Alexandra Fire Brigade: Facing a monster

ALEXANDRA Fire Brigade Captain, Chris Lynch, has done an amazing job, protecting Alexandra from the monster fire. The whole community is very proud of everything that the CFA did during the fire, across the region.

He said, “Saving Alexandra was the priority. Unfortunately, anything outside of that we had to deal with after. Unfortunately, we lost a house in Halls Flat Road, which happened to be a CFA member.”

He added, “I know a lot of other firefighters lost their houses and feel pretty broken for them.”

He said of the planning, “We had a plan and we executed that plan the best we could and we couldn’t have done it without all the strike teams and people that came in on that day. The sector commander for Alexandra was Jay Williams. He smashed it. He did an amazing job.”

Jay created the plan in the first place, and “It’s a plan that he’d been drilling into our heads for the last 10 years or whatever. We just executed that plan and not only did he do that, he’s been working tirelessly up the hill to try and contain the top of it. With his skills and knowledge and basically my right hand man for this, or I was his right hand man more the point.

“Everyone came here in that morning and that morning was just so scary. The wind had started, we knew the fire wasn’t far away and then we were told that it was that the fire was 12 kilometres away and then it was an hour away.

We had progressive intel, but it wasn’t accurate, so we didn’t actually know when it was coming in. But when it came in, it hit like a freight train and the strike teams held their line. They held the fire. It did jump at Swann Road,…

Image: First Lieutenant Haydn Simpson, Captain Chris Lynch and active firefighter Mick Van Heuzen.