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Firestorm
Firestorm
Published: 28 September 2021
ISBN: 9781761040917
Imprint: Viking
Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
Firestorm
Greg Mullins
Combines thrilling stories of what it’s like to be on the front line of Australia’s 2019-2020 giga-fire with the hard truths of human-caused climate change, and what we do about it.
Greg Mullins followed his father into fighting bushfires – it was in the blood. He fought major fires around Sydney and the Blue Mountains for decades, and studied bushfires in Europe, Canada and the US. He risked his life in the 1994 Sydney fires and, later, during the catastrophic Black Summer of 2019–20.
As a career firefighter, he worked his way up the ranks to become Commissioner of one of the world’s largest fire services, Fire and Rescue NSW, for nearly fourteen years. When it came to natural disasters there was little, if anything, he hadn’t witnessed first-hand.
Over five decades he watched as weather patterns and natural disaster risks changed, seeing bushfires becoming bigger, hotter and more destructive. He talked to scientists and weighed their evidence with his experience, coming to the realisation that man-made global warming was setting the stage for a deadly firestorm. In early 2019 he tried to warn the government that a Black Summer was imminent so that adequate preparations could be made. . .
But when he and former fire chiefs from across the country tried to meet with politicians to sound an urgent warning, they were ignored.
Combining thrilling stories of what it’s like to be on the front line of Australia’s first giga-fire with the hard truths of human-caused climate change, Firestorm is a compelling account of raging fire, political evasion, settled science, and one man’s courageous, urgent call to action for all Australians.
About the author Greg Mullins
Greg Mullins AO AFSM became a major national figure in the 2019–20 bushfire crisis – Australia’s longest, hottest and most devastating on record. From being a volunteer firefighter then a career firefighter, he is an internationally recognised expert in responding to major bushfires and natural disasters.
During his 39-year career he served as President, Vice President and Board Chair of the Australasian Fire & Emergency Service Authorities’ Council, Deputy Chair of the NSW State Emergency Management Committee, Australian Director of the International Fire Chiefs Association of Asia, NSW representative on the Australian Emergency Management Committee, Australian representative on the UN’s International Search & Rescue Advisory Group, and as a member of the NSW Bushfire Coordinating Committee. He is currently Chair of the NSW Ambulance Service Advisory Board.
In early 2019 he formed Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, a coalition of 34 former fire and emergency service chiefs from throughout Australia. They tried to warn the federal government of an impending bushfire disaster, were ignored, but continue to explain how climate change is super-charging the bushfire problem and why urgent action is needed on greenhouse emissions.
Published: 28 September 2021
ISBN: 9781761040917
Imprint: Viking
Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
Firestorm
Greg Mullins
Combines thrilling stories of what it’s like to be on the front line of Australia’s 2019-2020 giga-fire with the hard truths of human-caused climate change, and what we do about it.
Greg Mullins followed his father into fighting bushfires – it was in the blood. He fought major fires around Sydney and the Blue Mountains for decades, and studied bushfires in Europe, Canada and the US. He risked his life in the 1994 Sydney fires and, later, during the catastrophic Black Summer of 2019–20.
As a career firefighter, he worked his way up the ranks to become Commissioner of one of the world’s largest fire services, Fire and Rescue NSW, for nearly fourteen years. When it came to natural disasters there was little, if anything, he hadn’t witnessed first-hand.
Over five decades he watched as weather patterns and natural disaster risks changed, seeing bushfires becoming bigger, hotter and more destructive. He talked to scientists and weighed their evidence with his experience, coming to the realisation that man-made global warming was setting the stage for a deadly firestorm. In early 2019 he tried to warn the government that a Black Summer was imminent so that adequate preparations could be made. . .
But when he and former fire chiefs from across the country tried to meet with politicians to sound an urgent warning, they were ignored.
Combining thrilling stories of what it’s like to be on the front line of Australia’s first giga-fire with the hard truths of human-caused climate change, Firestorm is a compelling account of raging fire, political evasion, settled science, and one man’s courageous, urgent call to action for all Australians.
About the author Greg Mullins
Greg Mullins AO AFSM became a major national figure in the 2019–20 bushfire crisis – Australia’s longest, hottest and most devastating on record. From being a volunteer firefighter then a career firefighter, he is an internationally recognised expert in responding to major bushfires and natural disasters.
During his 39-year career he served as President, Vice President and Board Chair of the Australasian Fire & Emergency Service Authorities’ Council, Deputy Chair of the NSW State Emergency Management Committee, Australian Director of the International Fire Chiefs Association of Asia, NSW representative on the Australian Emergency Management Committee, Australian representative on the UN’s International Search & Rescue Advisory Group, and as a member of the NSW Bushfire Coordinating Committee. He is currently Chair of the NSW Ambulance Service Advisory Board.
In early 2019 he formed Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, a coalition of 34 former fire and emergency service chiefs from throughout Australia. They tried to warn the federal government of an impending bushfire disaster, were ignored, but continue to explain how climate change is super-charging the bushfire problem and why urgent action is needed on greenhouse emissions.
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336 pages, Paperback
Published September 28, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 29, 2021
"The 2019-20 bushfire season was Australia's worst by far. Among the thirty-five people killed, were six firefighters; 3,094 homes were destroyed; thousands of other buildings were destroyed; upwards of 24 million hectares were burnt across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, and billions of native animals were killed. Smoke killed at least 417 people and resulted in more than 4,500 additional hospital presentations during the fires. Economic losses were in the billions of dollars. The proportion of forest burnt was unprecedented."
I don’t usually write reviews for books that I've read. I'm much more the person who likes to lurk and read other peoples' thoughts on books that I'm interested in reading rather than committing my own to paper, but I think this is such an important book that I wanted to encourage others to pick it up.
I live in Canberra, Australia and was a young teen when the 2003 bushfires happened that destroyed over 500 homes and saw the previously unheard of creation of a fire tornado in our small capital city. I have clear memories of watching the news about Black Saturday in Victoria in 2008 and the incomprehensible amount of lives lost in that one day (nearly 200). I have holidayed in Tathra many times, which was the location of another huge bushfire in 2018. Canberra came close to serious devastation once again in the Black Summer of 2019/2020 and I watched in horror (along with the rest of the world) at the ongoing destruction of that awful Summer that never seemed to end.
Greg Mullins has spent over five decades as a firefighter - both career and volunteer, with exposure to major fires throughout the NSW region across this time period. It is these experiences and his intimate knowledge of how fires work that he draws on to write this book. He uses a combination of snapshots and stories about his experiences working on the fire lines to help explain the disturbing impacts that global warming is having on the climate. Living in a fire-prone country like Australia, it was truly chilling to hear his predictions for what the coming years will bring in terms of increasing bushfire danger. Greg Mullins notes that the word unprecedented has been misused a lot to exaggerate different situations and inflate their importance above what it actually is. In the case of Black Summer though, there is no better word to describe the impact of that fire season both in the short-term and long-term. It truly was unprecedented. The scary thing is that he predicts this will become our new normal by 2060, what will be considered unprecedented by then?
At times I found it hard to read this book due to how angry it made me feel about the inaction by our politicians here in Australia and their absolute insistence on remaining subservient to fossil fuels. Greg Mullins describes multiple attempts at trying to alert the Prime Minster and others in his office to the building threat of a bushfire catastrophe with direct links to climate change, but little attention was paid until after our Black Summer had already started, and even then minimal, if any, recommendations or changes were made. Too little, too late, as seems to be the trend with our current government.
I was grateful for the small bit of hope Greg Mullins offers at the end of his book when he talks about the short-, medium-, and long-term changes that are needed to help prevent an even greater climate catastrophe than what we are already on course for. It certainly prompted me to look into what investments my current bank is making (both in terms of supporting fossil fuels and renewable energies) and, as a result, I am in the process of changing to a bank more focused on sustainability, as well as looking into other ways I can make a difference.
There are some minor editing and grammar issues (such as repetitive word usage within sentences), but I was able to overlook those since I was just appreciative of getting to read Greg Mullins’ bushfire fighting experiences and his wealth of expertise in this area. I feel that this is a very insightful book that addresses head-on how we've gotten to this point and what we need to do to try and reverse it, backed by science and decades of experience. I would strongly encourage everyone to read this book and think about if you want Black Summer to be our new normal within 40 years time. Because if you don't, we need to do something about it now.
I don’t usually write reviews for books that I've read. I'm much more the person who likes to lurk and read other peoples' thoughts on books that I'm interested in reading rather than committing my own to paper, but I think this is such an important book that I wanted to encourage others to pick it up.
I live in Canberra, Australia and was a young teen when the 2003 bushfires happened that destroyed over 500 homes and saw the previously unheard of creation of a fire tornado in our small capital city. I have clear memories of watching the news about Black Saturday in Victoria in 2008 and the incomprehensible amount of lives lost in that one day (nearly 200). I have holidayed in Tathra many times, which was the location of another huge bushfire in 2018. Canberra came close to serious devastation once again in the Black Summer of 2019/2020 and I watched in horror (along with the rest of the world) at the ongoing destruction of that awful Summer that never seemed to end.
Greg Mullins has spent over five decades as a firefighter - both career and volunteer, with exposure to major fires throughout the NSW region across this time period. It is these experiences and his intimate knowledge of how fires work that he draws on to write this book. He uses a combination of snapshots and stories about his experiences working on the fire lines to help explain the disturbing impacts that global warming is having on the climate. Living in a fire-prone country like Australia, it was truly chilling to hear his predictions for what the coming years will bring in terms of increasing bushfire danger. Greg Mullins notes that the word unprecedented has been misused a lot to exaggerate different situations and inflate their importance above what it actually is. In the case of Black Summer though, there is no better word to describe the impact of that fire season both in the short-term and long-term. It truly was unprecedented. The scary thing is that he predicts this will become our new normal by 2060, what will be considered unprecedented by then?
At times I found it hard to read this book due to how angry it made me feel about the inaction by our politicians here in Australia and their absolute insistence on remaining subservient to fossil fuels. Greg Mullins describes multiple attempts at trying to alert the Prime Minster and others in his office to the building threat of a bushfire catastrophe with direct links to climate change, but little attention was paid until after our Black Summer had already started, and even then minimal, if any, recommendations or changes were made. Too little, too late, as seems to be the trend with our current government.
I was grateful for the small bit of hope Greg Mullins offers at the end of his book when he talks about the short-, medium-, and long-term changes that are needed to help prevent an even greater climate catastrophe than what we are already on course for. It certainly prompted me to look into what investments my current bank is making (both in terms of supporting fossil fuels and renewable energies) and, as a result, I am in the process of changing to a bank more focused on sustainability, as well as looking into other ways I can make a difference.
There are some minor editing and grammar issues (such as repetitive word usage within sentences), but I was able to overlook those since I was just appreciative of getting to read Greg Mullins’ bushfire fighting experiences and his wealth of expertise in this area. I feel that this is a very insightful book that addresses head-on how we've gotten to this point and what we need to do to try and reverse it, backed by science and decades of experience. I would strongly encourage everyone to read this book and think about if you want Black Summer to be our new normal within 40 years time. Because if you don't, we need to do something about it now.
January 29, 2023
Very interesting account of the worsening wildfire situation experienced in Australia and many other parts of the world. The author has extensive firsthand experience fighting bush and suburban area fires which were harrowing to read. He does a great job giving basic lessons in fire science as well. While sections focus on Australian politics it was easy to draw parallels to the US government.
March 3, 2025
Greg Mullins is a career and volunteer firefighter in NSW. He has led agencies in times of true horror and responded to communities when others have turned away. Bushfire are part of the environment in Australia, but through Greg's story the clear influence of climate change on the frequency and severity of fires we are seeing in the Australian landscape is undeniable.
A strong call to action for governments and individuals to stop and reverse climate change through individual actions and climate policy is paramount. Greg also highlights the divisive nature of this issue in Australian politics (Which is unhelpful) and not where other first world countries have landed.
We need to tackle this issue for all our sakes. Our firefighters' safety, our communities' safety and our lives are all at risk without action and even with action it will take generations to reverse what is already in train.
A strong call to action for governments and individuals to stop and reverse climate change through individual actions and climate policy is paramount. Greg also highlights the divisive nature of this issue in Australian politics (Which is unhelpful) and not where other first world countries have landed.
We need to tackle this issue for all our sakes. Our firefighters' safety, our communities' safety and our lives are all at risk without action and even with action it will take generations to reverse what is already in train.
January 12, 2022
Not many people know this about me, but I wanted to be a firefighter when I was a kid. The job fascinated me and even now, many decades after my childhood is over, I still felt that excitement curl in the bottom of my tummy when I read the author's descriptions of what it takes to fight a bushfire.
Having said all of that though, this book is a cautionary tale and should be required reading for everyone, especially those in power, as clearly something needs to be done. Climate change is a THING, not something made up by "Greenies". Our climate has changed and WE are responsible for that. Our government has known about this for a while but persists in putting their heads in the sand. I fear for the future of my grandchildren and greatgrandchildren (when I get them, I am not that old, yet).
Events like fire tornadoes which were rare a couple of decades ago, make regular appearances these days and our fire seasons are longer, start earlier and are harder to fight.
I remember when I was a teenager, most nights after a hot day, it would rain. It doesn't do that anymore. Some of the descriptions of our landscape being so dry fill me with despair. I would run and hide if I could, but there is really nowhere to escape to. If we have it tough, what about our wildlife? I can't imagine our landscape without our native animals in it but what if they just can't bounce back at a certain point?
It is appalling that our government has spent $3.5 BILLION on ordering tanks from the US, when we have no need for them. I can't imagine under what circumstances we will be needing those things. Wouldn't the money be better spent on buying some firefighting aircraft? We borrow them from the US but their climate is changing too and now our bushfire seasons are overlapping, which leaves us vulnerable. It is a huge mess.
I give the author of this book kudos for maintaining a cool, calm demeanor despite doing everything possible to alert the government as to the trouble we are in, and them not taking a blind bit of notice.
I fear for our country, I really do.
History will prove Greg Mullins and his colleagues right, I am sorry to say. Between climate change and the COVID pandemic, I am not feeling all that positive about our collective futures right now. I hope I am wrong.
Having said all of that though, this book is a cautionary tale and should be required reading for everyone, especially those in power, as clearly something needs to be done. Climate change is a THING, not something made up by "Greenies". Our climate has changed and WE are responsible for that. Our government has known about this for a while but persists in putting their heads in the sand. I fear for the future of my grandchildren and greatgrandchildren (when I get them, I am not that old, yet).
Events like fire tornadoes which were rare a couple of decades ago, make regular appearances these days and our fire seasons are longer, start earlier and are harder to fight.
I remember when I was a teenager, most nights after a hot day, it would rain. It doesn't do that anymore. Some of the descriptions of our landscape being so dry fill me with despair. I would run and hide if I could, but there is really nowhere to escape to. If we have it tough, what about our wildlife? I can't imagine our landscape without our native animals in it but what if they just can't bounce back at a certain point?
It is appalling that our government has spent $3.5 BILLION on ordering tanks from the US, when we have no need for them. I can't imagine under what circumstances we will be needing those things. Wouldn't the money be better spent on buying some firefighting aircraft? We borrow them from the US but their climate is changing too and now our bushfire seasons are overlapping, which leaves us vulnerable. It is a huge mess.
I give the author of this book kudos for maintaining a cool, calm demeanor despite doing everything possible to alert the government as to the trouble we are in, and them not taking a blind bit of notice.
I fear for our country, I really do.
History will prove Greg Mullins and his colleagues right, I am sorry to say. Between climate change and the COVID pandemic, I am not feeling all that positive about our collective futures right now. I hope I am wrong.
January 26, 2023
I found this to be a thoroughly engaging, although at times challenging, memoir of one of Australia's often unsung heroes, the bush firefighter. The author's father was a volunteer bush firefighter, which led his son to the perilous life of fighting fires. The stories hark back to past tragic bushfires and traverse many of the big fires that affected Australia, particularly the state of New South Wales. His father saw that fires were becoming more problematic in the 1980s and 1990s. The author saw that trend continue to the point that fire seasons have extended well beyond the traditional fire fighting season, and warns that the future will bring even more dire situations. This book started out as a story about fighting fires. It ended as a reminder that the worsening situation has been brought about by climate change - something we all need to be constantly reminded of. Everyone should read this book as a reminder of the tragic events that have unfolded and the need to do something about them. I gave the book 5 stars.
August 14, 2022
Firestorm is the true story about the politicisation of climate change by Liberal National politicians over a decade which culminated in the bushfire disaster of 2019-2020. Star players in this sorry saga includes Murdoch Media, Liberal primer ministers like John Howard, Tony Abbot, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison. Other honorable mention includes National politicians like Matt Kanavan, Barnaby Joyce, David Littleproud.
January 17, 2022
Essential reading, especially for those in fire prone areas. What you do to prepare your property will matter a great deal.
March 14, 2022
This is a book that everyone needs to read. This is now, floods, fires and global warming.
December 15, 2022
Every Australian of voting age should read.
January 15, 2023
Good and interesting book from someone who’s spent his whole life on the bleeding edge of emergency services. A relevant and experiential view of the impacts of climate change.
April 26, 2025
I was attending a work conference and heard Greg Mullins speak. He is quite the character. Larger than life. I was inspired to buy his book. I wasn't disappointed.
Read
May 23, 2024I wanted this to be more. I believe that anthropomorphic climate change is a thing, and is a threat to our continued existance on this planet. And I believe that Greg Mullins, through his experience as a volunteer bush firefighter and a paid professional firefighter has insights into the real world effects that this increased severity of weather conditions will have on fire behaviour and the way which people, especially Australians, will be able to live in close proximity to bushland.
But. This book is just badly written.
It is in desperate need of a strong editorial hand. There are so many instances where Greg circles back and repeats himself. Or where he talks off on a tangent making specific mention that Joe Blow was in charge of the brigade over that hill, and I knew him from the academy. It does nothing to advance the story or to better inform the reader, other than reinforcing (again and again) how many people Greg knows.
It feels like this book was rushed out to try and strike whilst the irons of public attention were hot, and before the news cycle did what the news cycle does and cycle onto something new.
But. This book is just badly written.
It is in desperate need of a strong editorial hand. There are so many instances where Greg circles back and repeats himself. Or where he talks off on a tangent making specific mention that Joe Blow was in charge of the brigade over that hill, and I knew him from the academy. It does nothing to advance the story or to better inform the reader, other than reinforcing (again and again) how many people Greg knows.
It feels like this book was rushed out to try and strike whilst the irons of public attention were hot, and before the news cycle did what the news cycle does and cycle onto something new.
December 27, 2023
Great book by Mullins, really brought it home on how climate change is causing more dangerous and threatening fires.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews