rations.
Snacks on the go.
Once inserted on the ground, dense cloud or smoke could prevent
helicopters from returning to collect us--
we could be out there for days.
This bag must weigh about 7kg already just with the water in,
and obviously these guys have got to take heavy machinery
and hand tools with them as well, and then they've got to hump it
across the ground in temperatures of up to 50 degrees centigrade.
This is, um, this is firefighting, but not as you know it.
This team works for the National Park Service.
For six months of the year, during fire season,
they become airborne firefighters.
It's not a job for the faint-hearted.
The teams are winched down 20m wires carrying chainsaws
and rakes into the forest below.
Luckily for me, we've been deployed to a hot spot close to
a place our helicopter can land.
Ah, there's a bit of smoke that's just popped up on the horizon
- over there. - It's quite faint on the, um...
Well, maybe a few hundred metres out. Shall we head over there?
- Yeah, you lead, Shelly. - Roger.
The tree we're targeting is only 500m away,
but in these conditions it feels like miles.
It's scorching hot, and this terrain,
my goodness, it is tough to move around in.
I actually find it a little bit frightening, it's overwhelming,
because if there was a fire coming through here,
when you're not in this,
in this sort of terrain, you think, "Oh, you just run from it,"
but you cannot run through this, you cannot move quickly through it.
It takes one and a half hours to reach our goal.
Oh, there, there's smoke just here.
Yeah, so we've got a, a tree that's obviously caught on fire,
that's still burning up high.
Lightning doesn't only ignite a tree's leaves,
it can also ignite its trunk.
And because eucalyptus is a slow-burning fuel,
it's possible a fire like this could lurk burning in the belly
of the tree for as long as three months.
So, the fire's burning from the top down?
From the top down, like a candle.
That's incredible.
And the liquid that's coming out is the sap of the tree?
The sap of the tree, the life of the tree.
It's like blood, the blood of the tree.
Yeah, looks like the blood.
You feel sorry for cutting down the big ones, I reckon--
they've taken years to grow and...
Hmm. Your job is to protect them, not chop them down.
Well, I might cut down one, but I might save another 10,000.
Actually, when it's on the ground like this,
you really do see it smoking away.
Immediately, the fire escapes the tree
and ignites the dead leaves, known as leaf litter, on the forest floor.
I can see what could've happened if the tree had been left,
and why it's so important to put it out.
Or if you just get your rake
in there and spread that stuff apart, just helps the water
to get down into it, cool it off a bit quicker, separate it all.
This is the mat we use, just to make it a bit easier
for the helicopters to, um, see our target.
Rake it out?
Yeah, but don't rake it onto those dried leaves,
- because then... - Cause a bushfire!
Wouldn't want that. So just rake it down?
Yeah.
Looks pretty good, I'll get onto the helicopter and see
if we can get a bucket dropped on this and cool it down a bit more.
To assist with the remote firefighting effort, Crusty
has set up a temporary airbase on the outskirts of the park.
Here, a refuelling tanker supplies a squadron of five helicopters.
They scoop up water from creeks and billabongs before flying to join us.
Yeah, that's over, Mark, we're ready for a bucket now.
Copy, mate, I'll call you in.
They're coming in now with a bucket of water,
we need to get out of the way.
Yeah, mate, I'm on your one o'clock, 100m.
It's right above.
That looks spot-on.
Hit the entire area, blanketed it, covered it in water.
Do I need to get out of the way now?
He's going to hit us again two times, so...
- It really needs that much to make sure it's completely out? - Yeah.
There it goes!
Good shot.
Are you happy with that?
We'll give it a rake, and then we'll probably get a couple more on it.
- A couple more?! - Yeah, come and look how much heat's in it still.
Still smoking.
So, see, there's still flame coming out there.
That's... It's... It is amazing!
You just dropped a huge quantity of water.
Probably about 1,600 litres just went down onto it then, but all
this sort of timber protects that from getting doused so, you know?
- Of course it does, of course it does. - Yeah.
I should help you, rather than just watching.
It's only sort of late in the afternoon that this stuff
- pops up as well. - Why's that?
Well, the temperature comes up,
the humidity comes down, so when you get the balance right
between the two, it ignites the bush again.
So what we might do is stand it up, try
- and get the water down into that. - OK.
Careful.
Anything like this has the potential to spark it up
- and keep it going, so these are the really important things. - OK.
So, yeah, we'll call them in again and, um, yeah, go from there.
Go ahead, Mark, another bucket in the same spot would be great.
You've got another chopper coming in now with another bucket.
I think what I find particularly surprising about this is the...
the sheer effort that is required to control and extinguish these blazes.
Look, this isn't... This isn't the inferno, it really isn't,
but it can become one very quickly
if they don't pay attention to every small bit of burn that's happening.
Is the fire out in the... in the trunk?
Yeah, I think we're pretty safe to leave that one now.
I sense that you love it.
We do, we do. We rely on each other and, yeah, it's good.
I feel utterly drained, and we try to keep drinking enough water,
but the sweat just keeps pouring out of us.
I'm left with a completely new understanding of what it takes
to fight a fire in a wilderness area like this. The bravery
and dedication of these teams is... It's quite something, it really is.
The fact that it takes two water-bucketing helicopters,
a transport chopper and three firefighters to extinguish
a small hot spot within a single tree trunk indicates just
what a formidable fire fuel eucalyptus is.
But firefighters know their efforts are vital, because if a blaze
does take hold in eucalyptus forest, there's something unique
about the way it spreads that can make it incredibly hard to control.
- Wow. - Welcome to the CSIRO Pyrotron, Kate.
It's amazing, isn't it?
This is the Pyrotron. It's a combustion wind tunnel,
and, at 25m long, one of the biggest in the world.
It is like something out of a sci-fi movie.
It's based in Canberra, where Doctor Andrew Sullivan studies how
wildfires behave by experimenting with different fuel types.
Fires have been burning in Australia for millions of years.
- Yeah. - Um, what we are developing is better ways of measuring
and observing these fires.
- So, is this the fuel down here? - This is the fuel down here.
Today, he's staging an innovative experiment to analyse
the nature of burning eucalyptus.
You see, you're much more random than me. OK, so just chuck it...
- Once you put it in, you can then spread it round. - OK.
We're replicating a eucalyptus forest in miniature.
At the base, we scatter leaf litter--
dead, dry leaves that can collect for years on the forest floor.
- Kate, can you pass me that one, please? - I can.
Excellent, thank you.
Next, we add a tree trunk
and fashion a road which should stop the fire in its tracks.
What we've got is a typical eucalypt tree trunk that's covered
with a fairly fibrous bark, as you can see.
The Pyrotron is rigged with temperature probes
and heat-proof, slow-mo and thermal-imaging cameras
capable of capturing what's invisible to the naked eye.
Have you done this before in the Pyrotron?
- No. - You haven't? - No, no, this is the first time.
OK, well, let's get it going.
Andrew ignites a line of leaf litter
to create the head of the wildfire.
Right, fan on.
Lights off.
The fuel condition that we've got, the... the wind speed that we've got,
is all pretty much like what you'd find in the bush.
All the flames are now leaning over un-burnt fuel
and that's accelerating the speed of the fire.
A fan replicates the effects of a 12km/h wind,
bringing oxygen to the fire and propelling it forward.
What's interesting is that
it doesn't burn at a sort of consistent rate.
And that's a property of the fuel in which we're burning.
The slow-motion cameras capture the precise way the fire spreads
through this leaf litter.
When the temperature reaches 300 degrees centigrade
the leaves break down, expelling a volatile gas which ignites,
drawing the flames onwards.
It appears the longer that it's burnt that actually it seems
to be speeding up or is... is that just me making that up?
What's happened is now we've got, a full width of fire that's
burning, and the whole width of the fire is now contributing heat
to un-burnt fuel and that's increasing its speed.
The fire gains momentum as the preheated, un-burnt leaves ahead
ignite more quickly.
As the line of flames passes through, the thermal-imaging camera
reveals the threat behind is far from over.
The leaf litter in its wake continues to smoulder,
and like the fire inside the tree at the Wollemi, each of these
slow-burning hot spots is capable of reigniting into flame.
But it's another type of fire behaviour that makes
eucalyptus wildfires so difficult to manage.
The fire has ignited that, that fibrous bark
and has burnt around it,
and bits and pieces of the bark have come off,
crossed over our break and has started a spot fire
that is now developing as a new fire, independent of this fire.
Didn't just jump the little break, it jumped quite a big distance.
It did.
This is a process known as spotting.
Eucalyptus is native to Australia, and having lived with wildfire
for millions of years, it's evolved ways to survive the flames.
When the tree's bark ignites, it quickly strips away
so that flames cannot reach the core of the tree.
These strips of bark become burning embers
with temperatures up to 800 degrees centigrade.
- That was incredible. - It was.
And this is the nature of fire in dry eucalypt forests
with the stringy barks.
They spot so prodigiously.
Once the fire gets up and running
and the ignition of those tree trunks happens,
it's very difficult to do anything about them.
I can see why now.
We had one spot fire take off,
under really dry conditions any of those embers could've started
new fires and you would've had dozens of new fires start.
Eucalyptus makes up 79% of Australian forests
and it's the unpredictable way that eucalyptus fires spread
that make them such a challenge.
Standing here and looking at that...
you realise what a terrifying foe
the firefighters are up against,
cos I'm slightly thinking, when you hear the news reports
which we've been hearing ever since we've been here,
of fires being out of control, you slightly think,
"What are you guys doing?
You know, about fire, how are they getting out of control?"
You see this, it's terribly obvious how quickly it can.
It's very, very sobering.
In the real world it's not just one tree producing
a handful of embers, it's a forest of trees creating a storm of them.
While the conditions in New South Wales start to cool,
I'm in Winmalee,
a town on the outskirts of a eucalyptus forest
just north of Sydney.
I'm meeting a couple who survived an ember storm
during the October fires.
They have astonishing evidence of why embers are such a threat
to property and lives.
Well it's only three months later...
and, er, driving around here, all you see is just these kind of
devastated plots of land which were clearly once people's homes.
I mean, I'm just stunned by the level of devastation.
Glen and Carol Blackman have lived on this street
for five and a half years.
What was it like that day? Was it an incredibly hot day?
Oh, it... We'd had three months of incredible dryness, no rain,
and it was 40 degrees.
It was just... It was a fire in waiting.
I was inside and Glen come rushing home and said,
"Look, there's a fire and it's coming, start getting prepared."
The couple's eight home security cameras captured a unique record of
a huge ember storm striking their house.
And all of a sudden
Glen said, "Oh, my God, it's here,"
and the whole wall of fire, maybe a kilometre wide,
30, 40ft high, just came straight for us.
It just come like a blowtorch.
The embers are hitting the house by this stage
and I'm saying to Glen, "Come inside, you're going to burn, come inside!"
I'm screaming at him, he's saying, "I'll be all right."
Glen started trying to extinguish the embers with a hose,
but was soon forced inside.
Ember attack is the biggest cause of house-loss in a bushfire.
These tiny, superheated particles are capable of entering property
through gaps in roofs, open windows, or air vents.
We're all checking in the roof,
checking around the doors for embers getting inside.
So, you're not just huddled on the floor?
Oh, no, we had wet mops and we were going into the roof
and putting embers out that were coming through the roof,
and you're thinking all the time,
"Is it on fire? Is it on fire?" And you go into overdrive.
Your heart's thumping, the fire alarms are whistling,
you're not really concentrating, it's what you can do to stay alive.
Was there any point during it that you thought
"We're just not going to make it?"
There was one stage where the smoke was down to
about two foot off the ground
and I couldn't breathe, and I got my text... my phone,
and I was texting my children,
"I love yous all, and be good to each other."
Even after the fire had passed over their house
the embers continued to do incredible damage.
It was just like a warzone,
all our sheds were on fire,
Glen's truck's on fire, everything was on fire.
Everything that could burn was burning.
The fires destroyed over 200 homes,
but the Blackmans' bravery and persistence meant
they managed to save theirs.
If another fire hit this area, how are you going to feel?
It's not if it ever happens again, it's when.
At the end of the day, it's the luck of the draw.
We could've lost our home just as easy as our neighbours.
It's just impossible to imagine
what it would be like to stand here
as a wall of unstoppable flame
comes racing towards you, your home,
your property, your little piece of what you think of as your safe land.
And it comes up here, and look how close it is to the house,
and it swept up that lawn and over the house.
They were so sort of sanguine about it, but...
just that sheer force must've been terrifying.
And, yet, listen, all around us there's the sounds of chainsaws,
of diggers, this is a community that is regrouping, rebuilding.
They're not going to be beaten by nature. They're starting again.
We've witnessed the terrifying power
and the unpredictable nature of wildfires,
and the huge challenges facing people trying to contain them.
Next time, we'll see how cutting edge science has been
deployed in the battle against fire.
So, you're able to predict
what I would think of as being unpredictable, a wildfire?
Fires aren't unpredictable, fires still follow the laws of science.
We'll reveal the causes of the biggest and most extreme fires.
By drawing air in just through those gaps,
that causes the rotating motion that spins up to a high velocity.
We'll discover the science behind fighting fire with fire...
Between 20 and 30 seconds gives them
plenty of time to clear the helicopter
and actually be on the ground when they catch on fire.
I can see how they're effective.
And we'll learn about the innovations needed
to keep firefighters safe.
- We can already smell a little bit... - Oh, look, and actually,
- it's starting to smoke. - It's slightly... - What is smoking?
Sync and corrections by n17t01 www.addic7ed.com
Original Air Date: June 8th, 2014