34 Time December 21/December 28, 2020in november 2019, Luke SummerScaLeS and
Jessica Jacobs were in a remote mountain range of
New South Wales, fighting some of the worst bush-
fires on record in Australia, when another disaster
struck: a fellow firefighter collapsed from a heart
attack. The nearest ambulance was more than an
hour away and the terrain was too steep for a res-
cue helicopter to land, so the pair started doing
CPR on 53-year-old John Kennedy.
Fires burning around them, Summerscales and
Jacobs struggled to get defibrillator pads to stick to
Kennedy’s chest. They performed CPR for 45 min-
utes before Kennedy was able to breathe on his own.
“We lost him three times, but we got him back
every time,” Jacobs says. “We’re so lucky to have
been able to really make a difference.”
In November 2020, the Country Fire Authority,
a fire- management organization, recognized their
actions by giving them both Chief Officer Com-
mendation awards. But Summerscales and Jacobs
aren’t professional firefighters—they’re volunteers.
Summerscales builds houses for a living; Jacobs
works as a university lab technician. Starting in
late 2019, as record fires raged across their na-
tion during its summer season, they joined tens of
thousands of Australians who set aside their usual
lives to help stop the spread of the blazes.As climAte chAnge heightens both the fre-
quency and intensity of bushfires, firefighters are
being tested to new extremes. Australia is unusu-
ally reliant on volunteer labor—in the state of New
South Wales, which suffered some of the country’s
most severe fires during the 2019–2020 bushfire
season, close to 90% of the men and women fightingfires were volunteers. It’s been this way for more
than a century in Australia, with ordinary citizens
working together to protect the land. But last year
especially, their service came with incredible sacri-
fice: they gave up the holidays with their families,
took time off work, and lost income to fight infernos
that burned for several months in 2019 and early- Three volunteer firefighters lost their lives.
Australia’s volunteerfirefighters riskedeverything to keeptheir country safe
BY AMY GUNIAHeroes