07/12/2025
Some brilliant information and advice from CFA District 12
🔥 Did You Know … We Will Never Have Enough Fire Trucks to Save Everyone? 🔥
Let’s rip the band-aid off again. Because sugar-coating this costs lives.
This post is another brutal truth every Victorian needs to hear before the next wind change, the next spark, the next bad day, before the next big firestorm.
🚒 A Hard Reality Check:
Take any small Victorian town — maybe a hundred so homes, families, pets, memories. Now look at the local CFA station. Maybe two fire trucks. Some towns, like mine, have only one.
That’s it.
One or two trucks… for what could be hundreds of homes. Two crews… for kilometres of roads, paddocks, bushland, and houses.
"But other crews will come to help," you say. Will they?
There are a million different scenarios where that help never arrives.
🔥 Scenario A: The Intensity. The fire is simply too intense or if the front is moving too fast, our crews will be pulled back to safety. We will not send volunteers into what is likely certain death.
🌲 Scenario B: The Blockage. If the fire isn't blocking the road — the wind snaps trees like matchsticks or brings powerlines down across the road. If the only road in is blocked, we are stuck. Fire trucks cannot fly. If we physically cannot get to you, you are on your own.
⛔ Scenario C: The Visibility. The smoke is so thick we can only see a few feet in front of the truck. In these conditions, crews simply cannot safely drive or navigate. We cannot fight a fire—or find your house—if we are driving blind.
‼️ Scenario D: The Numbers. There is more than one fire. We can't be everywhere at once, and we only have so many crews and trucks. (Volunteer if you want to help).
🔥 The "Ember" Trap:
Here is the scenario people forget: In extreme or catastrophic conditions a major fire can throw embers 30km+ ahead of the front. Those embers start new spot fires in your local area before the main fire arrives.
Your local brigade—your neighbours—rush out to fight those spot fires.
Now, the station is empty.
The roads are blocked.
Your town is undefended.
And so is your home.
And so are YOU.
And when the main front actually hits, your local truck may not be able to get back, or it could already be committed elsewhere.
And by the time crews from other towns try to get to you?
It’s too late.
The fires have linked up. The road is cut. The radiant heat is lethal. The fire front is impacting and tearing through houses and whole towns in minutes.
👉 We will never have enough trucks to be parked in every driveway.
👉 We will never have enough firefighters to stand between a fire front and every home.
👉 And pretending otherwise is how people die.
🌪️ The Wind Change Nightmare:
And let's not forget, on top of all this, we have the wind change. A wind change can change a fire's size and direction in a heartbeat. It turns a "behaving" fire into an unstoppable monster. A monster that will eat everything in its path.
Go read our in-depth post on this subject. The fire in these conditions scares us.
But wind changes? They are what wake us up in the middle of the night in cold sweats.
💀 The "Stay & Defend" Fantasy:
You think you’ll stay and defend? With what? When the power grid fails (and it will), water pressure drops or your pumps stop (and they most likely will). The wind will make your sprinkler system useless, blowing the water away before it hits the roof.
The lethal heat will likely evaporate the water coming out of your hose before it even hits the ground. And any water that does hit the ground or vegetation will evaporate before it does anything.
👉 Think about this:
We have fancy red trucks holding thousands of litres of water. We have burn-over protection systems. We have protective clothing. And in these conditions, even WE can't fight it and survive. We have to run.
Even if we had thousands of fire trucks on scene, we still couldn't fight fires in these conditions once they have taken hold. We encourage you to read our earlier posts where we go into depth about the maths and physics of this. The simple fact is: No firefighting equipment on Earth can stop a firestorm.
And you think you’re going to take it on with a garden hose or a small petrol pump?
As we said in our other post: Yeah, Nah.
When the radiant heat hits, your garden hose melts. Your car tyres melt. Your windows shatter. And you? You will likely already be surrounded by hundreds of spot fires. You will be terrified. You will not be thinking straight—if you've even survived this long.
At that heat, anything flammable auto-ignites before the flames even touch it.
🔥 Extreme or Catastrophic Conditions Change Everything:
These are the conditions that if a fire starts and takes hold, people will likely die a horrible death. When the fire danger hits Extreme or Catastrophic, the rules change — and they change fast.
In these conditions, once a fire has taken hold:
👉 We likely will have to pull our crews back.
👉 We don’t put firefighters in front of the main front.
👉 We cannot and will not sacrifice lives to defend property.
The fire behaviour becomes uncontrollable, unpredictable and utterly unsurvivable.
Not only for residents — but for us too.
⚠️ If You Ignore the Advice… You Wear That Choice
For over a decade, every expert, every agency, and a Royal Commission have all said the same thing:
👉 Leaving Early is the only guaranteed way to survive.
Not “wait and see.” Not “I’ll defend if I have to.” Not “the CFA will save me.”
If you choose to ignore that advice — that is your responsibility.
Your actions.
Your decision.
Your consequences.
📞 The 000 Reality:
If you choose to stay, realise this: When the fire is running hard, when the sky goes black and the wind swings… There will likely be no cavalry coming up your street.
If you call 000, you might be caller number 400. And even if you beg, yell and scream—as we said above, we may not be able to get to you.
💔 What You Choose Impacts Us Too:
When you stay and it goes bad, it’s us — our crews and our emergency service partners — who have to deal with what’s left behind.
It is our crews who will (if possible) try to rescue you. It is our crews who may have to risk their lives, solely because of your decision.
We are also the ones who see the aftermath. We are the ones who carry those images for the rest of our lives.
And trust us on this: Being trapped and burnt is not a nice way to go. It is violent, terrifying, and utterly avoidable — if you leave early.
🔥 This Isn’t About Fear.
It’s About Reality. We tell you this because we want you alive. We want your family alive. And we want our firefighters to come home safe too.
So when we say Leave Early, it’s not a slogan. It’s not a campaign. It’s not an overreaction.
It’s the single safest choice you will ever make on an Extreme or Catastrophic day.
In these conditions: Leave Early. It is the only choice that guarantees you don't die.
We really encourage you to go back and read some of our other in-depth posts about most subjects touched on here.
We are blunt, honest, and we lay it all out as best we can. We do this because knowledge helps you make decisions that may save your life — even before a fire has started.
