The South Coast 2019/2020 bushfires shocked the world, but one volunteer knew what was coming.
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In November 2019, Batemans Bay RFS brigade captain Ian Aitken was urgently delivering bushfire survival plan information to the public.
The Bay Post/Moruya Examiner interviewed him and published a story online on November 21, where he explained the number of new houses in the same path of the 1994 bushfire.
That fire destroyed the botanic garden caretaker's home, burnt land bordering George Bass Drive at Batehaven, Sunshine Bay, Denhams Beach and Surf Beach, reached Catalina Heights and destroyed parts of Lilli Pilli and Mogo.
In November, he warned that hundreds of residents were now in the historical fire path.
"I'm not saying it will go in the same place but history has a habit of repeating itself," he said at the time.
Five days later, the Currowan fire began.
Captain Aitken's wife now calls him Nostradamus.
Over the next month, the Currowan blaze destroyed property north of the Kings Highway, the Clyde Mountain fire began, a property owner's allegedly illegal hazard reduction burn started the Deua River fire, and more were igniting along the coast.
Meanwhile, visitors arrived for the festive season.
Finally, at 2am on New Year's Eve, Captain Aitken saw the Araluen Road fire coming down Mount Wandera.
"It was about a kilometre-wide coming down," he said. "To the north of me, I could see this glow. That was the Clyde Mountain Fire. That morning, they met."
Fire jumped the Kings Highway in the north and plundered through bushland to the west and finally blasted Mogo at about 6am.
Captain Aitken said a spot fire jumped the Princes Highway at Runnyford Road: "It jumped there, went straight over to Mogo Trig Road and then took off."
One Mogo volunteer firefighter said it was a fire storm humans could not stop, no matter how many fire trucks were there.
In December and January, fire destroyed 501 homes, damaged 274 and burnt 79 per cent of the Eurobodalla Shire's land mass.
Captain Aitken said the moisture content was dangerously low in the bush. He said backburning was "extremely hard and dangerous" in unpredictable weather.
"The chances of losing the backburn were quite high," he said.
Firefighters were reluctant to backburn some areas, but did so in other areas, such as near the Kings Highway.
"It was reasonably successful until that Saturday (January 4)," Captain Aitken said.
"It broke out of its box and jumped.
"In the conditions we had, there only needs to be one stump burning and wind shoots an ember across the road, and boom!"
He said the fires were inevitable but some people "walked around with their heads in the sand".
He was surprised at the number who didn't attend the community meetings before the disaster.
"Now people here have experienced (the fires), it will change. But it will fade over time," he said.
He said it wouldn't take long before there was more fuel to burn.
"Just because this happened this year, it doesn't mean something won't happen next year," he said. "It doesn't take that long to regenerate."
Captain Aitken said fire burnt areas where fuel had already been reduced through hazard reduction burns.
"Out of this whole area in Currowan, do you think there hasn't been hazard reductions up there? Of course there have," he said. "It went straight through those hazard reduction areas, depending on how old they were. It probably didn't go as intensely as other areas but it still went through."
Captain Aitken said backburning during the fires would be more hazardous than the fire itself.
Even after the fire, burned leaf little reignited at East Lynne weeks later.
He said Forestry did a hazard reduction burn in the Benandarah area in winter 2018 "which helped a lot".
"That hazard reduction definitely played a part in that (Currowan) fire not progressing further south," he said. "People whinged about the smoke at the time, but I'm glad they did it, because things would have been a lot different if they hadn't."
He said everyone would learn from the fires.
"There are lots of lessons to be learnt by all the stakeholders: National Parks, Forestry, private land, crown land and council land," Captain Aitken said. "Hazard reduction is only one part of it. There are lots of other things to do."
Captain Aitken doesn't want a "tin shed" for RFS stations. He wants minimum standards to be policed, deluge systems, male and female lockers and toilets, laundries, kitchens, and meeting and training rooms. Concrete or steel tanks must replace plastic that melts in bushfires.
"RFS has the budget and now has the money to upgrade all those stations," he said. "They should seriously do an audit on all stations."
Captain Aitken was proud of his crew and thanked the community for their help.
He said there would be another after-action review soon involving Far South Coast RFS, to assess their strategies.
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It has been Australia's lost summer. Drought, hail, floods and, worst of all, bushfires have ravaged communities all over the nation. But the selfless actions of friends, family, neighbours, strangers, local groups and volunteer organisations have inspired us and strengthened the bonds of community. Please join us in saying thanks to the heroes of the home front by sharing your stories of gratitude. To salute a person or a group, please use the form below.
