Firefighter Loses Home Saving Others, Returns to Fight

When volunteer firefighter Michael Harper heard over the truck radio that his own home was lost to flames, he did something remarkable. After a moment of silence, he grabbed water bottles and started handing them out to other firefighters on his street.

Harper had been battling Victoria's catastrophic bushfires for more than 24 hours when he got the news. He was driving a strike team through zero visibility conditions, navigating through smoke and flames to save homes in central Victoria.

The call came quickly on Thursday. Harper threw on his fire gear and rushed out the door with no time to pack anything else. He and his wife Cathie, also a volunteer firefighter, had always known this might happen.

"We're in a fire prone area and we wouldn't be there to defend our house because we knew we'd be on the trucks," Harper said.

His team had just finished checking on another firefighter's home when they heard the radio report. Gas bottles made Harper's property too dangerous to defend, and crews had to pull back. Every asset at his address was lost.

Mayor Damien Gallagher, who was on Harper's truck, watched his teammate walk toward the remains of his home speechless. Then something shifted. "He said, 'That's okay, I can't change it,'" Gallagher recalled.

Gallagher told Harper his shift was over and drove him back to the fire station. The pair had just spent 24 hours fighting fires across the region in conditions "as intense as fire gets."

But they were down to a crew of two. Harper came back out of the station and said, "Mate, let's go again."

They immediately left to defend a farm under threat in Acheron. Harper kept driving through fire, keeping his team out of ditches and away from fences while they saved homes and lives.

Why This Inspires

Harper wasn't alone in his sacrifice. Several volunteer firefighters lost their homes in Alexandra while protecting their community, and all of them kept fighting fires afterward.

"I throw my hat off to each and every one of the volunteers who puts themselves out there not knowing the fate of their home," Gallagher said.

Harper and his wife see this as the beginning of their next journey. "It is what it is, and we understand that when we're in the fire brigade," he said. "That's what we were meant to do."