Been fairly quite in Tennant Creek the last two years, so we’re making up for it with a brief, but busy fire season this year. If you remember we had hell of a season in 2007. Burnt out so much we’ve not had a lot since. Troy, Phil Noble and I did have to go tackle a fire east of town the night before the one in the article, about 20 km south east of town with about a 5 to 7 km front. We had some luck with us and were able to pull it up fairly quickly.

We had a good combined effort over the weekend. (The next morning for Troy and I) It was an NTFRS fire.

We had BF3, BF5 and TC01 in action along with the bushfire loader.

NTFRS had RGFU 311, Reserve GFU 59 and Medium Tanker 916 at work.

Check out the NTPFES media release.

As Nathan says in the article, great effort by all concerned. (He did a damn good job as Incident Controller).

Sorry, did not have much time to take happy snaps.

I think RFCO Troy took the two photos in the article. I can verify that I put together the map.

Cheers

Justin Hankinson

…

Just to add to the story a bit.

As mentioned I had been out the previous night tying up a more regional fire. Troy woke up early the next morning to check the fire, heading out to the area about 6am

I had a bit of a sleep in and then headed out to check a number of fire breaks to the south of town. After completing the task I headed back to town.

I had been keeping in touch with both Bushfires RFCO Troy Monckton and with NTFRS Acting OIC Nathan Ferguson. By coincidence Nathan and I agreed it would be a good idea for us to take a tour of the breaks protecting the east side of town when I arrived back in town. Breaks are within the NTFRS area.

At about 10 km out of town I called Nathan on the radio and arranged to pick him up from his residence. As I came a bit closer to town I noticed smoke, very, very rapidly building up. I called Nathan back on the radio. I think it took Nathan less than 30 seconds to put a page out.

Nathan got his tour of the break on the east side of town. A lot longer one than planned.