Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Greg Mullins, Viking, $34.99.
Greg Mullins retired as Commissioner of Fire & Rescue NSW in January 2017 and begins his memoir by vividly recalling his first big fire. “… back in the days when fires and fire weather were far more predictable than today”. That was on a hot, dry, windy Saturday in October 1971 following a dry winter.
You’re captivated from the first page!
“… Then, finally, the fire arrived in all its fury. The sound! It was something I’ll never forget – a roaring sound like a jet taking off, together with the strengthening wind whistling and howling through the trees…”
Greg remembers that was his father’s calmness in the face of danger (that day in 1971) and it was “infectious and incredibly reassuring”.
“In my experience, the best fire commanders seem to become calmer as the situation gets more perilous: you can’t absorb and process information when panicking, and panic is infectious. Military scholars call this cool, calm effect ‘command presence’, and it is a key element in effective leadership, but I wouldn’t know this for years.”
That was his first big fire and he was “hooked. I had found it frightening, fascinating, and awe-inspiring. I was only twelve, and I often reflect on the fact it was that day I decided that when I grew up, I was going to be a firefighter”.
Firestorm, told through the eyes of a firefighter with more than five decades experience, combines awe-inspiring stories of what it’s like to be on the frontline of Australia’s first giga-fire with the hard truths of human-caused climate change, and what we do about it.
Mullins, who developed a keen interest in the linkages between climate change and extreme weather events, coordinated responses to many major natural disasters over more than two decades.
The 2019-20 Australian bushfire season, now known as Black Summer, was the country’s longest, hottest and most devastating on record. It was magnitudes worse than the first fire he fought back in 1971, worse than the previously most devastating NSW fire seasons in 1994 and 2013, or anything else we’d ever seen.
From being a volunteer firefighter then a career firefighter, he is an internationally recognised expert in responding to major bushfires and natural disasters.
With truths that are difficult to accept about man-made climate change, Firestorm is a compelling account of raging fire, political evasion, settled science and one man’s courageous, urgent call-to-action for all Australians.
