Chris Dent was rudely awoken from sleep on a warm December night six years ago.
His CFA pager had gone off and as soon as he emerged from his house a short distance from the rural community of Stanhope he could see a glow in the sky that told him this was a big fire.
When he arrived in town he saw smoke billowing from the cheesemaking building in the Fonterra factory, and he joined his father, Peter, the Stanhope CFA captain, who was directing fire suppression efforts.
He knew the factory and many people who worked in the building.
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All the available Stanhope CFA volunteers turned out and soon Peter Dent realised it was going to require more help, so he called in surrounding brigades, more breathing apparatus units and the elevated ladder unit from Bendigo.
The fire appeared to have taken hold in the the cheesemaking building, a labyrinth of rooms and structures, sandwiched between other buildings vital to milk processing on the site.
The firefighters were faced with a fire creeping into the old roof in a factory environment that included chemicals like ammonia and containers with liquid nitrogen.
The battle lasted for several hours before it was fully contained and the Fonterra management, while shocked at the multi-million-dollar damage, were fulsome in their praise for the firefighters who prevented the blaze from spreading.
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Stanhope Fonterra site manager Steve Taylor said it was remarkable that although cheese production was not possible in the burnt-out building, the company was able to continue whey production the next day.
Milk continued to flow from the Goulburn Valley dairy farms to the facility and permanent staff were able to keep their jobs at the site.
The CFA and Fonterra management reflected on the impact of the fire, six years after the blaze, on December 16.
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Peter Dent was Stanhope CFA captain at the time of the fire (his son Chris is captain now) and distinctly remembers the teamwork involved in bringing the blaze under control.
“We had people on the brigade who knew their way around the site. We even had a sparky on the brigade who was able to cut the power to make it safer,” he said.
“Brigades joined in from as far away as Rochester and Echuca.
“The Fonterra guys said to us: ‘What is it you need? You tell us, we'll do it'.”
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He also recalled the site had an uninterrupted water supply, which was crucial in containing the fire within a few hours.
The fire has cemented the relationship between the factory people and the town.
Fonterra continues to make donations to the brigade and arranges familiarisation walk-throughs for the fire brigade so anyone called to an incident will understand the site layout.
Some of the 184 employees live in the town and the factory provides an economic driver to the farming community.
In 2017, Fonterra completed a $140 million replacement for the cheesemaking facility, massively increasing its capacity.
Next year will mark 100 years of milk processing on the site.