The golden sparks of fire have been raining upon Vivien Thomson AFSM intermittently for 32 years. Vivien who is an author/firefighter/farmer was the first guest speaker at the Murrumburrah Writers Group monthly meeting on Thursday June 27. She held the audience with spellbinding accounts concerning hers and others encounters plus more.
These were contained in her book, Ashes of the Firefighters. One thing that was evident is that this book was written with remarkable candor. Vivien also shared many key insights concerning bushfires with the audience including the fact that the nature of fires through climate change has radically changed (even within the 32 years she has been in the industry) and this can have traumatic consequences on the mental wellbeing of our firefighters. According to statistics, every year Australia wide around 50,000 bushfires occur and what’s worse the official Australian bushfire season is lasting longer and longer not only here but across the world with the number of very high to catastrophic fires (a category that was introduced in 2009) increasing.
Says Vivien: “Fires today burn much hotter and take far more resources to put out and often we don’t have enough of those resources because the characteristics of fires continue to change. Plus during fire seasons, as temperatures rise, extreme fire weather days multiply. And when heat waves sear our countryside, these oppressive conditions also increase fire danger.” Firefighters once had the luxury of predicable, fixed fire seasons, these days the active duty mode is almost ‘all year round’.
This is far from easy,” Vivien alleged, “because being in an adrenalin-filled state throughout a protracted fire season is not good for our mental or physical well-being, in fact it’s a recipe for burnout and much worse. Also that doesn’t include the countless traumatizing experiences we encounter for they too leave their scars.” Vivien believes that protecting Australians and firefighters from worsening bushfires requires better resourcing for firefighters, planning for increasing fire danger, and doing something about climate change which is driven by the burning of coal, oil and gas. For more information or if you want to order a copy of Vivien’s book, call Robin on 6386 2100. Robin C
