It wasn't all fun and games for Territory Day celebrations with Fire crews working through the night and into today to contain blazes caused by unruly fireworks. Hundreds of calls for help were issued as the authorities’ pleas for Territorians to put safety first fell on deaf ears.
00:00As thousands of Territorians play with fire, hundreds of firefighters cope with the fallout.
00:09Firecracker night is absolutely hectic, trying to keep runaway firecrackers out of dead
00:15gambagrass, which is what we are doing at the moment.
00:18Firefighters responded to 570 calls, 150 grass fires and three structure fires.
00:25But as Territory Day concluded, the workload continued, with harsh weather conditions fueling leftover blazes across the landscape.
00:32The winds will be increasing in the morning so we're going to be ready for anything to expand fairly rapidly as the sun comes up, the day heats up and the winds pick up.
00:42Leftover fireworks and kids on school holidays also a cause for concern.
00:47They're out to have some fun and inadvertently that results in fires in the landscape.
00:52In among the full-time fireys were more than 400 volunteer firefighters, fighting fires such as this blaze beside Livingston Airstrip south of Noonamar.
01:01That was Livingston Brigade that just responded to that fire alongside the old Livingston Airstrip.
01:06They're Territorians that volunteer their time to keep the rest of the Territory safe while all of us are out enjoying Territory Day.
01:13Drawing the thanks of their colleagues and the community.
01:16It's greatly appreciated. A lot of them have even knocked off work early to get themselves prepared to come in for the night and there's quite a few that worked until 3 o'clock in the morning to extinguish fires to make sure that conditions were safe for today.
01:32Putting in a hard shift for what the fire chief says was mostly a happy outcome.
01:37Definitely in here and in the city there was a lot of faces that were full of smiles and the like so I think it was a good event.
01:45The ashes of another Territory Day now behind us.
