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BURNINGAMBITION

T h e re’s little more terrifying than asoutheaster blowing a wildfire towards your

home or farm. That’s when you need theheroes from Vulcan. By Matthew Sterne

V ULCAN Wildfire isSouth Africa’s firstelite squad of wildfirefirefighters. Youngand fit, they’re thehardened athletes you

would expect, but they’re alsothoughtful, sensitive and talk abouttheir feelings. They base their op-erations on the US Interagency Hot-shot Crews, but the majority of theteam speak Xhosa, live inKhayeltisha and have never left theWestern Cape, let alone South Africa.Their primary job is to tame veld-fires, but they say their ultimate goalis to tackle inequality.

Ryan Heydenrych and PatrickRyan founded Vulcan six monthsago. Heydenrych, a former volunteerfirefighter at Newlands, walked awayfrom a promising web business andsold his car to help get Vulcan off theg round.

Ryan, also a former volunteer fire-fighter, turned his back on a suc-cessful photography career andpoured much of his own money intoVulcan, which promises very little, ifany, in return.

Ryan says, “Ryan and I were sittinghaving a beer one evening and said,‘Look, if only we could do this as ap r o fe s s i o n .’ There are professionalwildfire firefighters overseas. In Aus-tralia, they’re called Raft — Re m o teArea Firefighting Teams. In theStates, you’ve got Hotshot Crews andS m o ke j u m p e r s .

“We just thought, if only they hadthis out here, we’d go join them. Bythat point I was sick of photographyand the photography world. I hadfound much fuller and more ground-ed people in firefighting.

“Then the conversation wentfrom, ‘If only we could join a crew,’to, ‘Let’s just form our own crew.’And that was the start of Vulcan.”

Heydenrych describes the deci-sion as “completely out of character”for him.

“I am normally very sensible andconservative, especially with moneyand business decisions, but the morewe talked about it the more we re-alised how passionate we were aboutthe idea.

“And, more importantly, there is amassive need for it. Fires in the West-ern Cape are growing in size, fre-quency and intensity. Currently, a lotof fires are getting away fromc re w s .

“The guys are poorly paid, they’renot motivated, they don’t have theright skills and they’re unequipped.We came in and said that there mustbe a better way to do this.

“We ’ve got to make wildland fire-fighting a career for people — at themoment it’s just an entry-level job. Ifthey get the right training, gear andvehicles, we’ll elevate people from alower to a middle class. Becausethat’s very important for the futureof the country. And that’s a massivedrive to starting this company, tocontribute to an industry and make adifference. We want to let them reachtheir maximum potential in life.”

The first member to join Vulcanwas Luncedo “C u l t u re ” Ror wane.With five years’ experience at Work-ing on Fire, a job creation and step-ping-stone government programme,Vulcan seemed like the perfect op-portunity for Culture, 32, who hadrecently become a father.

A key aspect of Vulcan is that itoffers a viable career. Instead of avery basic salary, which is the normin the industry, the Vulcan crew ispaid a decent living wage.

The other key difference is thatevery man has at least two years’experience.

One of the first practices put in

place at Vulcan was a daily “mojou p d a te ”. Each morning, every mem-ber of the team rates their mojo outof 10 — how they are feeling phys-ically and mentally.

“I like the mojo because it helpsu s ,” says Rorwane.

“Maybe Dumisani’s mojo is lowtoday so then we know and we can

talk to him and find out what’swrong and then we can deal with it,especially if we are going to the fire-line. The best thing to boost themojo is to talk. Because we go tothese dangerous areas we need totrust each other.

“Almost all of us here are parents,but most of us are unmarried. We

try to help each other with ourproblems. Normally, it is with ourpersonal relationships. That is mostoften the problem with this agegroup and a big factor with thecrew ’s mojo.

“I cannot do this forever,” saysRorwane. “After this, in 10 years, I’dlike to open a small business in the

location or maybe help the com-munity. But for now, I’m focusingon my work.”

Sesethu “S i e ra h ” Stuma, 25, grewup in a small town in the Transkeiand has the sleek, taut muscles of awarrior. He had a difficult child-hood.

“When I was nine months old,my parents died in a car crash. Andso I did not grow up with muchg u i d a n c e ,” Stuma says.

“In 2008, my sister died. Whenshe passed away, she was my lasthope. For a long time, I didn’t wantto do anything. But I eventually de-cided to move to Cape Town andfour years later I am now working atVulcan. I’m proud of myself, to behonest. You see, many other guys

end up drinking, smoking, gettinginto gangs and robbery, all of thosethings. But now I’ve got firefight-i n g .”

Stuma is ambitious. “I wish to bea commander. They say I was bornfor this job. I don’t want to startagain. I want to go through thechannels to senior firefighter, tocrew boss, and my dream is to oneday be a chief. That is why I work sohard. I want my bosses to see howdedicated I am.”

He praises Heydenrych andRya n .

“When we go out they make surewe have everything we need.They’re always positive. Positivity isthe most important thing you needin life.” LS

‘MANY GUYS ENDUP GETTING INTOGANGS, BUT I’VE

GOT FIREFIGHTING’

HOT AS HELL: One of the first crews to arrive on day one of the Simonsberg fire that raged in the Cape Winelands in January deployed onto the left flank to try to stop the fire spreadingaround the mountain towards Thelema and Tokara. Here the crew hike in to cut a control line with chainsaws while helicopters support them with water drops

ASHES TO ASHES: Crew take a food b re a k in a burned area; this is, of course, the safest place to rest duringa fire as it cannot burn again

{ FIREFIGHTERS }{ FIREFIGHTERS }

Photographs: Patrick Ryan

HEROES: Crew boss Luncedo Rorwane, left, and firefighter Jericho Nduwaat one of the many fires at Elsenburg near Klapmuts Kop

FIRE CROWNS: Crew commander Ryan Heydenrych