Four firefighters from the Country Fire Authority who courageously handled an armed offender while responding to a fire in 2015 have been honoured with a Group Bravery Citation as part of the Australian Bravery Awards.
The Citation was awarded to Senior Station Officer (SSO) Roy Griffiths, Leading Firefighter Francisco Grech and firefighters Matthew Kent and Brendan Edwards, all members of District 14 brigade.
Award recipient, SSO Griffiths said that during the firefighting operation crews were confronted by an armed man who had set a house and several vehicles alight.
“I was observing the scene when I spotted somebody coming towards us from up the road in a threatening manner with an axe and a jerry can,” SSO Griffiths said.
“We withdrew our crews to what we thought was a safe place to the rear of the fire trucks, but the offender then set fire to the Metropolitan Fire Brigade truck,” he said.
SSO Griffiths said the crew was able to extinguish the fire in the cabin of the truck before the offender returned.
He said crew members had all safely withdrawn from immediate danger but when police arrived on scene the location of the offender was unknown.
“Our crews helped locate the offender by using a thermal camera which assisted police with locating him swiftly and were able to apprehend him,” he said.
“It was an intense situation that could have ended a number of different ways, but the sound judgement demonstrated by all crew members on scene led to a positive result at the end of the incident,” SSO Griffiths said.
