Frank Dunstan

Updated: Sunday 13 December 2009

With almost every structure fire I have been called out to the building was a smoking ruin by the time I arrived on scene.

In this case our job is to prevent the fire from spreading and becoming a bushfire, and to secure the scene with minimum disturbance until the police or NTFRS fire investigators arrive to take charge.

If the fire has yet to take hold and the building can be saved firies should attempt to do so, but without putting themselves in danger. Territory bushfire volunteers are not trained in structural fire fighting and don’t have the correct PPE or breathing apparatus to enter burning buildings.

The only structure fires I was able to put out were a small demountable which was so badly burnt inside to be a write-off and a large clapped out wooden shed. The timber was so rotten that I wondered why I bothered. Recently (Friday 16 October 2009) I was involved in a wildfire where a house caught alight, but we managed to save it.

Long distances in rural areas often mean that we can’t respond as quickly as NTFRS do for fires in town, and structures once alight tend to burn fast. In the case of the shed, I was already on scene for asset protection waiting for a bushfire front to come through and didn’t want extra radiant heat to add to our problems.