 Word On Books
with Jeremy Fenton
Firefighters
By Gary McKay, Published by Allen & Unwin
As one of nature's greatest instruments of destruction (and – it must be said – regeneration), fire holds a unique fascination for humans and Australians in particular.
 Our history is filled with conflagrations that make world headlines leaving ordinary Australians homeless, as this Summer has shown, and sometimes worse.
With a timeliness that coincides with current events, comes Gary McKay's account of the men and women who fight fires. Thankfully all such suspicions are erased by the promise that publishers Allen and Unwin will donate $1 for every copy sold to the ‘Christmas 2001 Bushfire Appeal Fund'.
McKay's narrative is pieced together, as in the case of his recent work on tropical cyclone Tracy, from eyewitness accounts and opinions of firefighters and victims. Although not as successful a splicing job as Tracey was, the reports still hold a strong fascination for the casual reader – a decided 'ordinariness' contrasting incredibly with the calculated risks firefighters take.
The author spent a rigorous 12 weeks on the Queensland firefighters training course before serving in a number of fire stations to gain an accurate understanding of what the ‘firies' go through to earn their positions of trust, so his insights are presumably accurate – coming as they do from personal experience.
Unfortunately, McKay's book is not the place to read about firefighting in NSW or elsewhere in Australia (it is very Queensland-centric) and it is definitely not the place to gain a deeper understanding of the reasons that fire plays such a predominant role in the Australian environment. Firestick farming and the role of Indigenous people in controlling fire in pre-European Australia are well beyond the its brief.
Nor is it the place to find spectacular colour pictures of fire and firefighters in action. Although there are some colour plates, the majority of the images are in black and white – a particularly unsatisfying way to view pictures of fire.
As the sub-title states, the book is simply about the 'men and women who risk their lives to save ours'.
On the plus side, the temperaments and personalities of the ‘firies' are starkly highlighted (no heroics, only teamwork is tolerated), as are current firefighting and rescue tactics.
'The days of ‘putting the wet stuff on the red stuff' are gone – it is now more of a ‘search and destroy' – we get in there, search it out and destroy only the fire. And then we get out and leave the place the way it was.'
There is also a very interesting and detailed appendix on the ‘enemy' that gives good descriptions of the various types of fire, firefighting techniques and terminology.
Ultimately, Firefighters is a pretty ordinary book about some extraordinary people who fight one of the most vicious elements at its most extreme. It is not without a certain appeal at this time of the year in Australia.
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