More than 80,000 people helped battle the 2019-20 bushfires. Five years on one remembers the blur of days
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Bernie O’Rourke can vividly recall flying out from Newcastle in September 2019 on one of the first catastrophic fire days of a season now known as black summer.
It was 1.30 in the morning and, as the navy helicopter zigzagged over the bushland between Armidale and Taree, O’Rourke could see up to five fires blazing bright in the darkness. While night fires usually resemble “dots of colour” across a black landscape, this time O’Rourke saw something “very weird”.
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