Ever wondered why it takes so long and so much effort to put out a bushfire?
Most Australian bushfire fighting is generally one of three things: a chaotic scramble to protect life & properties, back-burning or blacking out (or a bit of a mix)
"Backburning" is aimed at creating containment lines well in front of the fire. "Blacking out" is making sure those containment lines haven't got anything burning or smouldering close to the unburnt area.
It is this kind of work that takes up most of the time. It is hard, hot, dirty, tedious work and, as you will see, hugely labour and time intensive.
Trouble is, normally the media aren't much interested in this kind of work, so it gets very little attention and consequently the public often have little understanding of what goes on.
To give you a feel for what a full day of back-burning looks like, we thought we'd put together a "Day in the Life" of one crew from just one Brigade during the enormous 2019/2020 Fire Season.
On 5 February, Carwoola Brigade (and many others) were working at the Jinden fire (also just one of many burning at the time). The Jinden fire was about 50km south of Braidwood and this day's work was near the Wyanbene Caves. Together, the assembled crews for that day managed to back-burn a containment line about 2-3 kilometres long.