“There was a lot more property, homes and businesses at risk compared to what we are normally used to,” said Tyler.

Kirk added that every fire was different, but on Monday night the smoke was a problem, and they had to fly low to avoid it.

“Our job was to do the best job we could, to keep everyone safe, so we weren’t in danger and no-one on the ground was in danger. It’s always a judgment call,” he said.

“We don’t put the fire out, they do. We certainly helped. We try to cool the fire for them so the ground crew can come in. Basically, we give them more time and a pair of eyes sometimes too. But there is no way we can put a fire out like that, we just help where we can.”

“As Rohan always says, our job is to make the fire manageable, we buy them some time, reduce the intensity of the fire so it’s safe for them to move in,” said Jim.

When the Mail asked what the team did when they were not fighting fires, coincidently their oven-timer ‘dinged’ and Kirk ran to pull his cake out of it.

But on a more serious note, Tyler said they prepared the helicopter, the engineers did their inspections and they did a test every morning to make sure they were ready to go and take off at a moment’s notice.

“Then we come back to the office and do a lot of paper work,” said Rohan.

“Because it’s a trial season we document all the data, which is sent off to Perth to assess if this is the best place to have the aircraft, if it benefits the community and if there is justification for the aircraft to be based here.”

FESA air operations manager Peter Saint said: “We believe it’s a good area. Bunbury was the original place it was going to be stationed, but Busselton has the benefit of being a bit out of town, less noise, the airport is quieter and it’s still close to all the major areas in the South West.

“The shire and community bent over backwards to assist us to get set up here.

“And we get a good response from the community, which helps a lot. It goes towards justifying the reasons we are here as a resource.”