As Imogen Ward watched television reports of the devastating bushfires during summer and saw the flames come close to her own community, she felt "kind of useless".
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The Morisset High School student has converted that feeling into something positive. The 16-year-old has joined her local rural fire brigade at Martinsville.
"I always wanted to join, and I guess this year was a bit of a catalyst," Ms Ward said.
"I thought I'm in a position where I can go and actually help."
For the Martinsville brigade, it turned into a two-for-one deal.
When Steven Ward drove his daughter to the station in the heart of their village at the feet of the Watagan Mountains, he joined as well.
"When Imogen dragged me down, I sort of got thinking about it," said Mr Ward, who works at a local mine. "We live in a rural area, a stone's throw from the brigade, and our bushfire plan was, 'Just get in the car and bolt'. I started to think about how little I knew about bushfires and stuff like that."
The father-and-daughter recruits have been joined by Pat Tierney, another local property owner. The 63-year-old is about to have more time on her hands, as she is cutting back her hours as a social worker in Sydney, which involves long daily commutes. Yet that is not her only motivation for becoming a volunteer firefighter.
Like the Wards, Ms Tierney watched the bushfires creep close to Martinsville late last year and realised she could be better prepared to defend her property.
"I was kind of thinking, 'Well, if you're not part of the solution, or any attempt to do that, then really you're just kind of in the way'," Pat Tierney said. "I was prompted by the idea of having some contribution to the solution."
The captain of the Martinsville Rural Fire Brigade, Luke Masters, welcomed the three recruits, as it boosted the membership to 38. He said two others had also inquired about joining the brigade.
"It's comforting to know that people are still interested and willing to help," he said.
"It's a win-win. We get the members and they get the understanding to prepare property, and hopefully defend it."
Luke Masters said after a busy season, there was usually an increase in interest in becoming a volunteer firefighter.
But after this torrid summer, there has been a torrent of queries and applications to the NSW Rural Fire Service.
According to Inspector Ben Shepherd, from the NSW RFS, since July 2019, there have been more than 35,000 queries from people considering joining the organisation. For the same period the year before, there were 1800 inquiries.
So far since July, about 8400 have submitted applications to join the service. Many of those applications have arrived in recent months.
"During the fires, there's no doubt we saw a spike in people wanting to help," Inspector Shepherd said.
That spike has played out just down the road from Martinsville at the Cooranbong Rural Fire Brigade.
According to its captain, Leigh Chambers, the brigade has taken on 20 new members in the past few months. That is a huge boost for a brigade that had about 50 members before summer, and it is a far cry from a few years ago.
"From where the brigade was six or seven years ago, when we had four active members, it takes a load off," Leigh Chambers said.
The Lake Macquarie brigade is part of the Central Coast RFS district. According to Viki Campbell, the district manager of the Central Coast RFS, 262 membership applications have been processed in the past six months. That compares with 106 applications for the same period the year before.
Operations officer for the Lower Hunter RFS, Terry Burns, said since November, 243 people had joined the 43 brigades in the district. In the 12 months from November 2018 to October last year, only 146 people had signed on.
"So we've basically almost doubled what we did across 12 months in five months," Mr Burns said, explaining that it had been the bushfire crisis that had pushed up membership.
"What we've seen has been unprecedented and quite dramatic, and it's been in people's faces and at the forefront of their minds, and it will provoke people; some will donate money, some people will join the local rural fire brigade."
Read more: Martinsville firefighters face the flames
In the 31 brigades across the Singleton and Muswellbrook local government areas, there has also been a membership spike.
"I would say there's been 100 or more applications since the start of 2020," said Superintendent Paul Best, district manager of the Hunter Valley RFS.
The challenge now for the RFS is to process all the applications and train the recruits, particularly with the disruption being caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The Cooranbong brigade's training on Monday night, for instance, was called off.
But the goal, said Superintendent Best, was to have new members "fitted out and trained and ready to go as soon as practicably possible".
As his Lower Hunter RFS colleague, Terry Burns, put it, "We're getting ready for the next fire season".
In the big shed that houses the Martinsville Rural Fire Brigade, basic training has already begun for the three recruits.
The trio said they were enjoying learning new skills and facing challenges - no matter how high they seemed.
"The fire trucks are so tall," Imogen Ward, the brigade's youngest member, said. "You actually have to climb up."
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